When I was young, my mother, frustrated with my fidgeting, always told me: “You need something new every now and then to play with!” Nowadays, as I grow up in this tech savvy world, the innocent statement made by mother seems truer than ever.

From inventing gadgets to making tequila drumsticks, humans have done it all. This time, our new obsession seems to be e-cigarettes. So what exactly is an e-cigarette? It’s basically a cigarette-shaped tube through which people can inhale evaporated liquid nicotine as smoke to simulate smoking a regular tobacco cigarette. The draw is that there’s less nicotine and other chemicals than your average cigarette, and some e-cigarettes, or personal vaporizers (PVs), don’t use any at all, relying instead on flavoured vapor.

When I first heard about this invention, I was thrilled — after all, I have more than a few friends whom I’ve been pushing to quit smoking. However, as I later realized, there’s more to this story than meets the eye. In 2013, the World Health Organization released a statement saying that e-cigarettes should not be used as an alternative to quit smoking until they have been proved to be safe and beneficial in the process.

The Canadian Cancer Society reaffirms this opinion, as their research done on 13 e-cigarette products dictates that nine of these had “abnormalities” which could be potentially harmful to users. On top of that, of all the e-cigarette brands surveyed which claimed to be “nicotine-free,” two thirds were proven to contain traces of nicotine and other harmful chemicals.

There’s also the question of the toxicity of e-cigarettes. Though not much has been proven in regards to the danger of smoking these tubes, liquid nitrogen can be very dangerous when ingested or absorbed through the skin. The number of calls to poison control centres with complaints of e-cigarette poisoning — usually of young children — has risen steadily every month between September 2010 and February 2014.

To be fair, many people claim to have quit smoking as a result of this alternative, which is much cheaper than regular cigarettes and doesn’t contain tobacco, tar, carbon monoxide, or any of the other dangerous chemicals that we’re used to hearing about in PSAs. For example, an article in the Ottawa Sun talks about a 25 year pack-a-day smoker who switched from smoking to “vaping” with e-cigarettes and, seeing his wallet fuller and his health improved, “never looked back.”
The real question, then, is this: do the pros outweigh the cons?

The normalization of e-cigarettes could easily become a stepping stone to the real thing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of US high school students who’ve tried vaping doubled from 2011 to 2012. Angela Webb, a senior public policy advisor for the Canadian Cancer Society in Alberta, spoke to The Calgary Herald about the dangers of vapour, saying, “Even if they are approved as a cessation device, e-cigarettes still normalize smoking. The big concern is they undermine smoking bans.” One might consider that the normalization of e-cigarettes could easily become a stepping stone to the real thing.

Given that there’s little to no regulation on the production and taxation of e-cigarettes, we still don’t really know what the dangers are, which is pretty scary. The e-cigarette industry, still in its infancy, also benefits from a lack of rules and regulations regarding the use of e-cigarettes in public places. Canada’s ban on smoking in public places applies only to cigarettes containing tobacco, and so far, electronic cigarettes do not fall under that category.

Lack of research regarding this matter leaves us with no choice but to rely on public opinion, which is split: one side argues that smoking an electronic cigarette in a restaurant, for example, is perfectly harmless as it does not contain tobacco, whereas the other side argues that e-cigarette users inhale vapours which sometimes contains nicotine — not exactly a part of a healthy atmosphere.

The world is a scary place. An electronic cigarette — which, according to manufacturers, is completely harmless — could easily be hijacked by the tobacco industry, putting the young adults of tomorrow in a difficult situation. If there are no laws in place regulating the use of electronic cigarettes, it’s hard to imagine what will happen if these products start being circulated with tobacco.

Of course, I may be biased. A part of me becomes immensely sad every single time one of my best friends pulls out a cigarette, and to their credit, I think electronic cigarettes are a significant invention when it comes to those who are desperately trying to quit smoking. However, the lack of adequate research conducted, plus the fact that this product is readily available in the market to all age groups, is more than a little unnerving.

When I was a child, I once tried to copy an actor I saw in a Bollywood movie — I mimicked his actions by pretending to blow smoke in the air with a pencil. I got a glare from my mother, which made sure that I never even touched a pencil with that intention again, let alone a cigarette.

This is the point I’m trying to make. If we’re saying that vaping is okay, is it unreasonable to suggest that young people might decide to try an actual cigarette? For a country that has cancer as its leading cause of death, we ought to be a lot more careful about what we’re introducing our children to, and what regulations are being placed on such products.