Tell Young People the Truth: E-Cigarettes and Vaping Flavors Help People Quit Smoking (Alternet)

[LWolf]

111. The whole truth.

Tell them the whole truth. That e-cigs can help people quit smoking, but that they don't end nicotine addition. E-Cigs are a nicotine delivery system.

Tell them that nicotine addiction is similar to heroine and cocaine addiction, and may be harder to quit.

Tell them that while E-Cigs diminish the dangers of lung cancer from smoking, nicotine has other harmful effects on the body relating to heart attacks and strokes, and that a different delivery system doesn't change that.

I am a supporter of E-Cigs for those already addicted. They are less harmful than smoking tobacco. I don't, though, want to see them marketed. I don't want them to become a vehicle for making nicotine addiction fashionable again.

I'd like them to be regulated as medical support for those quitting smoking. Made available by prescription. I don't want to see a fresh wave of nicotine addiction hit the nation.

Of course, I grew up in a time when smoking was ubiquitous, am the daughter of a reformed smoker, and I spent 10 years married to a smoker who literally took the money I had set aside to make sure my babies had milk until payday to buy cigarettes. As those babies grew older, I had to resort to more and more extreme ways to hide their piggy banks and allowance, because he'd find them and rush off to feed his addiction if his carton didn't last from paycheck to paycheck. He had no second thoughts about stealing from his own kids to feed that addiction.

I don't want to go backwards when it comes to wide spread nicotine addiction.