NBC
Article
Welcome
back to the Flavor Vapor Blog! We hope that everyone has had a great weekend.
With cool weather ahead who can complain too much? There is always news about
e-cig and personal vaping devices that re-circulate and each time the wording
is a little different. This is no different than the article I found today.
There are a few guidelines I follow when writing and one of those is not to
talk about e-cigs and combustible cigarettes and the impact of these devices on
human health. This is why sometimes you
will see an article from a website and not an article in my own words and
perception. Today is a perfect example of these guidelines.
Todays article is: “Inside the Vaper's Den:
E-Cig Salvation, and New Dangers
BY BEN POPKEN”
you can find the article
at: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/inside-vapers-den-e-cig-salvation-new-dangers-n150056
“AA has 12 steps to take.
For vapers, there are 7,000 chemicals to kick.
At a wooden bar beneath
neon lights, fingers tap. A vial of e-cigarette "juice" pours into a
pen-shaped device. With the click of a button, electricity flows, a coil heats,
and flavored, diluted, liquid nicotine transforms to a gas. It's inhaled and
exhaled in a vanilla custard nimbus that hovers in the Henley Vaporium in
Manhattan.
"I'm sure this isn't
good, but it's a lot better than cigarettes," said Patrick A., a 38- year
old commodities options trader who asked only to be identified by his first
name.
Indeed, according to a recent study out of England, vaping is 60 percent
more effective for quitting cigarettes than nicotine patches, gum, or going
cold turkey. But just because e-cigarettes are tar-free doesn't mean they're
risk-free. The product is so new that there are no studies on its long-term
effects. And e-cigarette manufacturers have been criticized for targeting the
young and using television advertising, which traditional cigarette companies
have been banned from doing since 1970.
All that aside, vapers
aren't waiting for science or the government to tell them what they know in
their lungs to be true, and what they come to vaping lounges to have
reconfirmed.
"We know cigarettes
kill you. And we know what in cigarettes kill you. And we know that vaping does
not contain the things in cigarettes that kill you," said Peter Denholtz,
co-owner of the Henley Vaporium.
Lest they forget, a
fraction of the chemicals in a lit cigarette are stenciled on his shop's wall
in thick black letters. Arsenic. Cobalt. Lead. 2-Nitropropan.
5-Methyl-Chrysene.
Each time the vapers
cross the store's threshold they do so renouncing these thousands of chemicals
in exchange for just five FDA-certified ingredients: water, food coloring,
propylene glycol, glycerin and nicotine.
Especially the last one.
Because most are still addicts. Though in bursts of rapid shop talk users say
at least now they're not consuming tar and 68 other carcinogens to feed their
need. Or digging through garbage for old butts to burn when they bolt up from
sleep in the middle of the night, out of cigarettes, and out of their minds for
a fix.
That used to be Jordy
Tractenberg, a 45-year-old music rights negotiator. Four weeks after trading
his two-pack a day habit for a vape pen, he says he took a hot shower. As the
steam entered his nostrils, he began coughing and filled the drain with
"lung cookies," heavy, green and black chunks of mucus. Vaping was
giving his respiratory system a chance to start working through a 30-year
backlog, he said.
"All of a sudden,
you can breathe," he said.
The medical community
allows that nicotine on its own is a relatively harmless, though addictive,
stimulant. There just isn't any data on the long-term use of vaporizing it
along with a few other chemicals and inhaling it for 20 years.
"You remove the
combustion process and you obviously have a safer product," said Dr.
Taylor Hays, director of the Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center. "It
would be impossible to assume they're safe given that the industry is
completely unregulated and given that people are inhaling different chemicals
deep into their lungs."
But for Tractenberg
that's a gamble he's willing to take. Key to helping him stay clear of
cigarettes are the vape shops, he said. Many of the shops and lounges were
started by impassioned ex-smokers who wanted to help others like them switch to
e-cigarettes, and build a business at the same time. Tractenberg frequents
Beyond Vape on St. Mark's Place in New York to sample the new flavors and to
commune with the vaping faithful.
"It's kind of like
what a cigar shop would have been back in the day. Or an old school barber
shop," said Tractenberg. "People talk about flavors and devices,
sports, politics, sex, drugs and rock and roll."
Not every customer goes
for the gab-fest. "I go in and buy my juice and leave, I'm good,"
said Caren Evans, a 54-year-old public relations executive in Maryland.
Like others, Evans leans
on the vape shops to help her step down the amount of nicotine she's inhaling,
both to have more power over her addiction and because nicotine's bitterness
drowns out the e-liquid flavors.
Most users getting away
from cigarettes start off on 24 mg nicotine strength juice. Evans had worked
her way down to 12mg. One day she was in Vape Ink in Rockville, Maryland, for a
refill and they didn't have her favorite, a strawberry custard flavor called
Unicorn Milk, available in that dosage, only 18 mg.
Because of her pride in
getting down to 12 mg, the store strongly advised her not to buy it, she said.
"The guy looks at me, and said if you're at 12, I'm not selling you 18.
That would be wrong." These days she's down to 6 mg.
But there's more to the
revenue stream for vape shops than just getting smokers off cigarettes.
"The shops and the
e-cigarette companies want to have it both ways. They say they're out there
trying to help smokers quit, but they also want to get new users," said
Thomas Fairely, a former NYC health commissioner. There's plenty of profit to
be had in doing so. A Wells Fargo analysis estimate the e-cig industry to be at
$2 billion, and growing.
Blu and NJOY, two of the
biggest brands of e-cigarettes, and the types that most vape users try first
before graduating to the customizable and refillable types sold at vape shops,
have aggressive marketing campaigns. Actors and actresses were seen puffing
away on e-cigs at tables during the Golden Globes. NJOY hired hunky young men
wearing nothing but swim shorts to pass out free samples on-board New York City
subway cars.
"That's not how you
market to smokers. That's how you market to teenage girls," said Fairely.
"They're treating this like any other product where the bigger the market,
the better."
"The best way is not
going after smokers, but non-smokers."”
WE ONLY HAVE UNTIL AUGUST 9th
TO MAKE ANY ADITIONAL COMMETNS TO THE FDA! GET INVOLVED!
Thank you for taking time out of your day to read our blog. Please, get
involved with a CASAA. They have the right vision for the vaping world and our
(the consumers) best interest at heart.
Freetovape.org
&
CASSA.org
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