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
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.
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.
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.
Relevant username
This photo is like 5 years old.
Isn’t this from the popcorn lung scare?
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.
A lot of big vape brands are owned by big tobacco companies.
Popcorn ling was a legit scary thing because nobody knew what was causing it in the vapes. If I’m not mistaken it turned out to be something to do with a food safe additive that either was or turned into vitamin E when heated and was not safe to inhale. It was the cheap unregulated vape juices that were using that additive and the young people who are over heating and over juicing their vapes to rip those huge clouds that were effected. It’s just one more example of how important drug and food regulations are.
There never was a popcorn lung outbreak in vapes. Lipid pneumonia is not popcorn lung. Freebase nicotine is water soluable so it’s always been dissolved with glycol. THC is fat soluable so it was what was causing the lipid pneumonia. Popcorn lung is a very specific disease caused by diacetyl and I’m unaware of any cases of that in vapes, none the less an outbreak. There was never going to be a lipid pneumonia with nicotine though, because nicotine does not dissolve in oil. If you tried to put vitamin e acetate into glycol it would just separate, so I can’t imagine anyone deciding to do it
Popcorn lung was largely a concern for DIY vapes in the early days that used food additives haphazardly to create flavors. The dangers of diacetyl were recognized quite early though and folks made sure they weren’t using it.
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
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The problem isn’t vaping, but what you’re vaping and with what.
Cheap vapes you might get contaminants from the vape itself which are unhealthy. They get very hot, and quality control on these things is abysmal.
The second problem is the actual liquid. What goes into these with all the flavor crap isn’t regulated well and sometimes chemicals are being added that are harmful to us and cause problems, sometimes faster and worse than smoking cigarettes would have.
Now, if you have a good vape, and a proper vape liquid (probably neutral, no additives), it will be safer than regular cigarettes.
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.
Another win for big tobacco lol
