Monday, October 28, 2013

Marketing the cure: electronic cigarettes can defeat addiction



Vapriot juiceOctober 25, 2013  Examiner.com -



Glamorized cigarette usage within the entertainment industry seems to send young people the message that it’s okay to barbarically kill one’s self with nicotine, and to even be hooked on substances of higher toxicity. You can search statistics or use famous people as a gauge if you’d like, but the stories are all the same: cigarettes will eventually become an enigma which we, as molecular beings, cannot shake.


Thanks to electronic cigarettes, we can smoke like Navajo chiefs, yet without death being an imminent result. Breaking the addiction cycle isn’t easy: e-cigs definitely make the transformation back to good health much cheaper than other forms of therapy or hospitalization, however.


Addictions are Expensive…


The law of demand proves that price relationship is very real, and a prime example of this involves the tobacco industry. If you really like smoking Marlboro Lights, or perhaps Camel Non-Filters, and the price of then shoots downward, you can now either buy cartons instead of packs at one time, or you can buy single packs more frequently. Price adjustment controls habits, as do special purchases.


Electronic cigarettes remain steadily priced, easy to obtain and don’t come with warnings of death. You’re literally smoking vapors, people – how much easier to quit smoking can manufacturers make it?


Addictions are Gateways


Gambling, alcohol, adult movies, excessive gaming… bored and lonely people are addicted to something. We screen, and choose, our addictive experiences according to our beliefs, focusing on what our beliefs tell us is important and ignoring or glossing over the rest. We tend to filter the world for information that supports our belief system; conversely, addictions filter in that which contradicts what we really despise. Nicotine, filled with lots of yummy chemicals that would kill instantly if administered separately, is the gateway to wanting ‘more’.


Electronic cigarettes sustain that much needed mental signal which tells your brain you’re, in fact, receiving something pleasurable. These technological ingenuities don’t cause further addictions, either.


Addiction is Instant Hospitalization


Pain sufferers have their own theories when it comes to handling discomfort. Some might swear by a peculiar cocktail for curing hangovers, while others might profess their reliance on a remedy passed down from their relatives to get rid of back pain. Most believe cigarettes take localized pains away…


It is not surprising that the electronic cigarette has taken the world by storm as an alternative to tobacco cigarette – and as an object which predicates pain relief. These devices, also offered by Ego Cigs offer convenience, save money, and at the same time, when people buy electronic cigarettes, they offer a similar experience to traditional cigarettes, without the odor, inconvenience and health concerns of smoke.


In Closing: Choose Wisely


Cigarette addictions don’t come with reversal manuals. If you went to an addiction clinic, they would ask you to become abstinent immediately, meaning zero nicotine. With electronic cigarettes, you can become the quitter you wanted to be, yet more innocuously than other drug-induced methods. Expensiveness, ineffective pain management and no future gateways are perhaps the most common reasons electronic cigarettes have become the go-to target for smokers prepared to rob the Reaper of their addictive souls.




Marketing the cure: electronic cigarettes can defeat addiction

Friday, October 25, 2013

E-cigarette industry lobbies to avoid regulation as tobacco product


e cigarettesBy Stuart PfeiferOctober 24, 2013, 12:29 p.m. Los Angeles Times


They have the shape, feel and nicotine of tobacco cigarettes, but e-cigarettes should not be regulated like tobacco products, makers of the popular new product say.



The Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Assn., an industry group, is lobbying to avoid Food and Drug Administrationregulation under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.


“This is a critical time for … the e-cig industry at large,” said Cynthia Cabrera, the trade group’s executive director. “While our industry understands reasonable and appropriate regulation is needed, it is vital our young industry not be grouped with combustible cigarettes as federal guidelines are developed for these products. Excessive regulation could limit adult access to e-cigs and stifle growth and innovation in the segment.”


Members of the trade organization said they are traveling to Washington on Nov. 4 to urge members of Congress to not classify the devices as tobacco products.


Last month, attorneys general from 40 states urged the FDA to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products, noting the cigarette alternatives contain highly addictive nicotine and, unlike cigarettes, can be advertised and sold to children.


“People, especially kids, are being led to believe that e-cigarettes are a safe alternative, but they are highly addictive and can deliver strong doses of nicotine,” Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley said. “We urge the FDA to act quickly to ensure that these products are regulated to protect the public, and are no longer advertised or sold to youth.”


