Sabtu, 26 Mei 2012

Electronic cigarettes are not harmful, says science

By Brenda Heighlinder


In April 2009, a Florida based e cigarette company sued the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for illegally blocking its imports into the United States. Smoking Everywhere, the company in question, claimed the FDA had overreacted to the rising concerns of safety and banned the imports without due process. Electronic cigarettes that are marketed as a healthier way of smoking the nicotine have often been criticized by the regulatory body as glorifying the image of smoking.

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.

For the e-cigarette makers, the e-cigarettes are not a drug and do not contain many of the harmful chemicals which conventional cigarettes have. They do not have side effects and the scientific community too does not have a problem with e-cigarettes as they are much safer than conventional cigarettes. It is often difficult to find the contents of tobacco smoke, but e-cigarette vapors' contents are easily decipherable making it a lot safer.

In fact, e-cigarettes do not contain most of the chemicals of conventional cigarettes, and even when they do, the contents are much less. So they do not cause much damage to health. There is a lot of uncertainty in the contents of tobacco smoke and this makes it highly unsafe. Most of the chemicals and carcinogens in tobacco smoke haven't yet been identified, and only around 5300 of the hundreds of thousands of carcinogens of tobacco smoke have been deciphered. In e-cigarette, the levels of these harmful carcinogens are much lower, at times up to 500 to 1400 times lower!

Even the research carried out today proves that e-cigarettes are actually more useful when compared to products like patch and gum. When compared to nicorette, e-cigarettes come out as a better option in the short term. E-cigarettes could actually be employed by the governments as a measure to reduce the use of smoking by the people of the country.




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