It’s safe to say everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health. We’ve all watched the emotionally charged commercials and seen the gruesome images attached to every cigarette package.
Despite these measures, smoking persists in our society and lobbyists on both sides of the argument still spend millions of dollars a year attempting to change legislation regarding tobacco and related products.
So what’s the end game?
Tobacco will never be completely outlawed. Furthermore, past attempts at prohibition tell us this strategy would be completely ineffective.
So, if smoking is dangerous, and we’ve determined it’s an unavoidable part of life, isn’t the only logical solution to attempt to minimize the health risks? When humans started dying from automobile crashes, we didn’t make the car illegal. We regulated car production, installed life-saving features and offered safer alternatives to protect the lives of people who decide driving is an acceptable risk. Isn’t it time we started doing the same for cigarettes?
E-cigarettes might very well be the future of smoking. They share few similarities with their analog namesake; in fact, an e-cigarette is actually a powerful vapourizer, with no actual combustion involved, so many of the harsher elements of cigarette smoke are already absent from the vapour that e-cigarette users exhale.
Furthermore, the “e-liquid” consumed by e-cigarettes is offered in many varieties, including ones without addictive nicotine, meaning people are able to try smoking without the spectre of addiction hanging over them.
Additionally, the e-cigarette potential as an anti-smoking aid is uncharted. Not only have people been using other forms of nicotine-consumption to wean themselves off cigarettes for years, the nicotine-free options provided by e-cigarettes make this process easier than ever.
E-cigarettes are already facing opposition from anti-tobacco lobbyists, despite being a legitimate alternative to smoking with significantly reduced risk of throat cancer. New laws in Ontario already prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, which is admirable, but they also prohibit stores from selling e-cigarettes, and prevent people from smoking them in public.
Wouldn’t the better, long-term solution be to eliminate the health risk and the addictive nature of smoking? Kids will always experiment, but perhaps if the government regulated the companies, as opposed to the people, smoking could one day be safe enough that this experimentation could be worry-free. Or at least, the risk could be minimized.
Admittedly, as with any new technology, more research needs to be done to document the exact effects of e-cigarette smoking. It’s certainly not without risk, but with the knowledge gained through the widespread adoption of e-cigarette technology, it could be possible to make even safer versions of cigarettes.
Every death caused by smoking is a tragedy, but maybe we’re worrying too much about the gunshot wound, when e-cigarettes could simply take the bullets out of the gun.
Perhaps in an ideal world, tobacco would be completely undesirable. In reality, however, people have been smoking for thousands of years, so it seems unlikely they’re going to stop now.
I’m not a smoker, and I probably never will be, but I’m a university student. I walk past a dozen smokers a day, and interact with more than that regularly. I might be removed from the issue, but my objectivity is unquestionable.
If we can’t stop smoking for good, the least we can do is try to make it safer for everybody.
Corey Whelen is a student at the University of Victoria, majoring in English.
