Source: Beasley Allen Law Firm
Author: Kurt Niland

I have that “born late” feeling. I quit smoking before I had a chance to “smoke” electronic cigarettes, the latest and most overtly sci-fi smoking cessation tool to come along in my lifetime. My first attempt to quit smoking was in 1989, 4 years after I started smoking, when my college roommate yanked a brand-new pack of smokes out of my hand and chucked them to the middle of a retaining pond near our New Mexico State dorm. I had given Keith my permission to do that or something like it “if you ever catch me with a pack of cigarettes again,” which was about seven hours earlier that same day.

Subsequent attempts to quit involved Zyban, nicotine gum, nicotine patches, nicotine lozenges, various herbal “de-tox” remedies, and Chantix. I even bought this little gadget that punched holes in my cigarettes, allowing most of the smoke to escape through the filter. As ingenious as that device seemed to me, it was as frustrating as trying to drink with a broken straw. After a minute of sucking air, I simply got another straw that wasn’t broken.

Eventually, the only method I had left to try was the primitive, old-fashioned cold turkey method. Had electronic cigarettes been around when I was trying to quit, I assure you, I would have bought them.

The idea of an alternative cigarette is so appealing that many smokers probably have conceived of a fake cigarette at some point in their lives. I remember sitting on a long, trans-Pacific flight, experiencing the first withdrawal pangs from all the cigarettes I chainsmoked in LAX hours before, when the idea of inventing a fake “traveling” cigarette came to mind – basically just a flameproof, smokeless dummy that smelled and tasted like a real cigarette … an adult pacifier of sorts. But that was just pure fantasyto me.

Electronic cigarettes are like those fantasy cigarettes, only better. They are battery powered cylinders with chemically loaded cartridges that delivervaporous nicotine and other substances. In other words, they simulate real cigarettes like nothing else on the market.

Unfortunately, new studies reveal that these e-cigarettes are not without their own dangers. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved them for use and therefore does not regulate them. However, the FDA has conducted lab analyses and says that e-cigarettes contain toxic chemicalssuch as diethylene glycol (an ingredient used in antifreeze) and other toxic and carcinogenic substances.

In fact, the agency is asking the public to report any adverse events or product quality problems associated with the use of e-cigarettes to theFDA’s Medwatch Adverse Event Reporting Program.

Perhaps smoking substitutes are destined to be like so many of the substitutes for sugar, salt, and fat – marginally satisfying replacements that eventually prove to have negative side effects and health risks that are just as bad or worse than the real thing. The FDA’s e-cigarette advisory should remind smokers that, like Chantix, not all .