2mo ago

Good to see AAFES looking out for my health

117 comments

for other poor non-americans like me, who heard the term aafes first time in their shitty non-freedomy life:
The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES, also referred to as The Exchange and post exchange/PX or base exchange/BX) provides goods and services at U.S. Army, Air Force, and Space Force installations worldwide, operating department stores, convenience stores, restaurants, military clothing stores, theaters and more nationwide and in more than 30 countries and four U.S. territories.
- due to public Health concerns the US government will stop operating Army, Air Force and Space Force installations worldwide
  
  That would be nice
  
  if only...
- As an American who didn’t know and was afraid to ask, thank you. Had no idea. Now I wanna see some of that sweet sweet space force merch.
  
  You know how the Army has soldiers, the Navy has sailors, and the Air Force has airmen? The Space Force has "guardians".
  
  Dont be afride to ask questions. Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people.
  I guess you have an internet capable device in your vincinity. If you are afraid your fellow americans would make fun of your crippledness,you can use an internet search engine on that device without notifying your peers!
  
  It’s like a Costco membership, you just have to sign your life away to Uncle Sam for a few years
- I am an American and this is the first time I’ve heard of AAFES
  
  They don't really have any presence outside of military bases and embassies, so if you don't exist in those circles, you wouldn't have been exposed to them.
  
  Same ngl, I just assumed it was some health agency
  
  Not many people who never served would know, tbh.
- Fuck bruh just go to the NEX. Always a vape shop within 100 feet.

- French is a hilarious language
  
  You should hear Dutch
- I quit a few months after those came out in my province, and it was a bit of a shock the first time I saw them; but then like most things, they just became stripes on the butt. I probably wasn't their target audience though.
  While they didn't make me quit, (I had already decided on my "quit date"), I will say the extra graphic warning pictures were pretty damm effective for starting that conversation with self. I had to take a sharpie to a few packs.
- LeBron LeJames would never smoke LaCigarete!
  
  https://youtu.be/bTdTJHAf9-A

- Relevant username

If you smoke, you better start vaping. If you vape, you better stop vaping. It's that simple.
If you can't, at least don't use throwaway and sketchy products for anything you plan to inhale.
- Vaping is probably better for your health, but holy cow, are my friends addicted to vaping now. Vaping is so convenient and tasty, they go through several pens a day specially on the weekends.
  
  I went the other way, i stopped smoking and started vaping. I used a sub ohm vape with a low dose of nicotine 0.3-0.6 per 10ml bottles of oil.
  I vaped loads to begin with, likely due to the low dose. but it was hard to get the time to get outside of the office to vape, and each time i only had a short time to do it. It got less frequent and less time per frequency of going out to the point that one day i went a whole day without realising i hadnt vaped or even thought about it.
  I decided thqt day, after 17 years of smoking, and 1 year of vaping, that i didn't need it anymore. So i didnt take my vape to work the next day. And about 3 to 4 weeks later i threw it in the bin.
  Never looked back.
  
  I miss the early wick days where the vape pens shot screaming hot oil into your mouth and occasionally the wicks would burn from getting to close to the coil or just dry burning.
  Nothing made me quit smoking faster than that.
  
  I suspect this is because they have, weirdly enough, too low of a nicotine dosage in their eliquid. So they end up inhaling way way more flavored glycerin and glycol than they otherwise would.

Prohibition has been a dramatic failure every time it’s ever been tried.
- This is more like "We don't sell cider because it might be harmful to your body with all the alcohol and how it tastes of apples, here have some pure ethanol instead"
  
  "We've stopped selling paper due to the danger of paper-cuts for people. We will continue selling firearms and ammo."

I stopped smoking a decade ago. Do cigarettes really cost that much now? Fuck...
- In Europe many countries are at 12€ a pack...
  
  £15 in the UK.
- Marlboros here in MA I think are around $12-$13 a pack.
  The really amazing thing is that most the people who smoke, by most measures, really can't afford it, but somehow manage to squeeze it into their budget. People who can afford it...quit smoking years ago.
  
  Oh no, I certainly cannot afford 13 dollars a day. That's 130 bucks in 10 days. No way could I possibly fit that into my budget, back when they were 5 dollars a pack, it felt like highway robbery, this... would be out of the question.
- That seems really cheap compared to Australia
- You should see New Zealand.

Fuck I miss smoking. If there's a heaven it will be well stocked with Marlboro reds and quality coffee.
- Smoking will bring heaven closerrr
- I miss how cigarettes used to taste man. I'm not sure if it's because they're loaded with additives now or what but all cigarettes taste like shit to me. So even if I wanted to pay the ludicrous price for them, it's still not worth it for me.
  
  They taste like shit when you don't smoke.
  
  I think you might enjoy this John Prine song
  One of his best.
- In Islam, Heaven is supposed to have rivers of wine (that are not harmful). I bet that extends to all drugs/shrooms/whatever as well
  
  Heaven! Where heroine Tuesday blends seamlessly into crack pipe Friday!
- Interesting. I miss vaping bananas and cream vape juice. And peach, and mixed berries.
- You might try Allen Carr's easyway book, it's meant to make you give up in a way that you don't even want to smoke anymore, rather than fighting the urge. I'm a non smoker so I can't give my personal experience on it. But it was recommended by some former smokers on the ukcasual community. I bought a used copy for a colleague, but I don't work there anymore, so I'll try to catch up with him sometime and find out how he went with it. I'm currently reading Carr's other book, The Nicotine Conspiracy, and I'm finding it very interesting. (I have an ebook copy of his easyway book if you want it).
  
