E-cigarettes, not really the ‘healthier’ alternative

Image by Mike Mozart, courtesy of Creative Commons

Written by Camila Fernandez/BBC Managing Director

camila.fernandez@fiusm.com

From nasty tobacco-filled cigarettes to tasty-flavored, tobacco-free electronic cigarettes, young adults who look to quit their old smoking habits have found an alternative.

While traditional cigarettes contain over 7,000 toxic chemicals like ammonia and carbon monoxide, e-cigarettes depend on a tiny battery for its vapor effect. Despite their differences, e-cigarettes are not the saviors of bad-habit smoking.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both cigarettes use the powerfully addictive chemical nicotine – the key ingredient for returning customers. Although e-cigarettes help to avoid quick degrading skin and lung cancer, experts say that flawed manufacturing could account for carcinogens and vaporizing heavy metals like lead, tin and zinc.

Who are the head chefs of these cinnamon apple, banana nut bread, vanilla cupcake, chocolate candy bar and coconut bomb flavored “vapes”? According to The New York Times, the Chinese. Nearly 90 percent of the world’s e-cigarettes are made in China.

Due to its popularity, the Food and Drug Administration has worked on guidelines for careful manufacturing, but analysts say it could take years for Chinese factories to slow down their soaring profits before complying to tense regulation.

Sales of e-cigs more than doubled last year from 2012 to $1.7 billion, according to Wells Fargo Securities. In the next ten years, the use of the new technology could surpass that of traditional cigarettes.

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As of Oct. 2014, 587 universities prohibit the use of e-cigarettes on campus. Image by Krono Lescano/FIUSM

No-smoke.org states that as of Oct. 2014, out of the 1,014 tobacco-free campuses in the nation, 587 prohibit the use of e-cigarettes including our very own FIU. The University’s ban on tobacco began in early 2011 including “electronic cigarette(s)…or any other device intended to simulate smoked tobacco.”

Even though smoking is not allowed, my nose still squirms from the lingering fumes of sneaky students and staff smoking on campus. To see students use e-cigarettes inside campus buildings is even more uncanny.

When I studied abroad in Paris, I concluded that the need to smoke is frightening — even high school students are not forbidden from smoking a cigarette on school grounds. Everyone has the right to do as they choose, but despite the immense beauty and mystery of the city, it was hard to catch a bit of fresh air sometimes.

Sure, e-cigarettes don’t let out a big puff of unpleasant smells, but must it really become another addiction? For those who choose e-cigs with nicotine, its addictive component can intensify a bad habit that later becomes a struggle to break out of.

Instead, I propose a different kind of pleasantry — living a liberating life away from the chains of addictions. I have a loving friend who can’t watch an entire film with me without having to step out for a smoke and whose aroma impedes me from fully enjoying this person’s presence.

Whether it’s a cigarette or the next “healthier” version of an e-cigarette, addiction should never become a necessity nor a bad habit.

About the Author

Camila Fernandez
A FIU School of Journalism and Mass Communications Student - Began working with Student Media in 2013.

3 Comments on "E-cigarettes, not really the ‘healthier’ alternative"

  1. An ecig is dramatically better alternative to smoke. Of course we should regulate manufacturing to minimize the inhalation of metals, but the lack of Smoke and the thousands of chemicals present in a traditional cigarette make ecigs a vastly superior alternative. Nicotine is addictive but does not cause cancer. Yes nothing would be best… But for smokers, ecigs represent a God Send. We should agree to disagree, because thousands of smokers feel the difference everytime they puff an ecig versus a regular cigarette.

  2. Your headline statement “E-cigarettes, not really the ‘healthier’ alternative” is factually inaccurate. There is almost universal agreement within science and tobacco control that e-cigs are far, far safer than tobacco cigarettes, that traces of harmful elements if found in e-cigs are usually at levels much lower than tobacco cigarettes or at levels not significant to cause concern, and that the harm of smoking comes from the tar and not the nicotine. There is no occasion when smoking a tobacco cigarette is safer. Besides this nicotine is medicinally licenced to treat smokers’ addictions as a medicine. If every smoker in the world switched to e cigs tomorrow it would avoid millions of deaths in the 21st century. I know vapers who like the fruit flavours not because they are teenagers having their heads turned, but because crucially, they are adults able to take another step away from tobacco.
    So suggest a life away from nicotine – sure that’s the best option for anyone growing up, but don’t try to pretend these products are even in the same field as tobacco or discount them as a viable option for people addicted to tobacco to choose a healthier alternative.

  3. Nicotine on its own is not addictive. Look up studies on attempting to get lab rats addicted to pure nicotine. It was virtually impossible..but the mice felt good.

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