Marion County- e-cigarettes are Not Smoke

"Some men see things as they are and ask “Why?”.  I dream things that never were and ask, “Why not?" –Robert F. Kennedy.  (Paraphrasing his brother JFK).

Don’t ask me why I smoked because I really have no good reason.  I started in the sixties when everyone smoked and the thought that cigarettes might be harmful was being undermined by the tobacco lobby and glamorous jingles that I can remember to this day.  Don’t tell me I made a conscious choice to start, I was nine years old.  Don’t tell me that I was following the crowd; most of my peers didn’t smoke. Don’t tell me I was stupid, I skipped two grades and was taking college classes at 15.  RFK was prophetic, the answer is in looking at history and postulating from what is known, then going a step further into the unknown.  What if I never had a chance to make the decision?

My parents both smoked 10 years prior to my birth, so the germ cells from which I was eventually conceived were bathed in nicotine; my conception to birth was a nicotine sea as my mother smoked heavily.  I was breast fed and lived in a small house with two active smokers.  We know that nicotine evokes distinct changes in the brain, in the body and causes dependence.  I have never been successfully free of nicotine.  But I have been free of smoke.   Nicotine patches and gums did something, as I have 10 of my 45 years since the first cigarette smoke free through those agents.  They did not work because there was always something missing.  I could wean myself down to a quarter strip of a 2 mg gum- but never any further.  Why not? Because I stop being able to think clearly and my attention span is absent. I would go six months free of smoke then fall again into the lue haze.

I found e-cigarettes quite by accident, a co-worker switched at first to avoid having to take smoke breaks as vaping was allowed in the workplace.  The only awareness the rest of the center noted was he smelled better, as did his office.  I ordered them in Dec. 2010 and have not smoked a cigarette since.  My doctor visit six months later led to a discussion of how my weight, blood pressure and pulmonary function were dramatically better.  I simply told him I was off cigarettes.  I saw him last week and again and am now on no blood pressure medications and no inhalers.  I told him about the e-cigarette and being a physician expected a lecture.  He just smiled and said, my wife started those 6 weeks ago, small world.

Interestingly, before I retired to enter into teaching, I was a psychiatrist and addictionologist.  Smoking has three main features.  The first is addiction and withdrawal, the second is what some call pleasurable but I call self-medication of mood and attention span problems and the third the behavior of smoking and the physical nature of the act.  It explains a great deal to me.

E-cigarettes are vapor producing agents that contain the equivalent level of carcinogens as a patch or gum.  Both felt lower than any level dangerous per the FDA.  There is no evidence of any risk higher than that of the official nicotine replacement therapies.  But most important, there is no smoke.  Vapor produce a mist, like a kettle produces steam.  Tobacco burns and chemically emits at least 4000 compounds, 40 of which are carcinogens.  A cloth put over the spout of a kettle dampens and dries to a show no residue.  Put your mouth to a tissue and blow out smoke from a cigarette- brown residue that does not go away.

So let us dream and ask ourselves- exposed to nicotine all his life and probably for 10 years prior to conception, why would a person like me not be helped by this product.  And since it is the particulate smoke that lingers in the bronchioles in a maelstrom of carcinogenic material, how is an e-cigarette not a better and more appropriate choice? 

Associating vaping with smoking is comparing Utah Basketball to European Rugby.  They have a ball, but that is about the only association. 

Ban e-cigarette sales to minors, there isn’t much interest anyway.  Ban smoking, as an ex-smoker I am in awe of the pungent and lingering odors.  But vaping has not been shown to be an entry drug to smoking, it is not the evil empire of tobacco- it is an exit from the tobacco smoking habit.  Vapor is rapidly dissipating and not smoke.

And since it was not developed by a Pharmaceutical Company or Big Tobacco, those lobbies oppose them because they were a grass root industry that has formed to help millions across the globe and are more interested in the empathic elimination of smoking, harm reduction and choice.

When we dream of what is not obvious, find a solution and experience the amazing heath changes, we ask “Why not”.  When we see there are no toxins and no particulate smoke, we ask “Why not”.  When we see it is again American (borrowed from China) ingenuity and the American people seeking a solution to a problem that works for many more than FDA approved replacements, it is then we ask why, why eliminate a product that is less toxic to all.  The presence of vapers in public is an enticement for smokers to be exposed to a possible and most probably less harmful agent.  Like me they just might try it.  With Boston’s Department of Health stating they are 98-99% less toxic than cigarettes, think of the gains.

And the thought of being segregated with smokers in a designated area, is this not placing me in a harmful and toxic environment, the exact point the bill is attempting to free others of experiencing?

Equating vapor and smoke is not science and is not accurate, and accuracy is what leadership is all about.  Dream, be leaders and ask, as RFK did- WHY NOT?