E-smoking...Is it worth it?
July 6, 2012 2:46 PM
Millions of Americans have used electronic cigarettes. Advocates say they're a safe and an effective alternative to cigarettes, but the Food and Drug Administration and anti-smoking groups say e-cigarettes could be hazardous to your health. Susan McGinnis reports.
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See all 16 CommentsCBS you have the power to get the word out on how miraculous a product ecigs are. If they made it that easy for me to get off the coffin nails they'll help millions. Yet the FDA wants to ban them because the "may contain harmful ingredients", yup, the same FDA that approves the use of cigarettes (thousands of KNOWN harmful chemicals). That is NOT an opinion I trust. The FDA has an agenda, and it's got nothing to do with your good health.
A neighbor recommended e-cigarettes and I laughed it off. At this point I had spent so much money on 'approved' quit methods I was reluctant to spend more, and even more reluctant to get my hopes up yet again. My neighbor kept nagging me to try, and I eventually looked them up on the Internet and found many success stories. Still skeptical, I decided to give it a try. I bought an overpriced e-cig from a local drug store, and even though I now know there are much better devices and flavors out there, I was amazed to discover that I had gone a whole day without smoking. Then two days, then three. I wasn't really missing the cigarettes. I had originally hoped that maybe they would help me cut back. I was an accidental quitter.
Now, almost 1 year since I have had a cigarette, I am so grateful that my neighbor kept nagging me to try these things. I'm a biologist and I've read every scientific study I can get my hands on (there's more than you'd think out there) and for the life of me I can't figure out why the FDA isn't falling all over themselves to get these things approved. I'm not opposed to some oversight and regulation, but that does not seem to be what the FDA has in mind. The opposition to these things is completely out of line from the research that I have read. By all means, do some good unbiased research (unlike the manipulative FDA report from 2009, which actually shows the opposite of what it claims). Let's get these things mainstreamed. Let's let millions of smokers live healthier even if they can't bring themselves to quit.
To be sure quitting all together would be better, and someday I hope to do just that. I have cut my nicotine by more than half since I started, and plan to cut it down to 0 eventually. But, why WHY should I be discouraged from using these devices that allow me to stay away from all the tar and chemicals in cigarette smoke. Using simple common sense tells me that they are orders of magnitude safer than cigarettes, and I am 99% sure that future research will confirm that (as current research is already doing). To be sure, they have given me the courage to think that someday I actually CAN quit nicotine completely, which I had completely lost with the quit or die message. So yes, for me it was definitely worth it.
This time, I succeeded and have been smoke free for many years. This does NOT make be a wonder or a will power king or better than anybody else, what it makes me is damned lucky. Well, MUCH luckier than the day I lit up my first smoke at age 13 at any rate. I am glad to be rid of those coffin nails to be sure.
I had tried the step-down filter systems, the gum, (though never the patch), I tried to chew figuring it was at least better than puffing smoke and I had tried numerous times to quit cold turkey but failed again and again. My doctor told me my urge to quit was obvious and to keep trying and one day it would work. She was right.
BUT, I need to say if something works for you, if it kills craving and gets that damned smoke out of your lungs then GO FOR IT. People whine about everything other people do and want to be their nanny. But what are these E-cigs gonna do? Kill you?
Maybe, maybe not. But real cigarettes sure as hell will. ANYTHING that gets you off that noxious weed is better than staying on it. So don't give up and do whatever it takes to be smoke free. The alternative is ever so much worse.
I got an e cigarette kit 24 Feb 2011 after doing a lot of research online. That was the day it arrived and the day I smoked my last cigarette. Today is 9 July 2012, and I am cigarette free still and not having any cravings, fits of depression, anger or irritability. I lived with those each time I tried to quit the 'approved' and useless way.
I had tried on many occasions to quit. The gum, the patch, hypnosis, counseling. Nothing worked for more than a couple of days, stress would hit and I'd be right back on cigarettes. I watched my mother die of emphysema and a weakened heart from smoking for 50 years of her life and still could not get off cigarettes.
This ecig has made a marked difference in my life, and my health. I can breathe normally again, no more wheezing and no more having to stop for breath when walking any distance. I do not cough up my lungs in the morning. My blood pressure has indeed gone down. I feel better and more energetic than I have in many years. This has been a painless and pleasant way to get off cancer sticks.
I've read a lot of material about harm reduction, I read Dr. Siegel's blog religiously, he's been in the forefront of the fight against tobacco and for harm reduction for many many years and unlike the American Lung Assoc. or the American Cancer Society is a *scientist* with provable data. Available also is the Clearstream data, gathered in a strict research study among others abroad. Both refute the young lady's point of view in this interview.
The entrenched organizations say in effect, one must "quit our way or die". No harm reduction, take the gum, the patch, the inhaler, or heaven forbid the Chantix. Those methods have a 7% success rate with no followup data that I personally know of that are relevant to relapse to cigarettes later on.
Those products save Chantix have the same amount of nicotine in them that the FDA found in the samples of e cig cartridges they 'tested' with no real methodology or information for other scientists as to how and what measurements were applied. Suspect science, scare tactics, in my personal opinion.
We know now what is really in a cigarette, thanks to the tobacco companies being forced to divulge the information. Cigarettes have over 4,000 'known' toxins in them aside from nicotine. Cigarettes have you inhaling C02, formaldehyde, tars and many other items. You should look up the list one day when you are in a frame of mind to be horrified.
E cigs are not smoking. No one should consider them the same as cigarettes as they are far from cigarettes. They give us the oral satisfaction and hand to mouth motion we have psychologically become dependent on, in my case, far more than the nicotine.
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