Electronic Cigarettes: A Safe Smoking Alternative?
February 22, 2009 by Scott Wharton
Filed under Men's Health
I mentioned in a post a short while back about Marijuana use by using a vaporizer, which simply vaporizes the THC in Marijuana. You inhale the vaporized THC instead of smoking the Marijuana, which is safer and more healthy. There is a fairly new concept right now that is exploding on to the market. Electronic Cigarettes. The products are made to mimic smoking in every way. From looking like a cigarette, tasting like a cigarette and even illuminating the tip.
Like the Marijuana vaporizer, the electronic cigarette vaporizes nicotine. Sometimes in capsules and sometimes in simple liquid drops. They market these electronic cigarettes saying; “Smoke anywhere smoking is not allowed”, which is great and everything but should this also be marketed as a possible smoking cessation device? Andrea Janus from CTV.Ca brings up quite an argument here.
“I think that these particular devices are being marketed with the intention of keeping people smoking…They’re not smoking them to try to quit. And so I think that that’s a really big issue.”
Right now it is not an approved smoking cessation device (in the U.S.) and while they are called “safe”, many wonder just how safe they are. Nicotine is very toxic and if people misuse the liquid form of nicotine and/or the capsules then this could definitely prove fatal in may cases. They call this a “safe” alternative to smoking but it’s only safe in the cancer causing argument. Nicotine has not been shown to have any carcinogenic effect but it’s still a powerful stimulant that raises blood pressure. So how safe is this “safe” alternative to smoking. I guess if you are truly concerned about your health, this might be something to study up on if you smoke. The biggest concern is how much nicotine is being released in to the lungs of an electronic cigarette user and is it a safe amount? Approved smoking cessation devices are tightly regulated and the amount of nicotine released when properly used is known and tested to be safe. Smoking cessation products are also not made for permanent use.
So what does the FDA have to say about Electronic? They are investigating the safeness of the e-cigarettes and have seized quite a bit of the products coming in through customs. Essentially, nicotine is a drug and if it’s not regulated as a drug then there is no telling how many carelessly manufactured electronic cigarettes may harm people. I’m not so much worried about adults as I am worried about kids using these and not knowing the toxicity of nicotine. With anything, moderation is important, but knowing the overall safeness of the product is even more important.
Another thing to think about is that these products are electronic devices. Electronic devices have to be Rohs approved to only hold safe amounts of hazardous material such as lead and chromiums. These are products you are placing in direct contact with your skin and mouth, so this is another one of my concerns.
I can sympathize with smokers. I have been there and I’m still only a short way in to my smoke free life. The best way to quit smoking is to wean yourself off of the nicotine and to break yourself from the habit of smoking. It’s not an easy route no matter which way you go, but kicking nicotine is your ultimate goal. After all, that’s what got you hooked in the first place.
Until this is approved by the FDA and proven to be safe, I would not in my right mind promote or encourage use of these products. To me it seems more of a money-making products as opposed to something people are manufacturing with a real concern for people to quit smoking. They’re not concerned with health and safety, they are concerned with making money off of people’s addiction to nicotine…like any other drug dealer.
Image: Newscom
Hi Scott,
Good post. But I do think you have one thing mis-stated. Andrea Janus quoted Professor Kelli-an Lawrance as saying “I think that these particular devices are being marketed with the intention of keeping people smoking…They’re not smoking them to try to quit. And so I think that that’s a really big issue.”
While I can see that some would like to label this as a quit smoking device, it really isn’t. I have gone from a pack a day smoker and now smoke no tobacco, but I also have no intentions of ever quitting. Might I in the future? Only time will tell. After “quitting” 5 times, I had finally decided that I was a smoker.
What is interesting is that we KNOW how bad tobacco is for us, yet it is still legal to sell. The studies, whether we believe them or not, do lend to the idea that second hand smoke is not good for those around the smoker. So with an absence of second hand smoke, is this not a step in the right direction? Is it about tobacco harm reduction or abstinence of nicotine?
