Electronic cigarettes spark controversy
Friday, October 9th, 2009
By: Taunya English
tenglish@whyy.org
A New Jersey lawmaker is starting a real fight over fake cigarettes. State Assemblywoman Connie Wagner wants to ban electronic cigarettes in public spaces. There's no tobacco and no smoke, but e-cigarettes look a lot like the real thing. The battery-powered devices heat up liquid chemicals to deliver a puff of vapor and a nicotine fix.
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Smokers use e-cigarettes to satisfy cravings where smoking is banned or shunned. Brian Culwell is president of SmokeStikUSA.
Culwell: People are addicted to the physical habit, to the oral fixation, to the hand to mouth, and our product delivers that. You're essentially getting a vapor with tobacco flavoring in it or menthol flavoring in it.
Culwell says the SmokeStik brand doesn't contain nicotine but most e-cigarettes do.
Temple health policy expert Jennifer Ibrahim says electronic cigarettes are not a safe alternative. She says preliminary tests found some of the same carcinogens in e-cigarettes that are found in tobacco brands. The FDA is considering whether the government can regulate the devices under the new smoking prevention law.
Ibrahim: There's no regulation on the dosage, so when you are smoking one e-cigarette brand to the other, you don't know the dose of nicotine that you are getting, and that's really problematic as well.
Ibrahim says there are many unanswered questions about e-cigarettes. Culwell says e-cigarettes help smokers cope.
Culwell: We don't suggest that our product is going to cause them to quit smoking. But what we do is, we provide something for them for when they are sitting in a public space that they can use so that they're not anxious or nervous or fidgeting because a cigarette is not convenient at that time or not legal.
May as well be smoking. You shouldn't be emitting smoke of any kind where anybody else has to breathe it. Close the ban loophole.
Does the government want to say "Thank you for smoking?" Just as long as they can get their taxes that is. Walmart and any Kmart can sell nicotine gum, patches, lozenzes. From every thing I've read, this is the best way for hard core smokers who can't quit at least save their lungs. I don't smoke but my fiance is using these and he's down to smoking only 8 "real cigs" a day from 2 packs. I love these things. I want him to live.
Smokers wise up and read the writing on the wall. The government dose not want you to quit smoking after all they like spending your taxed money from them. They just want you to smoke in your house, in your bedroom with the door locked and a sign on it saying WARNING SMOKER IN ROOM. Now every smoker today has a choice called E-Cigarettes the give you your nicotine without the smoke I use them and prefer them to regular cigarettes. Get educated to learn more about E-Cigarettes go to http://www.luck-e-strile.com then blogs and articles their you can read the facts from real research physicians and doctors
Wagner and Ibrahim the new Laruel and Hardy of American politics.
Electronic cigarettes provide the option that smokers have not had up to this point…. The FDA's testing was flawed in that it used a TINY sample, finding almost immeasurable amounts that it is now using to scare anyone it can about this product. The fact is, Big Tobacco is scared, because it knows that this product will take their market share. The fact is, government is scared because it has concentrated so much on passing TOBACCO taxes…. not NICOTINE taxes….. Find out what you can do. Learn more about e-cigarettes, and why they are a BETTER alternative to tobacco cigarettes. Check it out at:
http://www.NoTobacco.net
Information shows that there is no evidence that these devices cause any harm to the vaper or the people around the vaper. Despite this, some local areas are taking it upon themselves to pass laws which discriminates against vapers based upon public fear of the appearance of the device, because they look visually similar to tobacco cigarettes. New laws force vapers to stand outside with smokers to use a device that has not been proven to be harmful, based solely on appearance and public fear.
If you want to see hypocrisy, just google "Chantix side effects" and tell me the FDA's concern is with the health of e-cigarette "vapers" and not with money interests of Big tobacco and Big Pharma.
As someone who smoked over two packs a day for 36 years I can tell you that PVs (personal vaporizors) ARE the answer to all of the problems that smokers, nonsmokers and antismokers have been looking for. Yet they are being banned everywhere. What the hell is wrong with people?
Maybe we should ban penicillin because it's made from mold. That can't be good, right?
If e-cigarettes have some traces of just a few things cigarettes have in a much higher amount, it stands to reason they are safer. Not to mention the thousands of other chemicals in real cigarettes that are completely absent in e-cigarettes.
Again, what the hell is wrong with people. Forget saving thousands of lives and making everyone's life better, show me the money. I'm losing faith in humanity.
Yhea I heard about this. California is trying to ban electric cigarettes as well. There are tens of thousands of people in LA that use these products.
Electronic Cigarettes MUST BE BANNED. Especially during this time of RECESSION, states (and the federal government) are not able to make their budget… smokers switching over to these vaporizing devices are NOT included under tobacco taxes.
Also, pharmaceutical companies will stand to loose profits off their quit-smoking aids since electronic cigarettes have a higher success rate of reducing or eliminating regular cigarettes. Nicotine gums and such are very profitable because people have to keep buying them again given their poor success rate. Since people can continue to vaporize regularly while they slowly reduce nicotine, that separates nicotine from the oral fixation making repeat buys minimal.
No one currently needs a prescription for nicotine right now, which should change so that people can support their local doctor's office to get a prescription.
Obviously this will also impact tobacco companies, who risk losing their monopoly on nicotine, since that is really what people want when they smoke a cigarette (they aren't doing it for the smoke).
And we all know health care needs to be better funded… we could lose that funding as fewer people find themselves being diagnosed with lung cancer and other smoking related illnesses — chemo therapy is worth quite a bit and help our economy in many ways, a dramatic reduction could cripple our industry.
And THINK OF THE CHILDREN! All these tasty flavors are obviously marketed towards CHILDREN! Even though children probably aren't carrying around 100 dollars for an e-cig kit to buy over a regular pack of cigarettes, it certainly sounds moral to say since one must over look the millions of lives it can save.
So as you can see, there are clearly MANY reasons the FDA and states should ban these devices. We MUST get the word out about how bad these are now before they catch on.
electronic cigarette saved my life.
"Temple health policy expert Jennifer Ibrahim says electronic cigarettes are not a safe alternative. She says preliminary tests found some of the same carcinogens in e-cigarettes that are found in tobacco brands."
What Ms. Ibrahim fails to mention is that the tests found levels of carcinogens that are at about the same levels as the FDA-approved nicotine patch. Would she like those banned, too?
And Ms. Ibrahim, "safe" is not the issue. Very few things are "safe." (But you already know that.) The question is: Are they safER than tobacco cigarettes? Are you prepared to tell me I'm just as well off smoking tobacco cigarettes? Are you willing to say that to all the smokers in New Jersey who have made the switch and are breathing better, feeling better, and who are not emitting any secondhand smoke?
Our policy makers need to understand something about e-cig users: We're by and large a well-informed group of people and *we're trying to save our own lives.* E-cigs are working for us. Anyone concerned with public health who isn't *thrilled* with the potential of e-cigs isn't really concerned with public health.
Banning the use of e-cigs in public places has nothing to do with science and everything to do with … what? Money? Control? Moral judgments? Whatever the motivation, the message it sends to e-cig users is clear: You may as smoke tobacco cigarettes.
Shame on Assemblywoman Wagner and shame on Jennifer Ibrahim for sending that message. It's a killer.