Argumentative Essay On E-Cigarettes

Have you ever seen anyone around your school, community, or even workplace smoking inside? It makes you look twice due to public places not allowing people to smoke inside anymore since 2010 in Michigan (http://www.mml.org/). What you might be seeing is an e-cigarette or “Vape”. These electronic, vapor devices starting getting popular with teengers (and some adults) in 2012, the percentage of users has over doubled since 2011 (http://www.cdc.gov/). There are hundreds of brands of e-cigarettes and millions of places to sell them and in some places they are aloud to sell to minors. But what all these users are thinking, is different from the reality of if these are any safer than actual cigarettes.

Now, what these people don’t know is

that most of these e-cigs have nicotine, which is an addictive drug just as in regular tobacco cigarettes. 76% of the teenagers who said they had vaped also used cigarettes within the 30 days of using a vape (http://www.cdc.gov/). Experts are looking at this as two possibilities, as a gateway to tobacco products, or a way to be addicted to vape juices. Teenagers can, in some states, buy electronic cigarettes because they are not yet considered tobacco products in a majority of them. This is causing more kids to think the vapes are pointed toward their use, which the e-cig manufacturers deny. They say they are not targeting kids, even when making favors like cookies and cream, cookie dough, and candy mixtures. Vaping is now a multi-million dollar industry, and they are taking over cigarettes whether people expect it or not. If you look past these things you’ll see there are some benefits but very few. Recently scientists have found that the so called “harmless vapor” isn’t what it seems.

California recently made a public health advisory about vapes, making a lot of people wanting to quit using them or try to avoid them.

This is because what you exhale from e-cigs isn’t a vapor as the makers claim it to be, it’s a toxic aerosol (http://www.nbcnews.com/). This was made a health advisory because the e-juices used have at least 10 confirmed chemicals on California’s list of carcinogens, which means chemicals directly related to cancer, such as benzene, formaldehyde, lead and nickel. At first these just sound like science words, but then you see formaldehyde is found in not only in “vape smoke”, its found in cigarette smoke and vehicles tailpipe exhaust (www.newsmax.com/). In e-cigarettes there are 10 known carcinogens, keep in mind they just started being researched, in regular cigarettes there are 69 known (www.lung.org/). In your mind it sounds like cigarettes are a lot worse, but along with 10 cancerous chemicals, there is the fact that e-juice is literally just liquid nicotine with some flavoring. Liquid nicotine is highly lethal. Less than one tablespoon of these juices can be enough to kill an adult, and one teaspoon is able to kill children. Whether adsorbed through your skin or swallowed. In September 2010 poison control centers would only get one call a month for this reason, between then and February 2014 these calls started averaging to 216 calls a month. That’s .3% to 41.7%, 51% of those calls were accidental poisoning of kids 5 years or younger

(www.health.howstuffworks.com/).

Now, thats another side to the story.

The side that tells you in some way there are a few benefits to electronic cigarettes. Such as to help people quit smoking. People could be helped by these things if you use them in the right way. If you’re already smoking traditional cigarettes you can at least go to e-cigs to slowly wean off your nicotine addiction. You can somewhat help the people around you by getting rid of the odor you and the by-standers will now carry around for the rest of the day. Smoking e-cigarettes gets rid of that horrible smokers cough also, and it does help your social life a little bit (www.ecigarettereviewed.com/). You won’t have to leave the building to get your smoking in anymore. Next, there’s no ash to flick or lighter you have to make sure is on you at all times. You don’t have to worry about cigarette burns on your clothing, or furniture. E-cigs are also cheaper than cigarettes, and will save you on health insurance because it is not yet considered “smoking”. And if you’re all about image and just want a vape to look cool, in some state minors can get away with buying vapes. This is because they are not yet considered tobacco products. Either way, if you don’t smoke already these are pointless to you and you should stay

away.

In the long run, this era of people will end up realizing how much of a mistake these things are. To make this worse the FDA tested the e-juices to see if the amount of nicotine labeled on the bottle was correct and it was significantly different (www.health.howstuffworks.com/). The FDA also found that each cartridge contained about 1% diethylene glycol, which is found in antifreeze. Now, who in the right mind would like to inhale a fruity tasting, antifreeze, car exhaust mixture into their lunges. There are pretty much zero benefits to these devices, even “looking cool” isn’t worth is. If everyone is vaping with these then why not be the different person who still has the lunges to go for a run. If you want to quit smoking then do a safer alternative. Just switching your smoking device won’t cut it. These things are a disaster beginning to happen.