Does It Even Matter If Electronic Cigarettes Are Safe?

 Not really, no.  Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigs or e-cigarettes, is a bona-a-fide success story for millions of former smokers all over the world. They are a very popular alternative to smoking tobacco products, aka analog cigarettes. (in Vape-Speak) And soon, what’s left in the wake of our destruction of our industry will be controlled by others and used for power and profit.

I’m going to take the long way around to this whole “power and profit” claim, please follow along…

 As I type this, there are more than 460 e-cigarette brands (in 2014 stats) on the market (according to this article here) (way too many by the way), of varying degrees of profitability, and although e-cigarettes are remarkably successful as a smoking cessation device, none of the respectable brands ever market themselves as such, despite what you might read in the mainstream press.

We, as in Spinfuel, often write about the electronic cigarette as “the” smoking cessation miracle, but you won’t find any mention of it on brand websites. Why can we say it when the brands cannot? Because it’s the truth, for one, and we’ve nothing to lose by shouting out the truth. At least, not yet. All those brands, the why is…because it’s against the law. Vaping is the best way to leave tobacco products in the past. Nicotine gum, patches, and other delivery systems fail more often than they succeed, by a wide percentage.

E-Cigarette Research

There has been plenty of research into the safety of e-cigarettes, and thousands of doctors and scientists have agreed that, in general, vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking tobacco products. In fact, those that agree that e-cigs are 95% safer refuse to call e-cigarettes tobacco products. Why? They are not tobacco products, and no amount of name calling (and that’s what is) will alter the reality that vaping is in no way the act of smoking tobacco.

We gladly admit that the industry does indeed need a few long-term studies to determine the long-term safety of the vaping, but deep down, we all know that mixing  propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, flavorings, and minute amounts of nicotine solution (compared to tobacco) into a vapable liquid (e-liquid or e-juice), and heating it into vapor form and inhaling that vapor it is ‘orders of magnitude’ safer than burning and inhaling the 4000 known chemicals, of which 43 are KNOWN carcinogens.

The following harmful chemicals (a fraction of the number anyway) are found in every tobacco cigarette or cigarette smoke, none of these chemicals are found in eliquid or the vapor created from e-cigarettes: tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT.

Other Nicotine Sources

The only common chemical found in both tobacco products and e-liquid is nicotine. However, nicotine is also a natural chemical found in: Tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflower, green peppers, black tea, and eggplant. Oh, and by the way, nicotine is NOT a carcinogen.

 How can the above vegetables NOT  be labeled as tobacco products since, like some e-liquids, nicotine is part of the chemical inventory? Just what does it take to be classified a tobacco product?

Measuring Nicotine

Now, in fruits and vegetables that contain nicotine, the chemical nicotine is measured in nano-grams, not milligrams, but the argument must stand since the FDA does not differentiate between e-liquid with X, Y, or Z amounts of nicotine, or even Zero MG nicotine eliquid. Just the existence of nicotine, or an arms-length between a bottle of eliquid with nicotine and a bottle of eliquid without nicotine, creates a tobacco product when uses in a vaporizer. In what universe does this make sense?

 Well, it doesn’t. The real, honest answer that the FDA and anti-vaping politicians refuse to tell you is that ALL vape gear and ALL eliquid is being classified as tobacco products simply because the act of exhaling smoke from a tobacco cigarette and the act of exhaling vapor from electronic cigarette “look” similar, and can therefore be regulated and taxed like tobacco products. That’s it. All of this destruction of more than 100,000 US jobs, 20,000 business establishments, and the loss of a billion lives after vaping is killed off, is all based on the similarity of the outward appearance of smoking in order to generate revenue. If this isn’t evil, then I don’t know what is.

Safe and Effective – So why the attitude?

 The effectiveness of e-cigarettes as the best tool to fight the addiction to real tobacco products can be easily explained by the fact that electronic cigarettes provide both nicotine, in varying amounts and none at all, as well as the hand-to-mouth action that most ex-smokers miss for a lifetime.

The FDA and anti-vaping propagandists do not care if e-cigarettes are safer, all they care about is the power and money that goes with regulating it.

 Nicotine Can Be Beneficial

In various studies, nicotine as shown to benefit many medical ailments, like, ulcerative colitis, depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, pain, mild cognitive impairment, Tourette’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Ask Tim Timblin, our newest columnist, why so many vapers are also chronic pain sufferers. Hell, even our Publisher, John Manzione, the worst chronic pain sufferer I’ve known in my lifetime, tells me that vaping helps with his pain.

E-cigarettes do not produce a single molecule of tobacco smoke. Instead, e-cigarettes emit vapor. The single ingredient in some e-juice that anyone can claim to be ‘addictive’ is nicotine. In the real world, nicotine is not nearly as addictive as the nicotine compound that has been altered by tobacco companies to make it even more addictive.