Once you strip out all of the carcinogens, additives and tars, nicotine is really no worse for you than caffeine if used responsibly. And, tests have been done on those with depression, anxiety and other metal disorders and found that nicotine is actually helpful to those individuals.
Will there be people who abuse it? Sure. Heck, people allow their children to abuse caffeine freely on a daily basis. Look at the rise in attention deficit disorders. If anything, we need to take the focus off of a legal drug for adult consumption and start focusing on caffeine which is legal for children to purchase and consume and carries some of the same side effects as nicotine.
If you are interested, please check out http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com. The suppliers and e-cig users will show you that this is not about money. This is about having an alternative to tobacco. We are all very real in our realities of smoking, what has done/or is doing to us and simply looking for something “better” to smoke.
The devices are all RoHS produced. There is very little actual circuitry. It is a battery, a switch, a coil and a timer/counter circuit. (One chip computer.) These are not being made in a garage, by some high-school kid learning how to solder. These are made in the same factories which manufacture scooters, tv’s, mp3 players, and various other high-sale items.
The chemicals are another story. The one with the kits, and sold as replacement cartridges, are made in a similar chemical company. Most of the refill chemicals seem to be made there also. However, there also seems to be a lot of rebranding, and rebottling, and home-brew mixing. Bottles with only a logo, but no manufacture or liquid contents listed. Unsealed, or heat-shrink-wrapped bottles. Some containing cloudy substance in the liquids, which seem to be bacterial growth. (Brewing in a kitchen or garage or unclean room. Apparently flavoring with every item they can grasp from the food lane in the grocery store, and diluting, and reducing large bottles into smaller bottles.)
At the most, all that will come of this, is a smoke-shop or ID required for the purchase of the devices. Followed by demands for certification and testing of liquids, checking for labeled contents and acceptable levels of nicotine.
The device itself is as harmless as an mp3 player, when used to vaporize water, or to vaporize flavored non-nicotine flavors, as long as the flavors are not inhaled past your mouth. (Oral saturation, not lung inhalation, and not nasal inhalation.)
If I drank coffee soaked lead fishing weights… and switched to only coffee… you, the FDA, and everyone else would logically deduce that it was safer to do the latter. The logic part is proven by the fact that more is worse, and less is better, as the FDA and WHO have already agreed in relation to nicotine and cancerous toxins. So, they have already agreed with the statements implied, however, they have not specifically given any single device a certificate of approval. All the data is in, we know what these chemicals do, long term. Ask any factory worker who manufactures the chemicals, and has for the past 20+ years.
Few people realize this, but a cigarette is a vaporizer too. However, it uses combustion to boil the chemicals and vaporize them for consumption. All that smoke is not pure carbon, a majority is vapor coming from a cigarette. That is why the paper turns wet and brown as the boiled tar and other chemicals condensate on the paper and filter. Those glass filters don’t reduce carbon without vapor to capture it.
Seriously… Would you rather a kid got hooked on nicotine gum, nicotine water, electric cigarette, or a real cigarette? Kids need to be addicted to fluids that help them stay fit, and help to detoxify them. They don’t drink water, they live off fat-soda and coffee and red-bull. (Not talking about 5-year olds here, I am talking about 10+ kids, who have money to go to the store and buy things off the shelves, and don’t hang around the house all day.)
Scott,
You say: “Until this is approved by the FDA and proven to be safe, I would not in my right mind promote or encourage use of these products.”
I am glad that you have so much faith in our Government and FDA. I mean just think about all the other wonderful things they have already deemed “healthy” for us. Take rBGH for example. If you don’t know what it is… LOOK IT UP or ASK A COW! That shit is being pumped into us Americans like sewage water and the FDA is WELL AWARE what it does to animals and what it will do to humans!
My point…! There are many products not approved by the FDA. MANY vitamins and supplements that may or may not be “healthy” but it is up to the consumer to have that choice whether or not they want to try or buy something not approved by the FDA.
