E-cigarettes: a gateway into addiction

By Russell Zazueta

Anti-smoking activists have a new enemy known as the e-cigarette, and it’s bringing smokers back to stomp on their campaign.

E-cigarettes have been around since the 1960s, and business is booming more than ever. As e-cigarettes continue to skyrocket in popularity, so will the curiosity to taste a cigarette, and in the process, reinstitute the dirty habit that anti-smoking campaigns have antagonized for over 50 years.

With over 250 brands available and flavors like lemon-lime love, pineapple paradise and raspberry cheesecake to choose from, vaping — the practice of inhaling vapors produced by an e-cigarette — is reeling in the young generation into a dirty trend.

These battery-powered cigarettes are loaded with cartridges known as cartomizers containing a liquid called e-juice teeming with nicotine and propylene glycol – an ingredient also used in antifreeze – along with other additives. The result: a nicotine inhaler that disperses vapor instead of smoke.

Vaping marketers should be held responsible for the resurgence of smoking and for serving the mystic fallacy that e-cigarettes are the healthy alternative to tobacco.

Over an estimated 4 million Americans have jumped onto the e-cigarette wagon according to the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, and they project sales of e-cigarettes to cross the 1 billion mark by the end of this year. It’s only a matter of time until many of these Americans cross over to regular cigarettes.

While researching e-juice, I came across an online store called Juicyejuice.com that contained a slideshow of idyllic backdrops with quotes that could sucker in a gullable, teenage hipster in seconds.

The website quoted a professional fitness instructor that said, “Juicy eJuice is the healthier alternative to traditional smoking.”

Then a pro surfer said, “ It’s more than vaping . . . it’s a lifestyle.”

These familiar marketing tactics were once used by tobacco companies to gather consumers to think smoking created sophistos with sex appeal, until the Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and everybody panicked.

Recently, Los Angeles lawmakers outlawed vaping from various work sites and many public places, including parks and certain beaches.

All restaurants, indoor and out, are under regulations. And 21-and-over establishments, such as bars and nightclubs, can no longer allow it.

Many citizens, however, are vaguely familiar with e-cigarettes, let alone know much about the new laws restricting them.

According to a few burghers around Los Angeles, vaping is nothing more than inhaling water, and others don’t even know what vaping is. They are unaware that nicotine is a big part of the gimmick.

Others believe that people vape to kick the habit. But most importantly, people are unaware that a consumer must be 18 in california to purchase an e-cigarette because nicotine is involved, just like a cigarette.

This kind of ignorance is allowing e-cigarettes to reign supreme without ever questioning the meat-hook realities in store for those people.

But in the end, lawmakers allow citizens in Los Angeles to purchase their battery-powered e-cigarette at various vaping lounges and tobacco shops, where vaping is permitted and cartomizers containing e-juice is sold.