Sunday 6 May 2012

Electronic cigarettes are not harmful, says science

By Brenda Heighlinder


It all started in April 2009 when Smoking Everywhere, an e-cigarette company in the U.S filed a suit against FDA, for blocking imports of e-cigarettes illegally in the U.S. FDA viewed e-cigarettes with suspicion and had banned its imports as it believed it increased public perception to increase smoking, rather than quit it. Electronic cigarettes, which have often been touted as a healthier way to smoke, have not got down well the FDA.

The Smoking Everywhere Company, argues that according to a Supreme Court resolution passed in 2000, the FDA could not regulate the import and export of conventional cigarette. The company argued, that in the same breath, the FDA could not regulate the import and export of e-cigarettes. In e-cigarettes, smokers inhale gases which are not poisonous, unlike what conventional smokers do. Though some research has gone into how useful and safe these e-cigarettes are, the FDA feels a lot more of research needs to be done.

However, the counter argument to that is these cigarettes are already under the purview of the same regulations as regular cigarettes. These regulations are carried out by the Federal Trade Commission. It has been often advocated as too how far a role FDA should play in all the products in the market that are marketed as alternates to smoking. A lot of e cigarette makers, like 212 smoke, have come forth to justify the exclusion from FDA.

E-cigarette companies claim that e-cigarettes are not drugs and the harmful chemicals present in conventional cigarettes, are absent in e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes have even been given the go-ahead by scientific companies stating that they are much less harmful. The components of e-cigarettes are much less harmful than ones in conventional cigarettes.


In fact, the actual chemicals of cigarette are found in much lesser quantity, if at all, in e-cigarettes. They are thus much more unlikely to cause damage to health in the proportion done by conventional cigarettes. There is a high degree of uncertainty of the components in tobacco smoke, this is not the case with the vapors emitted by e-cigarettes. The carcinogens of tobacco smoke haven't yet been identified and this makes the smoke a lot more unsafe. Around 5300 of the hundreds of thousands of carcinogens present in the smoke of conventional cigarettes have been identified. In the e-cigarette versions, the levels of carcinogens were found to be much lower, making it much more safer.

Existing research shows that e cigarettes are more effective than the conventional NRT products like the patch and gum. The comparison done with Nicorette shows that in the short term e cigarettes is much better than the NRT products. In fact there is a lot of academic literature showing that the electronic versions are the best harm reduction policy a government could introduce.




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