Did the FDA ask us…? ” Hey fellow Americans look what happened to this cow after we injected it full of recombinant bovine growth hormone! Would you mind if we inject ALL of our farm stock with this horrible hormone and billions of antibiotics so we can keep them alive long enough to suck the very last drop milk and life out of them?… Then feed the rotten, poison left over meat to you as well?”
NO! They never thought about us then… so why take a product that OBVIOUSLY has already HELPED so many??? I think we all know the answer. It’s all about what they can tax and “regulate”.
Fine.
Figure out a way to tax e-cigs. But DONT DARE take a product that has helped so many Americans QUIT smoking and offer a healthier life style. As far as marketing the e-cig as a way to get around laws and being able to “smoke everywhere” That may be the name of some of the BIG distributors but that is NOT their message. They sell their product as a means to help people QUIT! The name is just a catchy title. Give it up. Let people have their freedom of choice!
Amber
My mom will live because of E-cigarettes!
I am a 34 year pack and a half a day smoker who “accidentally” converted to using an electronic cigarette (which I choose to call a personal vaporizer). I say accidentally as I did not check them out with the intent of stopping smoking. I purchased the PV (personal vaporizer as I choose to call it) with the thought I could use it in my office to improve work performance since I would not have to take as many smoke breaks – I could just sit at my desk and use it thereby increasing the time I sit at my desk.
However, I soon discovered I enjoyed the PV more than I enjoyed real cigarettes. Within 2 weeks, I was using the PV exclusively. I noticed within the first month I was feeling much better, breathing much better, and could play with my grandchildren much longer before running out of breath. What a miracle or so I thought. My grandchildren love it now that I no longer smell like an ashtray and understand what my PV is.
It has been over 2 months now and with all the recent threat of FDA bans, I have weaned myself off of the nicotine liquids and am now exclusively using 0-level liquid for over a week. And I did it with no apparent withdrawal symptoms – just reduced the nicotine a little at a time over a month’s period. So what is the big deal?
I have conflicting beliefs on what the FDA’s position on these should be. The device itself I do not believe the FDA should have control over. I can go out and purchase personal vaporizers that are designed to vaporize herbs using a lighter and that is not FDA controlled. I can also purchase one that uses “flame-less butane” which also does not fall under FDA control. Why does a battery operated device deserve FDA control?
Juices containing nicotine is where I lean more towards FDA, or at least some type of, control if for nothing more than quality regulation. With out it, those choosing the PV as an alternative have no means to know the substance they are using is what it claims to be. A non-nicotine juice can be brewed using nothing more than propylene glycol (already approved for inhalation and is a common binding agent in asthmatic inhalers), distilled water, and flavoring.
I can relate to making unsubstantiated health claims – we the public have come to lean on the government to insure claims are made only after some validation has occurred regarding the validity of said claims. Mind you, I personally do not trust the government on everything but I have to give them credit for trying and the control they do exercise, albeit ludicrous at times, is better than no control at all.
I would like to see these remain available, and maybe marketed with a warning sides effects MAY include reduction in or termination of the use of traditional cigarettes. I reiterate, I did not begin the use of these devices with the intent to quit, but it certainly was a fantastic side effect!
All in all, I thought the article was well written until the last paragraph. I dissent in that I would recommend the use of this device to all smokers who enjoy the act of smoking but do not enjoy what smoking real cigarettes are doing to their bodies or the possible harm it may be doing to those around them.
Amber, No, they do not sell this product for a means to help people quit. They sell them as a means to make money off of people’s addiction to nicotine, but they market it as a means to quit. You’d have to be a fool to think that the sellers and manufacturers of this products actually care about the health of smokers. They are just offering a safer alternative that they can SELL.
Thinking a little deeper about this and in light of a recent move by the FDA, I realize that you are right about the FDA. They are all screwed up.
If it works as a mean to quit, that’s great, but regardless of FDA approval or not, I certainly hope that sellers keep a tight control on the sales of the nicotine liquids and it’s restricted to children under 18.