BY KEN MCLAUGHLIN
San Jose Mercury News
San Jose, Calif.-- The young man in the tall swivel chair at the mall seems lost in nicotine nirvana as he takes a deep drag on a cigarette and blows smoke rings to the surprise of passing shoppers.
Sarah Kruberg, a 21-year-old college student from Portola Valley, Calif., does a double take but keeps walking.
"I knew it couldn't be someone smoking a cigarette," she said with a laugh. "But I didn't know what it was."
What Kruberg saw at Westfield Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara, Calif., was a kiosk salesman puffing away on an electronic cigarette, a new product that Jose Canseco, the steroid-tainted baseball slugger turned e-cigarette pitchman, predicts will "revolutionize the industry of smoking."
Health officials worldwide, however, are casting a wary eye.
Last summer a Florida company begane aggresively marketing e-cigarettes--which emit a nicotine vapor with the help of a computer chip--but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now seems poised to pull e-cigs from the market because the agency considers them "new drugs." That means they need approval from the FDA, which requires companies to back up their claims with scientific data.
"It is illegal to sell or market them, and the FDA is looking into this," said Rita Chappelle, an agency spokeswoman.
Asked if that meant the FDA would crack down on the dozens of mall kiosks nationwide where the product is being sold like perfume and cell phone covers, Chappelle said: "This is an open case. Beyond that I cannot comment."
Informed of the FDA's position, David Burke, general manager at Westfield Valley Fair, said Monday that the shopping center is looking into the legality of the product. "All our retailers are required to comply with applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations," he said.
Invented in China several years ago, the e-cig not only "smokes" like a cigarette. It also looks like a cigarette, feels like a cigarette, glows like a cigarette and contains nicotine like a cigarette.
But it's not a cigarette. It's a slender stainless-steel tube.
When someone puffs on an e-cigarette, a computer-aided sensor activates a heating element that vaporizes a solution--usually containing nicotine--in the mouthpiece. The resulting mist--which comes in flavors such as chocolate and cherry--can be inhaled. A light-emitting diode on the tip of the e-cigarette simulates the glow of burning tobacco. The device is powered by a rechargable lithium battery.
Its boosters say it's the perfect way to quit smoking because the nicotine mist contains no tar or any of the host of cancer-causing agents of tobacco smoke--yet has the touch and feel of smoking. That, they say, makes the e-cigarette superior to other nicotine-delivery systems such as patches, chewing gum, aerosol sprays and inhalers.
The levels of nicotine can be adjusted, from "high" to no nicotine at all. That, e-cig supporters say, allows smokers to wean themselves from nicotine, which most doctors say is highly addictive but not, as far as they know, a carcinogen.
The products aficionados say that because it contains no tobacco, it can be used in bars, nightclubs, restaraunts and other public places where states and localities have banned tobacco use.
But anti-smoking groups say that's exactly the problem. They fear that it will reintroduce a "smoking culture" into places where people are no longer used to seeings wisps of smoke and cigarettes hanging from people's mouths.
"I understand why people use the nicotine replacement aids," said Serena Chen, regional tobacco policy director of the American Lung Association in California. "But I don't understand why people want to pretend that they're smoking."
Okay, first of all, we're not PRETENDING we're smoking, and as a non-smoking representive of a company that doesn't want people to smoke, Ms. Chen wouldn't know a damn thing about that in the first place. Out of everything in this overblown article, where e-cigarette users aren't even given a name or the ability to really defend why they use the e-cigs, Ms. Chen's comment infuriated me more than I've been mad in a really long time. Pretending to smoke? PRETENDING to smoke??? Are you freaking kidding me??? 
We live in such a nanny state nowadays that you can't do anything without someone saying, "Now, don't do that," and when we try to do something that while, may not be healthy, is at least HEALTHIER than smoking a real cigarette, we get told we're PRETENDING to smoke! 
My main concern, however, is how, when describing the "e-cig aficionados", as they're called in Mr. McLaughlin's article, they say that it's the "perfect way to quit smoking" and it "allows smokers to wean themselves from nicotine", two comments which are, for one thing, not necessarily true, and for another, irresponsible journalism at the very least. What worries me is that people who are considering quitting smoking may read this article, not do any real research (like by coming on this great forum), think that this is the way they'll really quit smoking, and get duped into purchasing it as an anti-smoking aid, which we, as e-cig users, know it cannot be considered yet.
We know that what we are doing hasn't been tested. We know that we're sort of guinea pigs as to whether or not the products we're using are even safe. If Mr. McLaughlin had taken the time to do any real e-cig research himself, he probably would have come across this forum and realized that we don't necessarily make all of the claims that he seems to think we do. By not giving us e-cig users a name or a face, and just making what I think are baseless claims as to what we believe, he's made a mockery of the e-cigarette users and of a fledgling industry that at the very least, might (and I use the word might as my OWN personal thought) be safer than Big Tobacco...8-o
And other forum members may not necessarily agree with me on what I think about this article. We're all welcome to our own interpretation of what this article says, and what it may mean to the future of a product that we all love. I just wanted to make sure that more people saw this article, and had a chance to post their own thoughts and comments...
