Safer Cigarettes

The electronic cigarette provides an interesting trade-off. The obvious benefit of this device is that it allows smokers to get their nicotine hit and simulate the act of smoking without also inhaling carcinogens. Of course, some smokers will not switch because it "isn't the same as the real thing." I don't think we'll see many of these in pool halls, but I could be wrong. The concern, of course, is that people who currently do not smoke and who are not addicted to nicotine might try the electronic cigarette, become addicted to nicotine, and then move on to more dangerous sources. While certainly this will happen, I have to wonder how many of the people who move from electronic cigarettes to real ones wouldn't have ended up smoking real cigarettes in the absence of an electronic option. I don't know if I like other people flavoring my air; and I won't be taking up electronic smoking; but I can't help but evaluate the net-benefit to society as positive. This could potentially be a powerful weapon against cancer in America.

Problem: The FDA is against electronic cigarettes because there may be health concerns.



Good point. Electronic cigarettes probably aren't 100% safe, as some advertisements may claim. However, they don't have to be 100% safe to be net-beneficial to society. Rather, they just have to be safer than cigarettes and unpopular enough to current non-smokers. I am not a chemist, but I can't imagine that an electronic cigarette could be nearly as dangerous as a regular tobacco cigarette, which is available for sale on street-corners all across the country. Still, I can't help but be concerned after watching the second video. What could be the effects of the propylene glycol that the FDA warns is in electronic cigarettes?

Well, according to the University of Chicago's Billings Hospital, propylene glycol may be a "powerful preventive against pneumonia, influenza and other respiratory diseases..."

Dr. Oswald Hope Robertson last week was making final tests with a new germicidal vapor—propylene glycol—to sterilize air. If the results so far obtained are confirmed, one of the age-old searches of man will finally achieve its goal.

Dr. Robertson's propylene glycol vapor is odorless, tasteless, nontoxic, non-irritating, cheap, highly bactericidal.

[T]he researchers found that the propylene glycol itself was a potent germicide. One part of glycol in 2,000,000 parts of air would—within a few seconds—kill concentrations of air-suspended pneumococci, streptococci and other bacteria numbering millions to the cubic foot.

But medical science is cautious—there was still a remote chance that glycol might accumulate harmfully in the erect human lungs which, unlike those of mice, do not drain themselves. So last June Dr. Robertson began studying the effect of glycol vapor on monkeys imported from the University of Puerto Rico's School of Tropical Medicine. So far, after many months' exposure to the vapor, the monkeys are happy and fatter than ever.

But the FDA "has opened an investigation and has refused to allow e-cigarettes, e-cigars and e-pipes to cross the border because they're considered new drugs that require FDA approval."

So, let me get this straight. The FDA allows tobacco cigarettes, which are well known to cause cancer, so long as there are warning labels, but it blocks imports of electronic cigarettes because they contain a chemical that has been scientifically shown to prevent pneumonia and other air-borne diseases when vaporized and inhaled? That's our government working hard to protect our interests.

If we want to be incredibly cynical we might say that the FDA feels threatened by the potential for electronic cigarettes to replace tobacco cigarettes as a safer way to maintain a nicotine addiction. For decades, the FDA has earned funding for its campaigns against tobacco. What would happen to the funding for the Center for Tobacco Products, which was launched in August of 2009, if suddenly Americans stopped smoking tobacco cigarettes. Without the almost 90% of lung cancer deaths caused by smoking, the FDA would have a lot less to do and a lot less justification for funding. Might they want to protect their greatest enemy in order to remain relevant and important?