A Word About Electronic Cigarettes...

Sorry for the recent lack of posts, we're on a tight submission deadline and will be back on the blog next week. In the meantime: e-cigarettes. If you haven't seen them, you might have seen them advertised in a banner ad or in a magazine. They are little plastic devices that look like cigarettes (or sometimes they're styled to look like a pen), you use them like cigarettes, but they use cartridges that produces inhalable nicotine and even vapor that looks like smoke. Sounds good, right?


The problem with alternatives to cigarettes is nicotine itself. Nicotine is actually not easily absorbed by the body. In regular cigarettes, tar acts as a binding and delivery agent which allows nicotine to be absorbed in seconds. In stop smoking aids such as the patch, lozenges or gum, there is no added substance to help nicotine be absorbed, which means that it does less damage to the body but takes up to ten minutes to get the feeling you get from a cigarette in a few seconds. And e-cigarettes? Well, they use a substance called ethylene glycol, more commonly know as anti-freeze, to get the nicotine into your system quickly. Sometimes propylene glycol may be used- a compound also used as a dispersant in oil spills, as a de-icer on airplanes, the main ingredient in stick deoderants, and as an insecticide.


The thing is, e-cigarettes are not marketed as a harm-reduction agent or as a smoking cessation aid, and therefore they are not currently subject to FDA regulation. That means no one knows whether the long-term effects of breathing in anti-freeze are more or less dangerous than tobacco with its tar and added carcinogens. Despite several states (including New York) having introduced legislation to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and adults alike, sales are increasing at a steady pace.


There are physicians' organizations that have endorsed the use of e-cigarettes, primarily because they do not produce the type of second hand smoke that has proven so dangerous. E-cigarettes and their nicotine containing cartridges have been banned in several countries (including Canada), and in Australia they are classed as poisons. Bottom line? Buyer beware.