Authored By chloe.morrison

Depending on whom you ask, e-cigarettes are either a relatively healthy alternative to traditional tobacco products or-as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said-potentially as harmful as other options.

They are either a good way to kick a bad habit-especially considering that most everyone acknowledges that traditional tobacco cigarettes are harmful-or they are a hindrance to smoking cessation.

Definition Vaping is a term for the use of e-cigarettes. It identifies the vapor that emits from the e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are devices that contain liquid that is heated at a low degree and turns into vapor.

The e-cigarette liquids come with or without nicotine and contain three other ingredients: propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin and food flavoring, vaping advocates said.

But others argue that there isn’t enough information to really know what is in the liquids because they aren’t being regulated.

Opponent perspective

Kevin Lusk, chair of Tobacco Free Chattanooga, said that from a health standpoint, the main concern is the unknown.

There was a time when people smoked traditional tobacco as if it wasn’t harmful, he said.

“Similar to the way cigarettes were 35 years ago, e-cigarettes are at the same stage as cigarettes were then,” he said. “There was so much unknown. The FDA is still trying to analyze what their stance is on [e-cigarettes]. There are a lot of questions out there.”

According to Healio.com, a hematology and oncology news site, from the 1930s to ’50s, cigarettes were tested and approved by physicians.

Although a couple of local advocates said there are only four ingredients in the liquid, Lusk said that because there aren’t standard regulations yet, it isn’t required that manufacturers or sellers list all of the ingredients.

Last month, FDA leaders did announce the ban of e-cigs to minors and said they would require warning labels and federal approval of the products, according to USA Today.

“This is an important moment for consumer protection,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, noting that tobacco remains the leading cause of death and disease in this country. “The rules will require manufacturers to report their ingredients to the FDA and obtain its approval. They also ban free tobacco samples and most vending machine sales.”

In February, the Tennessee Department of Health issued a public health advisory on electronic cigarettes and listed nine bullets of information that users should consider, including the lack of information available about e-cigs, the addictive quality of nicotine and the lack of regulations; and they advised that pregnant women shouldn’t smoke them or have them near children.

“We are not 100 percent sure what goes into it,” Lusk said. “Each liquid is made differently. Until we know how they are made, how they have to be labeled, no one really knows the [effects].”

Advocate perspective

Local restaurateur Dimitris Agrafiotis has become an e-cig advocate and started a nonprofit called the Tennessee Smoke Free Association.

He also hosts weekly Internet-based radio podcasts called Smoke Free Radio and said he’s spent years researching the products.

He said he wants to educate people about the products, which he said helped him stop smoking after 23 years.

Agrafiotis became passionate about vaping after it helped him kick a 23-year smoking habit, he said.

He is originally from Greece, where smoking is common, he said.

On Christmas night, his father died of a heart attack at age 39 after smoking for years. Even though he knew he had to stop smoking-if only for his two young daughters-he kept smoking for years after his father’s death. He tried everything from patches to medication, he said.

His wife was also a smoker of 25 years when the couple ordered an e-cigarette kit online. That was about four years ago.

“This product mimicked the habit of smoking, the physical effect that people are addicted to,” he said.

Though the nicotine in cigarettes is certainly addictive, Agrafiotis said he was also hooked on the process of smoking-the “hand-to-mouth action.”

Even though he still had a few packages of traditional cigarettes when he got the e-cigarettes, he didn’t use them. He threw them out and never smoked again, he said.

His experience has prompted him to become a vaping advocate.

He also said he understands the arguments about e-cigs attracting teens to smoking, but he said that many teens are smoking the more harmful traditional cigarettes anyway. And if they need help quitting, maybe vaping is a less harmful alternative.

“It’s less harmful [than cigarettes],” he said. “We don’t have any long-term studies, but we do know if we continue to smoke, we are going to die.”

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on e-cigarette use.