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What's next for e-cigarettes?

The Oxford Dictionary considered the word 'vape' (meaning 'to puff in vapor and let it out of your mouth') 'as the most popular word of 2014. In 2013, 'selfie' won.

'Vaping' is the act of inhaling and exhaling vapor from an electronic cigarette. The choice of the word of the year was preceded by a discussion on the prevalence of e-cigarettes: in the United States alone, the number of 'smoking' teens has tripled in just two years.

Until recently, the sight of a smoker blowing smoke out of something like a large pen was sensational. Today, vaping has been normalized. And even though vaping has been picked up by more and more people over the past seven years, there are still more questions than answers about electronic nicotine delivery systems.

In Australia, Hong Kong, Brazil, and Finland, you can have an e-cigarette for personal use, but you can only buy it abroad. There is a ban on advertising in the Netherlands, and some US states don't allow vaping in public places. Find more information about e-cigs on MigVapor.

Only now has the European Union noticed the phenomenon by passing a directive regulating basic issues such as the maximum strength of liquids (e-cigarettes containing nicotine) or not including e-cigarettes in the group of drugs. Despite the efforts of one of the British MPs, lobbying on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to recognize it as a drug - with all the legal burden. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Food and Drug Administration are also just getting ready to take a position. The institution is cautious, but it is also about big money because there is excise tax on tobacco products, and e-liquids could be classified as such. Private tobacco and pharmaceutical companies are losing billions to e-cigarettes.

Heaven and earth

Małgorzata, the secretary of a professor of medicine, switched to e-cigarette two years ago, along with her boss. The professor, a heavy smoker with several decades of experience, studied the works of American colleagues for a week and decided that it was worth it. For 25 years, he had tried to quit the habit many times, using all available methods including pharmacotherapy, but to no avail. Now it is true that they look like classic cigarettes, but the professors reassured them that they poison much less. And - as Małgorzata emphasizes - they do not stink. So he doesn't even read new reports that a harmful substance has just been found in the liquids. Because - as the professor says - there’s nothing worse than a thoroughly tested, honestly excised, carcinogenic cloud from a real cigarette.

Although governments and politicians are reluctant to spend money on research, something has already been established.

In traditional cigarette smoke, there are over 5.6 thousand various chemical compounds, both toxic and carcinogenic. And it's not just about those that arise during the combustion process, such as carcinogenic tar, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or carbon monoxide, which turns hemoglobin into carboxyhemoglobin, hindering respiration and the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Cigarettes themselves are full of chemicals because many poisonous compounds are added to tobacco in the production process. Also those that make us addicted to nicotine faster, such as ammonia derivatives, which increase the amount of dopamine secreted in the smoker's brain (this is how nicotine works, this is the reward system), and thus enhance addiction.

The aerosol, which is made from the liquid used in e-cigarettes, has only a few ingredients: nicotine (a highly addictive neurotoxin, but not carcinogenic, and above all also present in cigarettes), water, propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, or a mixture of these compounds, as well as from a few to a dozen or so fragrances and flavors, approved for use in cosmetics and food. “It's like heaven and earth,” says prof. Andrzej Sobczak, who has been testing e-cigarettes safe for five years at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health in Sosnowiec and at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Medical University of Silesia.

The only problem is that the liquid ingredients are heated in an electronic cigarette to a temperature of over 300 degrees Farenheit. “We have evidence that when glycerin is heated, traces of formaldehyde, acrolein and acetaldehyde appear, and therefore carcinogenic, toxic compounds,” says prof. Sobczak. “However, their concentrations, at least in some liquids, are minimal, ten times lower than the threshold concentration of formaldehyde in the air, at which over 50% people experience irritation of the mucous membranes. Not to mention the fact that there is several times more of it in exhaust gas.”

It is known that the harmfulness of liquids containing glycerin is greater in cheap and unproven e-cigarette models that heat liquid to very high temperatures, releasing acrolein. Many liquids do not contain glycerin, the carrier is only propylene glycol. But it cannot be said that they are 100 percent safe, although glycol is used in food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetic products, and even in inhalers prescribed to patients after lung surgery. “However, we only use the drug for a few weeks,” says prof. Sobczak. “We just don't know how the lungs will react to doses of glycol that have been served for many years. We will have scientific knowledge on this subject in about 10 years.”

To sum up: e-cigarettes cannot be said to be safe. However, it is highly probable that they are much less harmful than traditional ones.