If your name isn’t Chad, Trent, Hunter, or Tristan, stop reading now because this post doesn’t apply to you. This is for my e-cig smoking bros.
E-cig smoking bros: You have led me to believe that e-cigarettes are better for you than traditional cigarettes because they taste like coffee and don’t smell like my grandmothers fingernails. Hell, I’ve taken a few delicious drags of an e-cig but didn’t quite get the same buzz as I would have if I had my fedora on.
But in your defense, Tristan, the premise your basing your argument on seems valid: e-cigs contain vapor (and nicotine) while regular cigs are comprised of smoke (and nicotine). I’m no doctor but I’d venture to guess vapor wins out over smoke in the health category.
But, as my beloved co-worker Cass Anderson pointed out earlier this year, it’s not that cut and dry. An excerpt from his post:
NPR is reporting on a recent study from the ‘New England Journal of Medicine‘, in which e-cigs were found to have alarmingly high levels of the carcinogen formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a well established cancer causing agent, specifically it leads to lung cancer, but you’re most likely familiar with it as an embalming fluid. It’s that liquid that people put brains into when they want to preserve specimens in jars, and other organic compounds.
On top of the dangerous levels of carcinogen formaldehyde, even more research has been released supporting the idea that e-cigarettes are equally, if not more, addicting than traditions cigs.
According to the Daily Mail, a team from the American University of Beirut and the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products, studied the additive properties of e-liquids. The widespread opinion of e-liquids is that they’re a healthier alternative because rather than burning tobacco, liquids containing nicotine and flavorings are heated and vaporized.
This is not the case, Blake. Not the case.
Of the three types of nicotine contained in e-cigs, researchers found that all the brands of e-liquid they tested were the strongest form – free-base nicotine that is easily absorbed by the body.
Possibly even more alarming is that the levels of nicotine contained in e-liquids often don’t match the label.
Ready for more bad news, Tad? We all know that dude whose been trying to ween off cigarettes by using the decreased nicotine intake of e-cigs as a way out. A separate two-year study published in the journal Addiction, cited that reducing the level of nicotine in cigarettes was not shown to help people quit the habit.
Researchers recruited 135 smokers who were not interested in quitting, giving some cigarettes with progressively less nicotine in them to one group for six months, while the other group carried on smoking regularly. Then, after six months, they swapped. By the end of the study, of the 135 participants, only ONE wanted to quit smoking.
Dr. Neal Benowitz, a professor at the University of California San Francisco, said in a press release:
“We don’t know that very low nicotine cigarettes will not work to reduce nicotine dependence and enhance quitting, but progressively reducing nicotine content of cigarettes in the way we did, without other means of supporting smokers, did not produce the desired results.”
Bros, we can look at this two ways, depending on whether you’re a pack half-empty/pack half-full kind of dude. We can write off e-cigs as being food for the devil or never put one of those addictive cancer sticks in our mouths again. OR we can start smoking regular cigarettes again, because they’re really not that bad in comparison to e-cigs. OR we can have the mindset that life sucks and nothing matters and we all die anyway so to hell with your lame ass studies, Matt. TO HELL WITH THEM.
[H/T LADbible]