电子烟依然存在二手烟
最开始，人们对电子烟十分好奇，声称其响应了无烟政策——由于电子烟不会产生有害烟雾。现在，已经有许多电子烟工厂应运而生。但是，电子烟是否真的安全？现在的问题在于电子烟是否比传统香烟危害更少。
电子烟是电子产品，有着与传统香烟一样的外观，也像香烟一样能吸出烟。医学专家称，吸电子烟是为了让人们戒烟。但由于比一般香烟的口味要多出很多，甚至还有水果味的。那些不抽烟的人也开始喜欢抽烟了。而且吸电子烟不受约束，相对于传统香烟一年的花费，电子烟的花费少了将近一半。
专家称，电子烟也许比传统香烟安全，但这并不意味着绝对安全。吸电子烟时所产生的不是烟，而直接是雾气，直接地，更快速地进入肺部，心脏，甚至大脑中。一旦成瘾，癌症发病几率，先天畸型，发育障碍几率便会增加。2006年《妇产科学杂志》研究表明，嚼尼古丁口香糖的孕妇比不嚼的孕妇生产风险更高。
目前，电子烟的制造还不甚完善，对身体的危害还处于未知状态。上个月《成瘾行为》研究
表明多数利用电子烟想要戒烟的人，最终要么吸电子烟成瘾，要么又开始抽烟。科学家发现电子烟对戒烟并没有多大帮助。因为吸烟着普遍都有这种心理矛盾——想要利用抽烟来缓解自己的矛盾的心理。
一些科学家认为，电子烟或许能帮一些人戒烟，但是从广义上来讲，吸电子烟依然有尼古丁，同样没有达到香烟制造商所说的制造更干净，更环保，更健康的社会。那么电子烟里面究竟含哪些成分呢？现在还不清楚。由于电子烟缺乏有系统的临床实验数据支持，也没有系统的管理条例，这项新技术还不能有效的管理。新西兰号召规范生产和安全销售电子烟，美国食品和药物管理局计划根据《烟草控制法》规范推广烟制品。
E-Cigarettes Just More Smoke and Mirrors, Doctors Say
At first, electronic cigarettes were a novelty — something a braggart in a bar might puff to challenge the established no-smoking policy, marveling bystanders with the fact that the smoke relead from the device was merely harmless vapor.
Now, e-cigarettes are poid to be a billion-dollar industry, claimed as the solution to brin
g in smokers from out of the cold, both figuratively and literally, as e-cigarettes promi to lift the stigma of smoking and are increasingly permitted at indoor facilities where smoking is banned.
So, are e-cigarettes safe? Well, they're not great for you, doctors say. What's being debated is the degree to which they are less dangerous than traditional cigarettes.
1940 revisited
E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices, often shaped like traditional cigarettes, with a heating element that vaporizes a liquid nicotine solution, which must be replaced every few hundred puffs. Nicotine is inhaled into the lungs, and a largely odorless water vapor comes out of the device. Puffing an e-cigarette is called vaping.
Yet the industry's duplicity is clear to medical experts: E-cigarettes are marketed to smokers as a means to wean them off of tobacco (although studies show they don't help much); yet the same devices, some with fruity flavors, are marketed to young people who don't smoke, which could get them hooked.
Hooked? Yes, e-cigarettes are a nicotine-delivery system, highly addictive and ultimately harmful becau of their nicotine.
Cancer and respiratory experts e the same ploy being played out today with e-cigarettes as was done in the 1940s with cigarettes, when America started smoking en mas. They often are distributed for free and pitched by celebrities and even doctors as cool, liberating and safe.
In an ad for a product called blu eCigs, celebrity Jenny McCarthy, infamous for encouraging parents not to vaccinate their children, encourages young adults to vape, enlisting words such as "freedom" and the promi of x. In another ad, for V2 Cigs, a medical doctor named Matthew Huebner — who is prented without affiliation but is associated with a Cleveland Clinic facility in Weston, Fla. — implies that vaping is as harmless as boiling water.
As for the notion of e-cigs as liberating, the cost of a year's worth of e-cigarette nicotine cartridges is about $600, compared with $1,000 yearly for a half-pack a day of regular cig
arettes.
As for whether they're safe, it's a matter of comparing the advantages of one addiction over another.
E-cigarettes not a patch
One would think that vaping has to be safer than smoking real cigarettes. Experts say they are probably safer, but safer doesn't mean safe.
"Cigarettes have their risk profile," said Dr. Frank Leone, a pulmonary expert at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia. And just about everyone who breathes understands the risks: circulatory dia and myriad cancers, for starters. "E-cigarettes might be better off compared to that profile. But that doesn't mean they don't have their own risk profile."
A top concern is the nicotine delivery rate, Leone said. With nicotine patches and gum, the nicotine delivery is regulated, with small amounts of nicotine relead slowly into the
bloodstream. But with traditional cigarettes and now e-cigarettes, heat creates a freeba form of nicotine that is more addictive — or what smokers would call more satisfying. The nicotine goes right into the lungs, where it is quickly channeled into the heart and then pumped into the brain.
Once addicted, the body will crave nicotine. And although nicotine isn't the most dangerous toxin in tobacco's arnal, this chemical nevertheless is a cancer-promoting agent, and is associated with birth defects and developmental disorders.
A study published in 2006 in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, for example, found that women who chewed nicotine gum during pregnancy had a higher risk of birth defects compared to other nonsmokers.