San Jose Mercury News
San Jose, Calif.-- The young man in the tall swivel chair at the mall seems lost in nicotine nirvana as he takes a deep drag on a cigarette and blows smoke rings to the surprise of passing shoppers.
Sarah Kruberg, a 21-year-old college student from Portola Valley, Calif., does a double take but keeps walking.
"I knew it couldn't be someone smoking a cigarette," she said with a laugh. "But I didn't know what it was."
What Kruberg saw at Westfield Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara, Calif., was a kiosk salesman puffing away on an electronic cigarette, a new product that Jose Canseco, the steroid-tainted baseball slugger turned e-cigarette pitchman, predicts will "revolutionize the industry of smoking."
Health officials worldwide, however, are casting a wary eye.
Last summer a Florida company begane aggresively marketing e-cigarettes--which emit a nicotine vapor with the help of a computer chip--but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now seems poised to pull e-cigs from the market because the agency considers them "new drugs." That means they need approval from the FDA, which requires companies to back up their claims with scientific data.
"It is illegal to sell or market them, and the FDA is looking into this," said Rita Chappelle, an agency spokeswoman.
Asked if that meant the FDA would crack down on the dozens of mall kiosks nationwide where the product is being sold like perfume and cell phone covers, Chappelle said: "This is an open case. Beyond that I cannot comment."
Informed of the FDA's position, David Burke, general manager at Westfield Valley Fair, said Monday that the shopping center is looking into the legality of the product. "All our retailers are required to comply with applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations," he said.
Invented in China several years ago, the e-cig not only "smokes" like a cigarette. It also looks like a cigarette, feels like a cigarette, glows like a cigarette and contains nicotine like a cigarette.
But it's not a cigarette. It's a slender stainless-steel tube.
When someone puffs on an e-cigarette, a computer-aided sensor activates a heating element that vaporizes a solution--usually containing nicotine--in the mouthpiece. The resulting mist--which comes in flavors such as chocolate and cherry--can be inhaled. A light-emitting diode on the tip of the e-cigarette simulates the glow of burning tobacco. The device is powered by a rechargable lithium battery.
Its boosters say it's the perfect way to quit smoking because the nicotine mist contains no tar or any of the host of cancer-causing agents of tobacco smoke--yet has the touch and feel of smoking. That, they say, makes the e-cigarette superior to other nicotine-delivery systems such as patches, chewing gum, aerosol sprays and inhalers.
The levels of nicotine can be adjusted, from "high" to no nicotine at all. That, e-cig supporters say, allows smokers to wean themselves from nicotine, which most doctors say is highly addictive but not, as far as they know, a carcinogen.
The products aficionados say that because it contains no tobacco, it can be used in bars, nightclubs, restaraunts and other public places where states and localities have banned tobacco use.
But anti-smoking groups say that's exactly the problem. They fear that it will reintroduce a "smoking culture" into places where people are no longer used to seeings wisps of smoke and cigarettes hanging from people's mouths.
"I understand why people use the nicotine replacement aids," said Serena Chen, regional tobacco policy director of the American Lung Association in California. "But I don't understand why people want to pretend that they're smoking."
Okay, first of all, we're not PRETENDING we're smoking, and as a non-smoking representive of a company that doesn't want people to smoke, Ms. Chen wouldn't know a damn thing about that in the first place. Out of everything in this overblown article, where e-cigarette users aren't even given a name or the ability to really defend why they use the e-cigs, Ms. Chen's comment infuriated me more than I've been mad in a really long time. Pretending to smoke? PRETENDING to smoke??? Are you freaking kidding me??? We live in such a nanny state nowadays that you can't do anything without someone saying, "Now, don't do that," and when we try to do something that while, may not be healthy, is at least HEALTHIER than smoking a real cigarette, we get told we're PRETENDING to smoke! My main concern, however, is how, when describing the "e-cig aficionados", as they're called in Mr. McLaughlin's article, they say that it's the "perfect way to quit smoking" and it "allows smokers to wean themselves from nicotine", two comments which are, for one thing, not necessarily true, and for another, irresponsible journalism at the very least. What worries me is that people who are considering quitting smoking may read this article, not do any real research (like by coming on this great forum), think that this is the way they'll really quit smoking, and get duped into purchasing it as an anti-smoking aid, which we, as e-cig users, know it cannot be considered yet.
We know that what we are doing hasn't been tested. We know that we're sort of guinea pigs as to whether or not the products we're using are even safe. If Mr. McLaughlin had taken the time to do any real e-cig research himself, he probably would have come across this forum and realized that we don't necessarily make all of the claims that he seems to think we do. By not giving us e-cig users a name or a face, and just making what I think are baseless claims as to what we believe, he's made a mockery of the e-cigarette users and of a fledgling industry that at the very least, might (and I use the word might as my OWN personal thought) be safer than Big Tobacco...8-o
And other forum members may not necessarily agree with me on what I think about this article. We're all welcome to our own interpretation of what this article says, and what it may mean to the future of a product that we all love. I just wanted to make sure that more people saw this article, and had a chance to post their own thoughts and comments...
