Vaping has become extremely popular in the past several years, especially among teenagers and on college campuses like Skidmore’s. Despite its proven addictive nature, its popularity is largely built on it being marketed as a safer alternative to cigarettes, which are now far less socially acceptable than they used to be due to the abundance of advertisement about their many harmful and deadly effects.
However, the increasing evidence that e-cigarettes are not necessarily safer than cigarettes at all has me concerned about their popularity among young teenagers especially, as well as curious about how this will affect its use among legal users, such as those at Skidmore.
In the past few months, evidence has emerged that vaping can have the same negative effects, albeit to a lesser degree. The Center for Disease Control has identified vaping as the cause for an outbreak of 1,479 cases of lung disease in the past six months, including 33 total deaths. The resulting crackdown on e-cigarette products has included a emergency ban on vaping products in Massachusetts, and efforts to ban flavored e-cigarettes that are particularly appealing to underage users.
According to Politifact, it is very difficult to say whether vaping is actually less dangerous and lethal than smoking cigarettes, simply because of the lack of knowledge about its long-term effects since he devices are so new.
Therefore the narrative that “vaping is safer than cigarettes” should not be automatically believed if one is deciding to start vaping, or whether or not to continue their vaping habits.
To me, the unknown quality of e-cigarettes makes them more dangerous than other substances, even ones that are empirically more harmful. When you smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or use any other popular substance and/or drug, you probably have a pretty good idea of the health risks because they are widely known, well-documented, and drilled into us in school.
Choosing to use these substances may be reckless and self-destructive, but at least the choice is usually an informed one.
With e-cigarettes, all we know right now is that they do generally have the potential to kill you, but we don’t know exactly how. When this information is inevitably discovered and made publicly known, vapers may very well end up in the same state of cognitive dissonance as cigarette smokers, in which they are fully aware of the serious dangers of the substance but use it anyway.
While this is obviously not ideal, the greatest problem to me is the persistence of the narrative that e-cigarettes are unequivocally safer than regular cigarettes, especially when it comes to young teenagers. According to the LA Times, aside from the already murky health impact of vaping itself, vaping among people who have never smoked cigarettes will likely to lead to nicotine addiction and cigarette use in the future.
A good first step for people who vape would be to at least research the specific vaping product that they’re using and see what information already exists about its harmful effects. For example, research has shown that dab pens that include THC cartridges (especially ones purchased on the black market) are particularly linked to the recent outbreak of lung disease from vaping.
Truthfully, most people who vape are probably going to be reluctant to make dramatic changes to their habits even if evidence were to emerge that it is equally as dangerous—if not more so—than smoking cigarettes. But at least this way they are aware of the potential risks and will not be blindsided by the detriment to their health, as the 33 aforementioned victims most likely were.