Cigarettes, Electronic Cigarettes, What's the Difference?
Electronic cigarettes have been in the news a fair bit over the last three or four years and over the last few months made the headlines more than a few times. We can safely say that e-cigs and the electronic cigarette industry have gone from a footnote to big news very quickly and have both their champions and enemies. Here in the UK the Government has now started backing e-cigs as a safer, healthier alternative to traditional tobacco cigarettes with even the NHS having a lot of positive things to say. Over the pond the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was until recently fiercely opposed to them as an untested and potentially dangerous device that hadn’t been researched nearly enough to be considered safe enough enter the US market. Both these views for or against the electronic cigarette have very compelling arguments and both also have very valid concerns.
Electronic Cigarette Devices
Well here are the facts, electronic cigarettes as a device have been around for about 9 years, the liquid in them and the technology that drives them has undergone a number of tests and the results so far demonstrate that they are far less harmful than tobacco cigarettes even if the long term health risks are still uncertain. Tobacco has been around since the 16th century in the UK when Sir Walter Raleigh brought it back from an expedition and popularized smoking in the Queen’s Court. Until after the end of the First World War the only powerful voice that had spoken against it was that of King James VI of Scotland and I of England who expressed his distaste for tobacco as “…A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof…”. The 4000 or so harmful chemicals in them, many of which have been linked to cancer are a
testament to his words.
It took hundreds of years for medical science to establish and prove just how harmful cigarettes are but it won’t take this long to learn the long term effects of e-cigarettes with the technology of today. E-cigs remain an unknown in the long term for now, but initial tests and studies conducted so far have been overwhelmingly positive and the rise of their popularity has prompted even tobacco companies to invest in them with Lorillard buying up Blu Cigs, an established e-cig company, in early 2012.
E-Cig Case Studies
There is also the stigma of being a smoker in the world of today, no longer being able to enjoy a drink or a meal in a restaurant or bar/pub accompanied by a cigarette and smokers being segregated, only able to smoke in designated smoking areas or outside due to fears that second hand smoke from cigarettes is extremely harmful to those around it. Electronic cigarettes have no legislation or regulations set in stone yet and are generally allowed in most public places given that they don’t emit second hand smoke which makes smoking in a public place once again a possibility, ask first though, not everyone allows electronic
cigarettes in their establishments.
Cigarettes have been linked to cancer and emphysema to name a few deadly ailments as well as other long term health complications not to mention phlegm, shortness of breath, loss of smell and interrupted sleep. So far medical studies in Boston, New Zealand have shown that electronic cigarettes do contain some of the compounds found in tobacco cigarettes but in much, much lower quantities than the potentially cancer causing levels found in tobacco. As such they are widely considered a much healthier alternative to those who want to substitute the harmful tobacco habit with something more socially acceptable and healthier. Some studies go as far as proclaiming e-cigs to be an excellent device to quit with and even the American Journal of Preventive Medicine recommending them as such given that the liquids available for them come with varying levels of nicotine and even no nicotine content there is certainly some truth in this claim.
Electronic Cigarettes, The Future
In conclusion there is little or nothing to recommend tobacco cigarettes, they’re expensive, unhealthy, and potentially lethal in the long term, they socially stigmatise people who smoke them and are notorious for lowering peoples’ quality of life during the years they use them. The electronic cigarette is largely an unknown for long term health effects but has so far been proven to contain few if any of the harmful chemicals in tobacco and even then in vastly lower quantities. This makes them, at least in the short term, a much less harmful alternative.
Whether they will prove to be harmful or as harmful as cigarettes in the future remains to be seen but when it comes down to it which of the two, cigarettes or electronic cigarettes is better? Well it’s up to you.