E-Cigarette Safety Debate: PROS and CONS

Like anything there are pros and cons. E-cigarettes are changing the way society will view cigarette tobacco intake.

Thousands of Supporters of the Electronic CIgarette, say "leave us alone. it's helping us", while big bureaucratics, say "we want more testing".

"SANTA ANA, Calif. – Tonya Moraffah takes a deep drag on her cigarette, feels the soothing surge of nicotine and explains what extinguished her 30-year, pack-a-day smoking habit.

Every evening, she plugs her battery-operated electronic cigarette into a charger. She no longer carries a lighter or sucks breath mints all day in the office. E-cigarettes contain cartridges of nicotine that release an inhalable vapor. There’s no odor or smoke. They’re marketed as a safe alternative to tobacco’s lung-choking tar and cancer-causing carcinogens.

But those claims are disputed by the Food and Drug Administration. In July, the agency warned that the smokeless cigarettes are harmful.

“Because these products have not been submitted to the FDA for evaluation or approval, at this time the agency has no way of knowing, except for the limited testing it has performed, the levels of nicotine or the amounts or kinds of other chemicals that the various brands of these products deliver to the user,” the FDA

Brad Rodu, a tobacco researcher at the University of Kentucky in Louisville, considers e-cigarettes a better alternative for smokers who absolutely can’t break their addiction.

“We can’t say these are perfectly safe, but with everything we know about them we can certainly say they are vastly safer than continuing to light cigarette tobacco on fire and inhaling the 3,000 or 4,000 chemicals that cigarette smokers are doing right now,” Rodu said.

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