PHOTOS: The costliest bank failures


E-cigarettes are plastic or metal devices, shaped like oversized cigarettes, that use batteries to heat nicotine oil and create a vapor that users inhale. They provide nicotine without inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco.


The products have become so popular that some tobacco companies have been acquiring e-cigarette manufacturers as a way of getting into the business.


The Centers for Disease Control reported recently that e-cigarette use by middle and high school students doubled from 2011 to 2012. The trade group has scoffed at that report, noting that it was based on the number of students who tried the product, not those that regularly used them.


Further, the group said, studies have found that e-cigarettes are a safe alternative to tobacco cigarettes, the health risks of which are widely known.


“There is no evidence of which we are aware which would suggest that the risk/safety profile of e-cigarettes is in any way comparable to that of tobacco products,” Todd A. Harrison, an attorney for the trade group, said in an Oct. 17 letter to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.


ALSO:


FTC urged to investigate multilevel marketing firms such as Herbalife


Freddie Mac: 30-year mortgage rate falls sharply to 4.13%


Initial jobless claims fell last week as government shutdown ended


Follow Stuart Pfeifer on Twitter





E-cigarette industry lobbies to avoid regulation as tobacco product

Thursday, October 24, 2013

World's most expensive e-cigarette covered in 246 diamonds is created for girlfriend of Russian oligarch

most expensive electronic cigaretteIt is the ultimate bling birthday present for a wealthy Russian billionaire’s girlfriend who has everything but wants to give up smoking – at a cost of more than half a million pounds.


The £550,000 diamond encrusted custom-made electronic vaping machine was manufactured on the personal order of an anonymous London-based Russian oil magnate.


The masterpiece – which took four and a half months to create – is laden with 246 flawless two-carat clear crystal diamonds each worth £1,800.


One source said: ‘It is lined with 46 yellow Swarovski crystals and has a six-carat oval diamond worth £46,000 on the tip.’


It also features ‘authentic hand blown Italian glass from the Venetian island of Murano’ and is finished with 24-carat gold button and clearomizer base.



The creation is a tsar among the new trend of custom-made electronic vaping devices – even if it seems to come straight out of the TV show Meet the Russians.


It even has its own name – ‘Shisha Sticks Sofia’. It is not known if this is a clue about the identify of the owner who received it as a birthday gift from her tycoon boyfriend. He is keen to remain anonymous.


Anthony Mixides from makers Shisha Sticks said: ‘This was a dream brief for us. 


‘We were asked to design the ultimate shisha vaping device for class, style and luxury.



‘We were told that, within reason, money was no object on the project.


‘Once the design was approved we set about sourcing the finest diamonds, yellow crystals, glass and gold available.


‘It took over four months to design, but this is without doubt the finest shisha stick ever produced.’


The billionaire demanded ‘nothing but the very best’, added a source.


As a guessing game got underway as to the identities of the benefactor, it appeared the best-known Russian tycoon, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, was ruled out since he is not British-based.


Shisha Sticks is a UK company supplying electronic shisha vaping devices claiming to “provide the finest and ultimate smoking experience without any of the harmful toxins”.




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2470632/Diamond-covered-e-cigarette-created-Russian-oligarchs-girlfriend.html



World's most expensive e-cigarette covered in 246 diamonds is created for girlfriend of Russian oligarch

The Lunatic War on E-cigarettes

By Jacob Sullum  October 23, 2013 | 2:07am




Sales of electronic cigarettes have risen dramatically in recent years. Whether you see that development as an opportunity or a threat depends on whether you view the matter rationally or through a fog of prejudice that makes anything resembling a cigarette look sinister, regardless of the risks it actually poses.


The Food and Drug Administration is expected to propose regulations for e-cigarettes by the end of this month. If unreasoning fear carries the day, those regulations will restrict information about and access to a potentially lifesaving product, thereby increasing smoking-related illness and death in the name of public health and consumer protection.


A few years ago, ignoring that danger, the FDA sought to ban e-cigarettes as unapproved pharmaceutical products. After that effort was blocked by a federal judge and an appeals court, the agency announced that it would instead regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products.


