Who Uses Them?
Primarily smokers. Apparently up to a fifth of American smokers have tried them. They are often used as part of smoking cessation, but clinical trials of their effectiveness are mainly on the drawing boards.
Is Nicotine Safe?
No way. It resets the entire autonomic nervous system, which controls heart rate, breathing, many basics of life. Blood pressure goes up. Epinephrine levels go up. Through various mechanisms atherosclerosis increases.Â
Nicotine can be highly addictive. Intravenous nicotine can be preferred to intravenous heroin, for example.
However, the cardiovascular effects of nicotine bearing electronic cigarettes appears less than the cardiovascular effects of smoking complete cigarettes.
Nicotinoids may not be so helpful to others species, though. Nicotine is one of nature’s most effective insecticides. Neonicotinoids may be one of the reasons for Colony Collapse Disorder, which is killing bees everywhere and setting up the potential for a catastrophic loss of pollination of global crops.
How Might Electronic Cigarettes Prove Better for the Public?
Smoking kills a lot of people through second and third hand smoke. People were shocked a year ago to realize that children in buildings with smokers – whose parents never touched tobacco – had much higher rates of respiratory diseases like asthma. Non-smoking Japanese farmer’s wives die of lung cancer three to six times at the rate expected – if their spouse smokes.
Electronic cigarettes come close to elminating the problem of second hand smoke.
Secondly, cigarettes have thousands of separate components. They include perhaps ten major classes of carcinogens. Some estimate cigarettes put out 10,000 separate substances. Many are toxic.
Electronic cigarettes have one toxic component – nicotine.
Do Others Become Annoyed By Electronic Cigarettes?
Some do. However, most do not miss the tar, smoke, and carcinogens of normal cigarettes. They are generally much easier for the public to handle.
Personal Experience
One of the great pleasures of my life is getting people to quit smoking.
It’s hard.
Many smokers try to quit a dozen times or more. They know the evil weed may kill them. They hate the cost and the public excoriation they experience. Look at the smoking enclosures in airports. They look and feel like glass cages, temporary prisons where the public offenders can be banished and mocked.
About half the people I’ve seen have shifted from cigarettes to electronic cigarettes. Many report breathing better and overall improved health. They know their overall chance of death has gone down.
Some have gone all the way to quit.
Bottom Line
Electronic cigarettes will get better clinical trials – and more regulation. Tobacco is now a “tax center†to many governments – local and federal.  Selling them to kids is banned in most countries as a “gateway†to other tobacco products and addictive drugs.
But they can help a lot of smokers improve their health. They can act as way stations to complete cessation.
A fifth of American adults still smoke. They need all the help they can get to quit.
And we need them to quit.Â
