Do e cigarettes work? Are they safe?

First, my own experience as a doctor I have found e cigarettes to be one of the most effective methods of cutting down or quitting smoking for recalcitrant smokers.

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This is because e cigarettes are not only a nicotine replacement therapy, they are a total smoking cessation therapy, as vaping simulates the act of smoking, and you physically draw vapor into your mouth.

I have found e cigarettes to be one of the most effective methods of cutting down or quitting smoking for recalcitrant smokers.

Several years ago I learned a technique for hypnotizing smokers to quit, and the biggest obstacle to overcome other than the nicotine was the image that people had of themselves with a cigarette in their mouths. E cigarettes allow a cigarette addict to perpetuate the image and the nicotine, but to lose the tar and other cigarette toxins that cause cancer and emphysema.

Though there are no long term studies to show I m right about e cigarettes for smoking cessation, there is one recent study in the British journal Lancet that did demonstrate that e cigarettes were at least as successful as a nicotine patch.

But if I see e cigarettes as a potential tool to quit for adults, at the same time, I am very concerned about the growing role e cigarettes are playing for teens, many of whom are non smokers the first time they try an e cigarette.

According to the Centers for Disease Control e cigarette use among high schoolers is now up to 10 percent, double from a year ago, with 80 percent also smoking tobacco.

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the CDC and a top expert in preventive health, told me that e cigarettes can be a gateway drug, with nicotine addiction leading to more tobacco use.

I believe that, and though 12 states including New York ban e cigarette use for minors, few are listening, and kids can still buy their e cigarettes on line.

On top of this problem, liquid nicotine is now being sold in different flavors on line, at much higher concentrations than is found in an e cigarette, which generally includes nicotine levels in the 1.8% to 2.4% range.

The low concentration is less risky, but Vaporworld, for example, sells a gallon of liquid nicotine at 10 percent concentration for only $195, and Liquid Nicotine Wholesalers charges $110 for a liter at the same concentration. With this high concentration, experts say that just a tablespoon could be enough to cause serious harm.

Nicotine is a potent neurotoxin which can be ingested or absorbed through the skin, leading to seizures, vomiting, and rapid heart rate. The number of poisoning cases linked to e liquids was 1,351 in 2013, up 300 percent from the year before.

So clearly, there is a rising concern over the safety of nicotine liquids as well as nicotine addiction.

I believe that in the right hands, e cigarettes can be an effective tool for quitting smoking, perhaps the best we currently have available.

Unfortunately, they are frequently not getting into the right hands, and I also know many smokers who carry both cigarettes and e cigarettes around, and don t actually cut down on tobacco.

The FDA is planning on increasing regulations on e cigarettes, and I think this is a good idea, though not likely to solve the problem.

I wish there was a way of regulating e cigarettes so that a doctor has a definite role, and can guide her patients to e cigarettes to be used as a treatment rather than as another party chemical.

Unfortunately, the chances of e cigarettes becoming prescription only is about as likely as the chance of cherry flavor being replaced by the taste of cigarette ash in bubblegum.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a practicing internist, joined FOX News Channel (FNC) as a contributor in 2008.

Young using e-cigarettes smoke too, study finds – nytimes.com

Is it possible to buy cigarettes online if your living in new zealand?

Middle and high school students who used electronic cigarettes were more likely to smoke real cigarettes and less likely to quit than students who did not use the devices, a new study has found. They were also more likely to smoke heavily. But experts are divided about what the findings mean.

The study s lead author, Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has been critical of the devices, said the results suggested that the use of e cigarettes was leading to less quitting, not more.

The use of e cigarettes does not discourage, and may encourage, conventional cigarette use among U.S. adolescents, the study concluded. It was published online in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Thursday.

But other experts said the data did not support that interpretation. They said that just because e cigarettes are being used by youths who smoke more and have a harder time quitting does not mean that the devices themselves are the cause of those problems. It is just as possible, they said, that young people who use the devices were heavier smokers to begin with, or would have become heavy smokers anyway.

The data in this study do not allow many of the broad conclusions that it draws, said Thomas J. Glynn, a researcher at the American Cancer Society.

The study is likely to stir the debate further over what electronic cigarettes mean for the nation s 45 million smokers, about three million of whom are middle and high school students. Some experts worry that e cigarettes are a gateway to smoking real cigarettes for young people, though most say the data is too skimpy to settle the issue. Others hope the devices could be a path to quitting.

So far, the overwhelming majority of young people who use e cigarettes also smoke real cigarettes, a large federal survey published last year found.

Still, while e cigarette use among youths doubled from 2011 to 2012, regular cigarette smoking for youths has continued to decline. The rate hit a record low in 2013 of 9.6 percent, down by two thirds from its peak in 1997.

The new study drew on broad federal survey data from more than 17,000 middle school and high school students in 2011 and more than 22,000 in 2012. But instead of following the same students over time which many experts say is crucial to determine whether there has been a progression from e cigarettes to actual smoking the study examined two different groups of students, essentially creating two snapshots.

Dr. Glantz says that his findings show that use of e cigarettes can predict who will go on to become an established smoker. Students who said they had experimented with cigarettes that is, taken at least one puff were much more likely to become established smokers if they also used e cigarettes, he said.

One of the arguments that people make for e cigarettes is that they are a way to cut down on the smoking of cigarettes, but the actual use pattern is just the opposite, he said.

But David Abrams, executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Legacy Foundation, an antismoking research group, said the study s data do not support that conclusion.

I am quite certain that a survey would find that people who have used nicotine gum are much more likely to be smokers and to have trouble quitting, but that does not mean that gum is a gateway to smoking or makes it harder to quit, he said.

He argued that there were many possible reasons that students who experimented with e cigarettes were also heavier smokers for example, living in a home where people smoke, belonging to a social circle where smoking is more common, or abusing drugs or alcohol.

The study did have a bright spot Youths who used e cigarettes were more likely to plan to quit smoking. Dr. Abrams highlighted that finding, but said it was impossible to tell whether students who planned to quit actually did, because the data did not track this.