That approach was blessed by the courts, which noted that the nicotine in e-cigarettes is derived from tobacco. But the “tobacco product” label does not really fit either, because e-cigarettes do not contain any tobacco, delivering nicotine in a propylene glycol vapor instead of burning dried vegetable matter.


That difference is crucial for smokers contemplating a switch to vaping, because it means they can avoid the myriad toxins and carcinogens generated by tobacco combustion, thereby dramatically reducing the health hazards they face. There is no serious scientific dispute on this point, although people who should know better often pretend otherwise.


For instance, Maria Azzarelli, coordinator of the Southern Nevada Health District’s tobacco control program, recently told the Las Vegas Sun that “no one can say right now whether e-cigarettes are a healthier alternative to cigarettes.” Really? No one can say whether inhaling vapor containing nicotine, flavoring and propylene glycol, which the FDA has approved as an ingredient in food and medicine, is safer than inhaling smoke?


Even the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently cited increased consumption of e-cigarettes while urging the FDA to regulate them, concedes that “e-cigarettes appear to have far fewer of the toxins found in smoke compared to traditional cigarettes.” Boston University public-health professor Michael Siegel, who supports vaping as a harm-reducing alternative to smoking, notes that “we actually have a much better idea what is in electronic cigarette vapor than what is in tobacco smoke.”


So why the strange resistance to e-cigarettes, which contain no tobacco and generate no smoke, among people concerned about the health hazards of tobacco and smoking? Like other activists and some politicians, Azzarelli claims to be worried that e-cigarettes will make the conventional variety seem glamorous again. “We’re very concerned that what [was] becoming passé — smoking — is now coming back,” she says.


In other words, Azzarelli and her fellow activists worry that a product whose main selling point is avoiding the scary hazards and offensive stench of smoking somehow will make smoking more appealing. That fear seems implausible, to say the least, and there is no evidence to support it.


E-cigarette alarmists like to cite CDC survey data indicating that “e-cigarette use among students doubled in the last year,” as 40 state attorneys general noted last month in a letter to the FDA. But that increase was in the number of students reporting any use in the previous month, which may reflect nothing more than experimentation.


The survey provides no evidence that such experimentation leads to smoking. To the contrary, as Siegel points out, nine out of 10 teenagers who tried e-cigarettes were already smokers, meaning the trend that the attorneys general consider a public-health emergency may instead portend successful harm reduction. Likewise with adults: Survey data indicate that e-cigarette use is overwhelmingly concentrated about current and former smokers.


It’s in the shift from the former category to the latter that the disease-reducing potential of e-cigarettes lies. Impeding that transition by imposing arbitrary restrictions on e-cigarette advertising, sales and flavors would be a literally fatal error.




The Lunatic War on E-cigarettes

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

E-cigarettes present a (non) burning question of safety



vaping5By Don Sapatkin, Inquirer Staff Writer

After 20 years of cigarettes, things started adding up for Abhi Nath: The smoke burn. Future health concerns. “The whole ick factor.” Then his employer added a $50 health insurance surcharge. “And I was dating a girl and she hated cigarettes. So I started e-cigarettes.”





Three months on, Nath, 38, of Old City, gets looks of curiosity, not disgust. He feels and smells better. He plans to gradually reduce the nicotine level (there’s no tar or ash) – and to enjoy doing it.


“The only thing about e-cigarettes is there is no regulation of the content. How do you measure the claim that it is 5 percent nicotine?” Nath said. “That is the one very, very scary part about it.”






In just a few years, “vaping” – e-cigarettes produce vapor, not smoke – has upended the market.


A stigmatized habit is suddenly cool again. A burning stick has become a high-tech gadget (one product vibrates when it senses another nearby, a sure conversation-starter). Falling cigarette sales are balanced by big growth in electronics.


The most deadly behavior in the United States might morph into a lifesaver. Or a product with an unknown safety profile might lure more smokers. The e-cig has divided a public health community whose reliance on carefully collected scientific evidence is no match for a fast-moving new technology backed by some of the world’s slickest marketers.


Which is why so much is riding on a Food and Drug Administration decision expected soon on whether and how to regulate e-cigarettes.


Some states have stepped in. New Jersey bans sales to people 19 and under, and the use of e-cigs in indoor work and public spaces. In Pennsylvania, anyone of any age can buy and use them anywhere.


