Smoking has always bothered me. I remember being stuck in a car with one of my friend’s parents when I was young. The windows were up and his Dad was smoking a cigarette. The odor and fumes were intoxicating, leaving me with a headache and clothes that smelled awful for the entire day. The first time I ever put a cigarette in my mouth and smoked it was in the 7th grade. I was staying at a friends house and he stole a couple from his older brother. As I coughed my way through it in the alley outside of his house, I remember wondering, “Why does anyone smoke these things?“.
I am older now, and I do a lot of things that my 12-year-old self probably would not understand. However, we are still of one mind when it comes to smoking cigarettes. I am grateful every time another law is passed that prevents smoking indoors, and support any increase in tobacco taxes. Each time I see one of my friends light up I am not entirely sure why they do it, and wish that there was something I could do to convince them otherwise.
Recently, I learned of a new product called an Electronic Cigarette (E-Cigarette). These devices look like cigarettes, and upon inhalation give smokers a hit of vaporized nicotine from a liquid cartridge. The second hand smoke is harmless and has no odor. While it still isn’t healthy to inhale nicotine vapor, it is certainly less toxic than cigarette smoke. I have already convinced one of my friends to switch to E-Cigarettes – her response after first taking a drag on one was “Wow, its so smooth!” What’s even better, she is progressively reducing her dependence on nicotine by purchasing cartridges with a lower content of the drug.
While I care about my friend’s health, I really want people to switch to E-Cigarettes for my own selfish reasons. Mainly, I don’t like the smell of cigarettes. If you are currently a smoker, perhaps now is the time to ask – is an E-Cigarette right for me?
