Personal Injury Law

The E-Cigarette Controversy

By Jane Akre

E-Cigarettes May Be Bad For Your Health

First of all - what is an E-cigarette? 

It is an electronic cigarette consisting of a metal tube with an atomizer, a battery, and a cartridge filled with liquid nicotine.  A smoker sucks on the tube, a lighted end glows like a real cigarette and the nicotine vaporizes so it is inhaled.  A smoker takes the nicotine in then exhales and a smoke is exhausted, although it doesn't have a tobacco smell. 

For some smokers, it is an effective tool to cut down on tobacco-filled cigarettes.

But despite their marketing as a smoking cessation device, E-cigarettes are attracting the wrong kind of attention.  The American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association are calling for them to be removed from the market.    The groups feel kids may be attracted to the fake cigarettes and they have not been proven safe.

"Anybody who doesn't think this product without any smoke attached to it is orders of magnitude less harmful than cigarettes just has no concept of basic science," says Jack Leadbeater, president and chief executive of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Sottera Inc. said to the Wall Street Journal. 

They sell the Njoy brand of electronic cigarettes.  Most of the e-cigarettes are made in China.

The Food and Drug Administration is considering regulation since they deliver a drug. So far the FDA has refused shipments of 17 cases of e-cigarettes. 

Besides delivering the drug nicotine, e-cigarettes also deliver flavorings, propylene glycol, a sanitizer ingredient. Nicotine is thought to be non-carcinogenic but has been linked to high blood pressure, reports the WSJ. 

For the first time since the mid-1960s, the number of Americans who smoke cigarettes has fallen below 20 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). #

Full post as published by West Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).