  This book was how I finally managed to quit smoking well over a decade ago.

I miss the clutches of people that would congregate in smoking areas on breaks at work, kinda forced to socialize but all walks of life would be tied together by their shared vice.
Now the smoking area at work has dwindled so I feel like a pariah sucking on my electric nicotine pacifier for a couple minutes, staring at my phone and ignoring the other pariahs that come outside.
Hell, I think I met the larger part of my 2000s friend group striking up conversations outside of bars when you could no longer smoke inside.
Sorry I'm romanticizing am unhealthy dirty habit, but I do think that we, in the US at least, have vilified one more means of social connection.
- I've told people before, as a non-smoker, that smoking would be the ultimate social activity if it weren't for all the cancer and assorted negative health outcomes. You've got an idle habit that many people also engage in. It requires that people come closer together to share the disposal resources. It then requires that you hold still and fidget with a small stick for several minutes every time you do it. And nothing else. It's hard to beat a set of conditions to get people to idly interact with each other that's better than that.
  But, you know, cancer...
  
  I have a couple of friends who smoke and I really enjoy heading outside with them when they go out to smoke. I especially enjoy it when it's very cold out, because nothing makes me appreciate the cosy warmth of my home more than a brief spell of bracing cold.
  Shame about the passive smoking though
  
  Imagine if smoking made you healthy.
  
  When I worked in an office, I used to regularly take breaks with the smokers, even though I don't smoke. Not unlike following a bird or deer through the woods to a source of food or fresh water, the smokers really do have a line on togetherness. That and getting up from your desk regularly to take a damn break.
  
  Drinking is better it also lowers inhibitions.
- It’s not the habit it’s the people. People just want to be left alone these days.

I would think that neither cigarettes or vaping is good for you but I don't really understand which is supposedly worse and why. I just remember the outrage over vaping because it was primarily marketed to young people
- Vaping is much healthier per unit. The thing is lots of people cant stop vaping coz unlike cigarettes it tastes awesome. They suck on that thing 24h a day vaping the equivalent of 100+ cigarettes.
  Also a big part of the revenue is generated from addicted kids, they know it and wont change it.
  
  This is just entirely untrue. People generally consume more nicotine when vaping. That much is true. Vaping has significantly less toxins and dangerous chemicals than smoking cigarettes, as well as circumvent the whole tar in the lungs thing. There are no long term studies on vaping, so doctors will always say "we aren't sure which is worse" but advise that smoking is likely to be far worse for the body than vaping. There is not a single study on earth, nor any doctors I've heard, that supports your claim.
- Smoking is much more harmful than vaping, but vaping is not necessarily healthy either. The higher temperatures from burning plant matter (any plant matter really, nicotine is just super addictive) create most of the carcinogens in smoke. The most abundant carcinogen is Benzo[a]pyrene, which is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs, a.k.a. "tar" in cigarette smoke). PAHs are formed at temperatures above 300 Celsius. And vapes typically operate around 200 Celsius. Vapes still contain carcinogens and nicotine itself harms vascular health, but they have none of the PAHs if operating correctly. The biggest issue with them is the targeting of kids, especially by Juul in the 2010s.
- Coles notes: smoking, is quite literally that, creating smoke that you intentionally inhale. The desired chemical (nicotine) is mixed with other smoke shit (thousands of different compounds. The shit in that smoke can give you cancer and a long list of other problems.
  Vaping is basically a handheld fog machine that has nicotine added to the liquid. Usually sweetened and flavored, but not necessarily. It has the desired chemical, nicotine, as well as a short list of additives (maybe a dozen or so, depending on a few factors), and doesn't contain any known carcinogens (so no cancer)
  At the end of the day, you're lungs should breathe the air. If you smoke or vape, that's not as good for you as clean fresh air. However, vaping won't give you cancer, and has a fraction of the toxins and compounds that cigarettes do.
  It's like comparing driving your car into a lamp post, or plowing through a parade with your SUV. Neither is ideal, one is definitely much worse than the other.
  
  vaping won't give you cancer
  Has that been proven though? I don't think there's yet any sufficient long-term research to know the full risks of vaping.
  
  vaping won't give you cancer
  That's one hell of a confident statement... Backed up by exactly zero sources.
  
  I have smoked and vaped alternatively. When I've vaped I have breathed as bad or worse than smoking. Vape liquids are propileneglycol (or some other glycol, can't remember) and glycerine, often in 50/50 or a close ratio up or down. When vaping you are coating your lungs in oil. Probably not better than smoke. Different type of harm, but definitely very harmful. Just think about it: oil in your lungs...
- It's the difference between eating a Tic Tac, and just pouring the whole box in your mouth. Neither are good, but the second is definitely worse.
- https://youtu.be/cHEOsKddURQ
  Here is an excelent Kurzgesagt video.

This photo is like 5 years old.
- Isn't this from the popcorn lung scare?
  
  Wasn't the popcorn lung due to amateur vape producers mixing it with vitamin e oil?
  
  Honestly, I don't recall. That might have been the reason given, but I'm willing to bet tobacco lobbyist money was at least as big of a factor. Either way, I had managed to quit cigarettes and vapes by the time they banned them, so I didn't really pay it too much attention.
- I thought it might be, I used to work at the Navy Exchange about that long ago and remember taking that stuff off the shelf.

🤦‍♂️

Another win for big tobacco lol
- Big tobacco own stock in vapes, so they win either way.

The place that has taste testings of Jäeger while you’re in line to buy booze and smokes is concerned about my health now? That’s not the class 6 I remember

117 comments