Introduction

According to Handy, smoking is one of the prime reasons behind several respiratory and heart diseases and a habit that takes discipline and motivation to quit. However, overcoming the challenges can be good for you and the people around you. Veteran smokers pick up vaping to quit smoking and a significant portion of the younger generation prefer to heat up flavored tobacco as well. But, with so many opinions floating around the internet, it may be hard to distinguish between smoking and vaping or find out proper solutions to quit either. So, we gazed deeper and prepared a guide to declutter some of the confusion.

Quitting Smoking, the traditional and familiar monster

Apart from accumulating carcinogenic tar in your body, smoking also affects your fertility, dental health, and can cause heart diseases, eye damage, and a lot more. The good thing is that most smokers try to quit the addiction and there is a lot of help available around you.

Apart from motivation from family and friends some of the strategies that have proven to be fruitful for many include:

1. Nicotine replacement therapy - substituting nicotine with short-acting NRT like nicotine gum or long-acting nicotine patch that helps you fight the physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal
2. Medications that help you to quit smoking like varenicline, Bupropion, or Nortriptyline
3. Personal counseling and support groups

Quitting vaping vs smoking

While vaping or using e-cigarettes, nicotine along with other chemicals are heated to create thick vapor that you can inhale. Vaping contains fewer chemicals and carcinogens but the word that needs to be highlighted is “less”. For example, propylene glycol, one of the chemicals used in vaping can create carcinogen formaldehyde when heated to temperatures suitable for vaping.

Quitting vaping can be harder than regular cigarettes as it doesn’t leave the bad smell of tobacco in your breath and is very convenient. It reduces the social stigma which is one of the major motivations for regular smokers to quit. In fact, a recent study shows that a majority of participants who picked up vaping to quit smoking ended up using both regular and e-cigarettes after a year. In worse cases, extra strength cartridges can get you more addicted to higher nicotine concentrations.

So, quitting vaping may even require more discipline, motivation, and measures and should be treated as an equally bad habit that needs quitting.

While vaping is highly addictive, it is less harmful than regular cigarettes and may even guide existing smokers in the right direction. But it shouldn’t be approached as a new miracle path to quit tobacco.

According to the 2015 report by the US surgeon general, around 40 percent of e-cigarette users of the younger generation have never been close to regular tobacco. This is alarming since it is creating new tobacco users who may not have picked up smoking tobacco at all.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has helped to clear some of your confusion about smoking and vaping. Handy believes that if you are a regular smoker, having an end goal of quitting all tobacco products can help you to improve into your better self.