Every time I go through airport security, I breathe deeply and try to stay calm. After officers see my passport is from Honduras, a country known to be the cocaine bridge between South America and the United States, they always make sure to go over my carry-on bags for about 30 minutes before letting me rush to my departure gate.
One time, they had a lengthy discussion on whether the Victoria’s Secret plaque on my makeup bag could be considered a weapon. Another time, I was asked to join a female officer inside a tiny room so she could search for drugs in between my toes.
This time though, it was different. I was carrying in my bag a carton of 200 tobacco cigarettes and my brother behind me was carrying 200 more. Don’t get me wrong—we weren’t breaking any law (the personal exemption of tobacco allowed each of us to carry a total of 200 cigarettes each). Yet I knew the officers didn’t need more reasons to question our personal belongings.
Standing in line, I was regretting my decision. The cigarettes weren’t even for me, I was making a favor for two friends who were sick of paying high prices in Canada.
Thankfully, we were able to go through security without any issues.
***
During the last five years, the e-cigarette or vapes trend has gained momentum. It’s convincing millennials to try it and fooling older people it might just be the solution to quit smoking.
What few know is the e-cigarette has been around for decades. In fact, American businessman Herbert Gilbert patented the first smokeless non-tobacco cigarette in 1963.
“Timing can be everything and I was ahead of my time, in the midst of what some might say was the most powerful advertising period of big tobacco,” Gilbert told Ashtray Blog in 2013.
In the 60’s, the connection between smoking and lung cancer was just starting to be found. There was no need for big tobacco companies to advertise a new, perhaps “safer” product when the cigarette was still at its acme.
In 2001, Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik found inspiration from his own cigarette addiction and from his father’s death to lung cancer and registered the patent for the first modern e-cigarette in 2003.
The way the e-cigarette would work is a battery would heat up a flavoured liquid (vape or e-juice) and create vapor with less toxins than cigarette smoke. Lighting fire to a cigarette (the process of combustion) delivers a stronger hit of nicotine and toxins to the lungs, hence making it more dangerous.
Even though e-cigarettes don’t have a filter like cigarettes do, the vapor inhaled cannot be compared to smoke.
Lik’s goal was to create something that could replace tobacco cigarettes and be safer. Just like Gilbert thought many years before. But when the e-cigarettes reached U.S. markets in 2006, the story and its once beneficial purpose changed substantially.
Kerrie Luck is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick St. John, an occupational therapist and a certified tobacco educator.
She said big tobacco companies have bought most of the smaller e-cigarette private companies and market them as “fun and yummy and cool with the fruity flavours” to attract teenagers or young adults and expand their markets.
“Once their bodies start to want that nicotine, they potentially are going to try some other substances that have tobacco. Because up to this point you can’t get a hit of nicotine as effectively from a vaporizer as you can from a cigarette.”
Nicotine is more addictive than heroin or cocaine according to Luck, so those who try the e-cigarettes have a high chance to eventually become smokers. And the big tobacco companies? They just get richer.
Isabel Serrano, a student at St. Thomas University and one of the friends for whom I brought the packs of cigarettes, started smoking when she was 16 years old.
“I’ve tried the e-cigarette but I prefer the normal one because of the tobacco flavor. I know people might use the e-cigarette to try to quit smoking but I think you smoke more when you have the e-cigarette because you don’t have to go out to buy a pack that runs out quickly every time,” she said.
Luck said there’s a lot of misinformation when it comes to vaporizers. Some sellers say their liquids don’t have nicotine at all, or have low levels of it. But there is no way for people who buy e-cigarettes to know for sure the list of chemicals and toxins they are putting into their bodies.
“The scarier part is right now in Canada, e-cigarettes are not regulated. So, the ones you purchased from wherever that were made in China, there’s no regulation to say what qualities that particular product provides.”
She said there have been numerous cases of e-cigarettes exploding in people’s faces while using them. This happens because the mechanical mod, which holds the vapes’ rechargeable battery, sends unregulated current to the atomizer.
“The electrolyte inside the battery is basically the equivalent of gasoline,” explained Venkat Viswanathan, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University to NBC. “So when these batteries short out, there’s a surge of heat that causes this flammable electrolyte to combust and explode.”
The risk of explosion increases when the e-cigarettes are overcharged or charged too quickly.
Luck’s theory as a certified tobacco educator is, overall, vaping is less dangerous than smoking because it doesn’t involve the process of combustion. However, this does not mean vaping is safe.
“If you jump out of a 100-story building from the 100th floor, compare that to smoking, versus jumping out of the 25th floor [compare that to vaping.] The outcomes are the same eventually.”
Luck said it was only 50 years ago that studies proved smoking causes cancer. So who knows what studies will show vapes to cause in a few more years?
Meanwhile, the trend is calling in for more and more people each day.
Evan Hovey works at Kingpin Juice, a vape shop located in Fredericton’s downtown, and has worked at a number of Fredericton and Oromocto shops.
“A lot of people like to go into the vape shops and hang out. People will come in and buy a bottle of juice and talk to other customers and hang out. The first thing I do when I go to another city is check what vapes shop are there.”
What began as a trend a few years ago has now become a subculture known as the “vape community.”
Luck said “It’s like you are playing Russian roulette with your lungs and your health.”