E-cigarettes don’t burn and don’t produce tobacco smoke, which contains dozens of known carcinogens. Instead, electric current from a battery heats a liquid containing nicotine. The resulting vapor is inhaled, mimicking the feel (and look) of tobacco smoke with what more closely resembles steam. Nicotine – the ingredient that causes addiction but that is not necessarily harmful – provides the kick.


Although research is ongoing, it seems likely that vaping will prove safer than smoking, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates leads to more than 440,000 deaths per year.


That alone supports a public health point of view – embraced by the industry and cited by every vaper in this article – known in the field as harm reduction. It’s the philosophy behind methadone maintenance for people addicted to heroin. It prevents deaths by accepting the lesser of two evils.


Danny McGoldrick takes the other view.


“We need to look beyond that very narrow question of ‘Are they less harmful than cigarettes?’ ” said McGoldrick, vice president of research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Former smokers might be brought back, he said. Sponsoring sporting events and marketing flavors like bubble gum – both prohibited for regular cigarettes – might lure youngsters who would not have smoked.


“It all comes down to, are these going to be used to decrease smoking or to increase smoking?”


Anyone who has tried to quit would be hard-pressed to recognize that experience at Ecigs International, a new e-cigarette store and vapor lounge on Green Lane in Roxborough. A handful of customers sit around blowing “clouds” and talking about the merits of different products.


Most people there started with more basic disposables, the products that look like an oversize cigarette, battery included, provide puffs equal to about a half-dozen regular cigarettes, and cost $7 to $12 in convenience stores. Now they favor rechargeables, which come with external chargers and which can be customized with a range of atomizers – the heating element that turns nicotine liquid into vapor – and varieties of the “e-juice” that feeds them; the store mixes 150 to 200 flavors with a range of nicotine contents.


“I had open-heart surgery 13 years ago and a heart attack three years ago,” said Robin Patterson, 48, who drives from her home in Allentown, N.J., east of Trenton, for supplies. She was unable to quit smoking until July, she said, when her brother suggested an e-cigarette.


She gets the same “throat hit” as with regular cigarettes, and the electronic varieties offer the same “oral fixation.”


She showed off her new black chrome Vamo V3, a complete $110 kit that she supplemented with a $22 Kangertech Protank II atomizer that holds more e-juice, of which she bought two bottles, guava and spearmint, each with 24mg of nicotine. Total cost: $149. The e-juice will last a month and a half; the rest, in theory, could work for years. Yet the total cost equals two weeks of her old 11/2-pack-a-day Virginia Slims habit.


She has set a personal goal of reaching zero nicotine level within a year by buying liquids with lower content every four months. Meanwhile, she vapes wherever she wants – home, the car, at work as a corporate relocation manager, even once flying from Newark to Chicago.


“I don’t cough anymore,” Patterson said. “The blessing is that I don’t smell like an ashtray anymore.”


E-cigarettes make up just one percent to two percent of $90 billion in tobacco sales. But an August report by Goldman Sachs predicted a rise to 20 percent by the end of the decade. Another top analyst projected last month that e-cigarette revenue would exceed that from cigarettes by 2021 for Reynolds American Inc., which sells both.


The three big tobacco companies recently created or bought e-cigarette brands, among them Lorillard Inc.’s blu eCigs, the market leader, along with privately held NJOY.


The original e-cigarettes were bulky rechargeables. NJOY, founded in 2006, introduced the first disposable two years ago, instantly changing the market. NJOY set the stage for the current regulatory vacuum when it successfully sued to stop the FDA’s plan to classify e-cigarettes as drug-delivery devices.


The agency now plans to regulate e-cigarettes under the 2009 law that authorized it to oversee tobacco. It cannot ban them, as Japan, Brazil, and Mexico have. It can regulate e-cigarettes marketed as cessation tools, requiring evidence from clinical trials. And it could approve messages that they are less harmful than cigarettes, but only if manufacturers submit evidence of a net benefit to public health.


Observers expect some version of tobacco rules, which allow the FDA to test safety, restrict sales to minors – and, in the case of regular cigarettes, limit self-service displays and the sports and entertainment sponsorships known to increase sales.


Marketing limits would be too much for Craig Weiss, CEO of NJOY, who said he supports “reasonable regulation.” But given the death toll from tobacco – “basically a 9/11 every three days,” he said – “I don’t want them to restrict our ability to advertise our product.”


