E-Cigarettes

Every year more than 5 million people are being killed due to smoking epidemic. Now what is an e cigarette? The answer is very simple. It’s nothing, just a thing made from joining a battery, a coil and a fluid filled with your favorite flavor and a hint of nicotine which is used to emulate tobacco smoking.

From the outside it is similar in appearance to that of a regular cigarette but from inside it is entirely different. As I have already stated that it has a battery, a coil and a liquid. When we turn on the battery, the coil heats up the liquid and the vapors of this liquid is visible to us. The older models of e-cigarettes had an on and off switch but now automatic models are available which use sensors. The sensor activates the heating element when someone sucks on the cigarette. 

The advantages of e-cigarettes are that when not taking puff no smoke is generated and also it causes no harm if we only use some flavors. However, some studies indicate that the liquid can be carcinogenic but how quickly and after how much usage it will cause cancer that we still don’t know.

Recently there has been a debate over whether the manufacturing and selling of e-cigarettes should be regulated or not. The proponents of regulation claim that is regulation of manufacturing and selling of e-cigarettes is good because then manufacturer will have to tell what he is using. But those who oppose this say that it will make e-cigarettes expensive as the manufacturer will spend on advertising. Moreover, the advertising of e-cigarettes will be harmful for children. The opponents of regulation also claim that it is not a medicine so it should not be regulated. Tobacco control medicines are already available. The opponents say that it is our choice whether we want to drink coke or diet coke.

Finally, to conclude I would like to make three points. Firstly, what people must know is that it is not a medicine, it is just an alternative; it is just a psychological way of leaving smoking. Secondly, nobody has proved it as a “safe alternative”. Thirdly, there can be three possibilities of using e-cigarettes:-

1. People smoking cigarettes switch to using e-cigarettes which is good. 
2. People start to use e-cigarettes which are not problematic.
3. People using e-cigarettes start to smoke cigarettes which is problematic.

It’s clear that there are still problems that need to be ironed out and if the potential benefits outshine the risk, e- cigarettes can help escaping the tobacco trap and the e- cigarettes are the way forward.

Credits- Vinayak Kaushik, Paras Hemrajani and BBC