Learn the dangerous truth about E-cigs

VIDEO: WOW!   Watch how E-cigs are 10 times more likely to get Cancer

E-cigarettes are growing in popularity with smokers who are trying to get away from real cigarettes, and their ensuing health risks. But the truth about their safety, and effectiveness in helping people quit smoking, is less clear than manufacturers would have you believe.

E-cigarettes not a patch

One would think that vaping has to be safer than smoking real cigarettes. Experts say they are probably safer, but safer doesn’t mean safe.

“Cigarettes have their risk profile,” said Dr. Frank Leone, a pulmonary expert at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia. And just about everyone who breathes understands the risks: circulatory disease and myriad cancers, for starters. “E-cigarettes might be better off compared to that profile. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own risk profile.”

A top concern is the nicotine delivery rate, Leone said. With nicotine patches and gum, the nicotine delivery is regulated, with small amounts of nicotine released slowly into the bloodstream. But with traditional cigarettes and now e-cigarettes, heat creates a freebase form of nicotine that is more addictive — or what smokers would call more satisfying. The nicotine goes right into the lungs, where it is quickly channeled into the heart and then pumped into the brain.

E-cigarettes have been around for about 10 years. First developed and marketed in China (not known as a bastion of consumer safety), they were designed to offer a convenient way to enjoy smoking. The e-cigarette is designed to vaporize a liquid (that contains nicotine, flavorants and other substances) and allow it to be inhaled. The liquid can have varying amounts of nicotine. It can also have other substances (flavorants) added (mint, fruit flavors and others.) These flavorants are seen by some as a marketing ploy to get children to start smoking. The liquid may contain other chemicals or impurities, as well.

1940 revisited

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices, often shaped like traditional cigarettes, with a heating element that vaporizes a liquid nicotine solution, which must be replaced every few hundred puffs. Nicotine is inhaled into the lungs, and a largely odorless water vapor comes out of the device. Puffing an e-cigarette is called vaping. [Vaping: How E-cigs Work (Infographic)]

Yet the industry’s duplicity is clear to medical experts: E-cigarettes are marketed to smokers as a means to wean them off of tobacco (although studies show they don’t help much); yet the same devices, some with fruity flavors, are marketed to young people who don’t smoke, which could get them hooked.

Hooked? Yes, e-cigarettes are a nicotine-delivery system, highly addictive and ultimately harmful because of their nicotine.