Nicotine is one, of several, substances called “alkaloids” found in tobacco, and when tobacco companies add other alkaloids to nicotine its enhances its addictive properties. Additionally, the monoamine oxidase inhibitors and acetaldehyde found in all cigarette smoke also have the same effect of increasing the addictive properties. Nicotine is addictive, yes… but  it isn’t anywhere near as addictive as smoking tobacco products. It must follow then that vaping eliquid with nicotine in it, is also not nearly as addictive as smoking cigarettes. This is common sense people.

Using e liquid containing 3mg, 6mg, and even 9mg of nicotine will not even produce withdrawal symptoms that would be any more uncomfortable than a moderate coffee drinker withdrawing from their morning coffee.

If you drink coffee regularly, and if a day or two goes by where access to your coffee is withheld, you may suffer from minor irritability, restlessness, and mild anxiety. People that use vaping products with e-liquid containing moderate amounts of nicotine (3mg, 6mg, 9mg) might experience the same withdrawal symptoms, but probably much less.

Dangerous Misinformation

The very idea that scare tactics like “a human brain becoming addicted to other substances because of e-cigarettes” is preposterous in the extreme.

Other such nonsense being written about in the anti-vaping circles include exposing yourself to toxic levels of nicotine if you get e-liquid drops on your hands or clothes. After nearly 5 years of vaping, if that were anywhere near true, I would dead 100 times over. Not a day goes by where I don’t get e liquid on my hands and fingers. I don’t immediately jump up to wash my hands, because I know the truth, and I know that the minuscule amount of nicotine in my eliquid cannot possibly cause me harm throw touch.

Just the other day I was told that the anti-vaping press were now purporting the possibility that users of e-cigarettes can be tempted to fill their tanks with substances other than nicotine. Like what?

First, no one fills their tanks or clearomizers with nicotine, they fill them with e-liquid, with may contain very little nicotine to begin with. What other substances are these anti-vapers talking about? They never reveal them, because it’s simply not true. These zealots are not bothered by lying and distorting the truth because whatever it takes to win is what they signed up for.

Misinformation, or disinformation, is the work of anti-vaping terrorists who believe that the ends justifies the means, including disseminating downright malicious lies and cherry picking tiny bits of scientific studies to bolster their agenda to kill the vape industry.

The Anti-Vaping Terrorist

There are two types of anti-vaping terrorists at work today. One is the group of people that despise anything that has the possibility of re-normalizing ‘smoking’, (let’s call this type the ‘brain dead’) and the other group of anti-vaping terrorists are the profit based terrorists, people who stand to lose great sums of money with open and legal access to vape products. Profit based terrorists are politicians, who basically work for the other profit-based terrorists, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.

What we are seeing today is ugly zealots, fascists and cut-throat profiteers working together for the common goal of killing the vape industry at any cost. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” applies here.

Profit

You may ask; if these terrorists are out to kill the vape industry, how can they profit? Killing the vape industry means killing off all the vape gear you use today, and the vast number of eliquid brands you love. In its place will be vaping instruments and eliquids created by Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, approved by the FDA, which are heavily taxed and regulated. They will be outrageously expensive. Our industry in its current form will be gone, killed off, for profit to the terrorists that will control what’s left. As for those terrorists that just want vaping completely outlawed? The profit-based terrorists will simply tell them to Fuck Off.

Truth Will Out

When searching for the truth you must look to see what each side has to gain by looking at their agenda. Big Tobacco needs smokers, the politicians needs Big Tobacco’s money, Big Pharma needs the sick and diseased, and the pure zealots need to hate something. It’s the perfect storm.

What do we, as vapers need? Simple. FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

Federal Level Advocacy Hasn’t Worked

Over the past few years all the calm, professional discussions from the vaping advocacy groups to the anti-vaping politicians has fallen on deaf ears. If vape products are not tobacco products the government cannot tax them like tobacco, which has been a part of their agenda since day one.

It’s almost amusing to watch some advocacy group as they think they’ve made any headway on the federal level. The initially proposed “Deeming Regulations” announced in 2014 are just about the exact final ruling by the FDA. All the hearing, all the emails, all the petitions, none of it changed anything on the federal level.

The people these advocacy groups they deal with on the other side are ‘perfect liars’, they are ‘perfect immoralists’, they are care nothing about its citizens and fellow Americans, they care about power and profit, and only power and profit.

Advocacy groups taking meetings with federal government officials about implementation of level-headed, light-touch regulations have been for naught. We would all love to see the day when truth will out, but the way it stands today, that will never happen.

What needs to happen now, and every day until August 8^th, is loud protesting. Civil Disobedience, demands for clear cut explanations. If this nonsensical ruling cannot be recalled, then the precious predicate date must be moved to a point down the road, not 2007.

Why are there not thousands of protesters outside FDA offices right now?

Where is the outrage?

Julia Hartely-Barnes