Many longtime tobacco researchers are pressing for restrictions, hoping to prevent a new generation from getting hooked before evidence proves e-cigarettes are safe.


Some have found harmful ingredients. Perceptions that e-cigarettes can help smokers quit far outstrip the evidence, they say.


No one knows how they will be used in the long term.


“There may be people who use this exclusively for their [entire] life and we need to know how it will affect them,” said Andrew Strasser, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania who is enrolling cigarette smokers in a study to see how they respond to e-cigarettes. “Others may use it for a short time,” he said. Still others may add e-cigarettes to an existing cigarette habit.


His conclusion: “More evaluation needs to be done before you make a decision either way.”




dsapatkin@phillynews.com 





E-cigarettes present a (non) burning question of safety

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Healthy Markups on E-Cigarettes Turn Vacant Storefronts Into 'Vape Shops'

e cigarettesBy   Bloomberg BusinessWeek


Across the country, small storefronts shuttered during the recession are reopening. The new occupants aren’t coffee shops or dry cleaners: They’re small retailers catering to the fast-growing electronic cigarette market. Known as “vape shops,” because e-cigarettes dispense vaporized nicotine rather than tobacco smoke, their products provide “a great business for us with excellent margins,” says Sam Bahhur, who in June expanded his 10-employee U Smoke Shop in Miami, adding a second location in Coral Gables dedicated solely to e-cigs.


While he can mark up traditional cigarettes by 10 percent to 20 percent, the numbers jump to 200 percent to 400 percent on e-cigarette dispensers, nicotine cartridges, and accessories, he says. Bahhur expects to bring in $1.3 million in revenue this year from the two stores. Vaping, he says, is “cost-effective for our customers.”


There are more than 3,500 independent vape shops around the country, according to Aaron LoCascio, chief executive officer of Vape World, a distributor based in Boca Raton, Fla. E-cigs’ manufacture and sale are not regulated or taxed in most states, making them more profitable than tobacco products. While a 2009 U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on sales of the devices was overturned by a federal court in 2010, industry groups the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association and the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association expect the FDA to propose regulations on the devices as early as this month. Those regulations could lead to taxes on manufacturing and sales.


Some regulations, including a potential ban on Internet sales, could help brick-and-mortars. The TVECA estimates that physical stores will sell more than $1 billion in vaping equipment and products this year. If online sales—estimated at about $500 million in 2013—move offline next year, many of those independent retailers could benefit, the group says.


Most vape shops are independent ventures put together by owners of traditional tobacco stores and small groups of investors, such as self-employed marketing consultant James Ting and five business partners, most of whom are smokers. So far, they’ve come up with $90,000 and plan to open Ja’Vape in about a week in El Monte, Calif., near Los Angeles.


A neighboring town “already has 10 or 11 vape shops that have popped up within the last three months,” Ting says. “That’s how crazy this market is now—the demand is so high.” He and his fellow investors have refitted a 1,500-square-foot video store that went out of business a few years ago. No special licenses or permits were required for the store, and the city had no apparent concerns about it, Ting says. The partners are waiting on inventory and store furnishings to arrive before they can open Ja’Vape.


Electronic cigarettes remain controversial, and their health effects are still being studied. Proponents tout them as a safer, cleaner alternative than inhaling tobacco smoke’s hazardous chemicals and an effective way to quit cigarettes. Because they supply nicotine and mimic the physical act of smoking, e-cigs are psychologically satisfying in a way that nicotine gum or patches aren’t, they say.


Opponents worry that because e-cig cartridges are unregulated, there’s no quality control on what goes into the mix of nicotine, propylene glycol, and flavorings that are included in them. There are also concerns that e-cigs’ sweet flavors, such as cherry and bubble gum, may get teens who wouldn’t have started smoking hooked on vaping, and also that these new products may make the use of nicotine glamorous in a way it hasn’t been for decades.


The large tobacco corporations have latched on to the disruptive technology in recent years, buying established e-cigarette brands or starting their own. Reynolds American (RAI) estimates electronic products account for about 1 percent of U.S. cigarette sales and projects e-cig revenue will reach $3 billion within five years.Other forecasts show e-cig sales reaching more than $10 billion by 2017.


