How refreshing. I was getting tired of the same old lies about e-cigarettes. The new lies include allusions to "additives," "oily" fog, and "leveling the playing field." They even threw in a reference to cross contamination from car
batteries being made in the same factory.
Uh-huh. Car
batteries? Come on, guys. You can do better than that. Does anyone believe that the lithium ion battery used in their cell phone, laptop, Ipad, and e-cigarette is made in the same factory with wet-cell
batteries? They don't even use the same materials.
E-cigarettes have much more in common with a pharmaceutical nicotine inhaler than they do with any tobacco product you can name. Both use pharmaceutical grade nicotine (provided the e-cigarette liquid contains any nicotine at all.) Both contain flavoring. Unlike the pharmaceutical product, e-cigarette liquid uses propylene glycol (PG) and/or vegetable glycerin (VG) to create the mist. Both are "GRAS"--generally recognized as safe by the FDA. Propylene glycol is the active ingredient in the liquids employed in artificial fog machines.
E-cigarette liquid also contains a small percentage of dihydrogen monoxide (aka "water.") That's it: No additives are necessary. No oils are present. Those are red herrings thrown in by those who have such a deep-seated hatred of the tobacco industry that they feel perfectly justified in applying the same punishments to anyone with nicotine in their bloodstream -- from any source whatsoever -- as they do to smokers, including denial of employment.
I'm surprised that this story left out using e-cigarettes to deliver illicit drugs. But perhaps that was the purpose for the reference to "oily" fog. E-cigarettes are designed to vaporize liquids that contain glycols, which are chemically similar to alcohol. Trying to vaporize liquid that contains oils will ruin the atomizer in an e-cigarette, which operates at a temperature of only 180 degrees F. Ask any employee in a head shop. A special atomizer is required to vaporize hash oil. Different technology. And different effects on the brain. It is not dangerous to operate a car or machinery while under the influence of nicotine.
Now let's talk about the playing field. Some of the anti-smokers are trying to convince us that the public needs to be protected from e-cigarettes. Oh really? What's the body count? How many deaths can be attributed to inhaling e-cigarette vapor. In fact, the clinical trials that have been conducted show that e-cigarettes do function just as well as a nicotine patch for those who want to stop smoking. Those trials also show improvements in the health of the smokers who switched to e-cigarettes. In fact, one study showed shortness of breath was substantially reduced from 20 to 4% already by week-two.
So why should a product that is saving lives be treated the same as conventional cigarettes, which the CDC tells us cause 400,000 plus deaths each year? Nicotine does not cause lung disease, heart attacks, strokes, and cancers. Those are caused by inhaling tar, carbon monoxide, and thousands of chemicals of combustion. We haven't seen those diseases among the long-term users of nicotine gum. In fact, we don't see those diseases among users of refined moist smokeless tobacco products either. But the propaganda campaign against those products has been in force much longer than the propaganda campaign against e-cigarettes.
