The E-Cigarette boom began around 2009-2010 when early companies sold a total of only 61,000 or so units the first year. As products became more standardized and sophisticated, the sales have gone up, and have never decreased.
You know that the concept has legs when major tobacco companies get into the act, such as Lollard, the tobacco giant purchasing Blu E-Cigs, one of the early electronic cigarette marketers. R.J. Reynolds also has come out with its own brand of e-cigarettes.
The basic fundamentals of an e-cigarette are simply the igniting of a glycol liquid which turns it into water vapor that looks like and acts like real tobacco smoke. The vapor can be inhaled and exhaled, thus acting just like the real thing. You can also buy vape liquid of your favorite flavor if you are an experienced vaper.
This has prompted a boom in the concept and in the reality that this has become a major industry with all kinds of stores, cigarette outlets, convenience stores, and department stores selling e-cigarettes.
The glycol substance that is ignited is called “juice” and it now comes in many different forms and flavors, including actual nicotine. While nicotine is not the safest substance known to man (one drop of pure nicotine on the tongue will kill a grown man almost instantly), it can be used in minute amounts to simulate the nicotine “hit” given by a tobacco cigarette.
Initially, ECig effects were promoted as tools for people who wanted to get off of real tobacco cigarettes, simply due to the proven harmful effects of tobacco. It is documented that the 161,000 or so lung cancer deaths each year are primarily caused by smoking tobacco laden cigarettes. When switching over to e-cigs, a smoker can still get the nicotine hit, without the danger of the tobacco. Or can he?
While it may still be too early to tell, there is mounting pressure to regulate the e-cigarettes more closely because of the lack of standardization in regard to what is exactly being put into the “juice.
If you are only inhaling water vapor that is one thing, but if other substances are placed in the tube along with it, who is to say exactly what it is? Would it be possible to put marijuana in there? Of course – and that has been done, but at the present, there are no standards.
Political entities have a great interest in this subject because they see a huge field of new taxation possibilities opening up right before their very eyes. In spite of this political greed, it does make sense to at least formulate some sort of overall standard in order to protect the public as far as what can be put into an e-cigarette and what cannot.
Of course, if you compare what comes out of a conventional cigarette with the effects of what comes out of the vapor from an e-cigarette you will get two widely differing substances. From the cigarette, you will get tobacco smoke that contains over 200 chemicals that definitely cause cancer in addition to cyanide and arsenic. With the vapors from the majority of the brands you get water vapor and vegetable residues that make up the flavorings of the different flavors of the “juice.”
At this point in time, there have been no reports of any side effects from vaping, but from a historical standpoint, there were no reports of ill effects from smoking when it really took off in the ’40s and ’50s. It wasn’t until 8 to 10 years later that reports of lung cancer began to become linked with tobacco smoking.
There have actually been many cases where tobacco smokers have move from smoking tobacco to e-cigs successfully and have left the nicotine levels commensurate with what they enjoyed before with the tobacco. They figure, and perhaps correctly, that they are better off not to have to inhale the tobacco smoke, as it is the culprit to avoid.
It is probably logical to assume that eventually, some political entities will begin to pass legislation to regulate e-cigs, but until then we have a free market with no restrictions. It is unlikely, however, that a reputable E-cig company would knowingly place any harmful substance in their products because that would kill their business anyway.