Collin Spencer is hoping for a slice of that market. His two OG Smoke Shops in Los Angeles County will bring in combined revenues of $750,000 this year; he’d like to top $1 million in 2014 and predicts a quarter of that will come from vaping customers. He says about half of those customers smoke traditional cigarettes and are looking for ways to stop smoking or to at least cut back. The rest are just curious or have smoked hookahs as a social experience and “want some of the same effects in a portable fashion,” Spencer says.


Vaping attracts a lot of young people, he says, though he has banned customers under 18 from his stores, which employ seven. “There is a non-nicotine option, so if people don’t smoke, there’s a flavored propylene vapor they could use,” he says.



Healthy Markups on E-Cigarettes Turn Vacant Storefronts Into 'Vape Shops'

Monday, October 21, 2013

Vapers’ Plea: Don’t Outlaw E-Cigarettes in Evanston




Patch file photo.




Many people spoke up against a proposed city ban on smoking e-cigarettes in places where you can’t smoke tobacco.


Posted by (Editor) , 

patch


If his father had switched from regular cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, he might still be alive today, Evanston resident James Gottschalk told city council members Monday.


Along with other supporters and users of e-cigarettes, Gottschalk spoke up Monday night against proposed restrictions on smoking e-cigarettes, or “vaping.” City council members are considering amending the Evanston ordinance on tobacco to include electronic cigarettes and prohibit their use in all places where other types of smoking are banned.


Only a handful of other municipalities in the U.S. have passed such legislation, and few if any in Illinois, although many cities are considering passing similar ordinances to the one on the table in Evanston. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has said it will issue proposed regulations on the sale, advertising and ingredients of electronic cigarettes by the end of October.


“It is pre-emptive,” said Gottschalk, whose father died of complications from emphysema and long-term smoking last year. “For us to restrict other individuals from having access to a product like that is very wrong.”


While the ordinance amending the city’s tobacco code was scheduled for a vote Monday night, city manager Wally Bobkiewicz told council members that the ordinance was not complete, and asked them to hold off on voting for two weeks.


If passed, the ordinance would also limit sale of electronic cigarettes to minors under the age of 18. Gottschalk and other supporters of electronic cigarettes said they would support a ban on sales to minors.


Speaking on behalf of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives (CASAA), Lincolnwood resident Michael Cozzi explained that the proposed ordinance would force ex-tobacco smokers to “vape” in the same places where other tobacco users smoke. Practically speaking, that means they would be exposed to the smoke they were trying to avoid by quitting regular cigarettes and switching to e-cigarettes.


Cozzi said he had smoked tobacco from the age of 14 until he smoked his last cigarette on June 5, 2010. Electronic cigarettes are motivating for tobacco smokers who want to quit, he said, in part because they do not produce smoke and also because they are allowed in more places than traditional cigarettes.


“If you relegate electronic cigarettes to the same classification as tobacco cigarettes…you’re taking away the motivation of people who want to get off tobacco,” Cozzi said.


He and other supporters also told council members that they believe electronic cigarettes are significantly healthier than tobacco cigarettes.


Electronic cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat up a liquid solution, vaporizing the material and delivering nicotine to the user in a water-based mist, according to CASAA. They may look like traditional cigarettes, pens or small flashlights.


Traditional cigarettes cause cancer because of the chemicals created when the cigarette is burned, according to the American Lung Association.  Meanwhile, electronic cigarettes do not generate that smoke, but simply create a watery mist. They still contain nicotine, however—meaning they are also addictive, just like regular cigarettes.


The American Food and Drug Administration states that the health effects of e-cigarettes are not fully studied, and therefore, consumers should avoid them. However, Cozzi and others cited recent studies that appear to show e-cigarettes may not be all bad. Researchers at Drexel University recently concluded that the chemicals released from electronic cigarettes do not pose significant hazards to bystanders, while Boston University scientists showed that e-cigarettes may be a good tool for quitting tobacco.


“Essentially, there are no risks whatsoever to people who are near vapers,” said Evanston resident Tom Kendall. “I just don’t understand why we would be considering such an ordinance, especially because nowhere else has it.”


Municipalities that recently passed legislation to restrict the use of electronic cigarettes include Duluth City, MN, Woodstown, NJ, Monroe and West Monroe, LA, and Woburn, MA.




Vapers’ Plea: Don’t Outlaw E-Cigarettes in Evanston