WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-Are electronic cigarettes safer or just a fad?

Are electronic cigarettes safer or just a fad?

By Brigida Mack - bio l email

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) – North Carolina's smoking ban in bars and restaurants went into effect January 2, 2010. But what if there was a way for you to legally get around it? I'm talking about electronic cigarettes. You've probably seen them at the kiosks in malls like Southpark and Carolina Place.

"It taste like chewing tobacco almost." That was Josh Roberts, a WBTV producer, first reaction to trying out an electronic cigarette. "I mean it doesn't taste like a cigarette," he added. It may not taste like one, but at first glance, it looks like the real thing. You take a drag and what looks like smoke comes out when you exhale. The tip even lights up. But it's actually a battery powered E-cigarette that gives off water vapor instead of smoke.

A smoker with nearly a-pack-a-day habit, Josh was curious if the E-cigarette would give him the same fix as his Camel Lights? "But it's not really the same," he said.   

It may not be the same but Dr. Jaspaul Singh, a pulmonologist at Carolinas Medical Center, says it's too early to know if the E-cigarette is a safer alternative to traditional cigarettes. "We don't have enough research currently to say for sure whether they're safer," he said. "Theoretically they're safer because they don't have the tar and the other products traditional tobacco products and cigarette have."

The one ingredient E-cigarettes do have in common with tobacco cigarettes: nicotine, a powerful stimulant. "This can definitely be as addictive as regular cigarettes," said Dr. Singh. "The nicotine is still nicotine."

Other potentially harmful components are the chemicals that produce the water vapor you exhale. Singh says they have the same chemical properties as anti-freeze. "Ethylene glycol, propylene glycol and those kind of chemicals that make up the water vapor," Dr Singh said. "So inhaling those--are they dangerous or not? Nobody knows."

Since E-cigarettes are not regulated by the FDA, they don't have to undergo the same rigorous testing and research which means it could be years before we know the long-term effects of smoking them.

Each cartridge holds a different amount of nicotine so one may be more potent than another which means the E-cigarettes may not always last the same amount of time or give you the fix you're looking for.  

Don Arthur, a manager at Rock Bottom Brewery didn't know about E-cigarettes until he saw a customer smoking one a couple of weeks ago. "And he sat there and smoked this thing right next to everyone else who was not smoking at the bar," Arthur recalled.

E-cigarettes are not a part of the state-wide smoking ban that went into effect last month so Arthur can't stop customers from using them. "It's not detrimental to our business therefore I'm not going to ban it because it's not really smoking," he said.

While the thought of getting around the ban was tempting, once we told Josh the price tag for a start up kit--"That's a hundred dollars," he exclaimed, he decided to pass.

Once you buy the start-up kit, you get a lifetime warranty on the electronic cigarette. You only have to pay for new cartridges—it will cost you $10 for five.

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