Get ready to take that habit outside, e-cigarette smokers.The Chicago City Council on Wednesday moved to ban the smoking of e-cigarettes in most indoor public spaces -- including restaurants and bars -- in addition to anywhere within 15 feet of a building entrance, just as traditional cigarettes are regulated under the city's existing indoor smoking ban.Only four aldermen voted in opposition to the e-cigarette ban, while 45 voted in favor of the proposal backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.City Council passes e-cig ordinance 45-4 regulating like other cigs to best protect our youth and air!#eCigTruths #healthychicago — ChiPublicHealth (@ChiPublicHealth) January 15, 2014 Voting against the ban were Alds.Roderick Sawyer (6th), Rey Colon (35th), Nicholas Sposato (36th) and Brendan Rellly (42nd).Reilly was particularly vocal in his opposition to the proposal ahead of the vote.On Monday, the City Council's Health and Finance Committees voted overwhelmingly -- 15-5 -- in support of the proposal, which also requires e-cigarettes be sold only behind the counter at stores.

While critics of the ban say e-cigarettes are harmless to bystanders and argue the change will make it more difficult for smokers who use e-cigarettes to help them quit smoking traditional cigarettes, others in support of the ban say it will dissuade more people from picking up smoking in the first place.New York City previously added e-cigarettes to their public smoking ban last month, while Los Angeles has also moved to regulate the battery-powered cigarettes and similar "vaping" devices just as they do traditional cigarettes.Just north of the city, Evanston passed a similar ordinance last year, NBC Chicago notes.A new Illinois law that went into effect on Jan.1 already bans the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.E-cigarette bans, meanwhile, have also been a topic of consideration for college campuses nationwide as of late and a group of U.S.senators has blasted the "glamorization" of smoking e-cigarettes during Sunday's Golden Globes broadcast.At a Senate hearing last month, Jay Rockefeller noted that electronic cigarette fluid is available in a wide variety of flavors—conclusive evidence, to his mind, that e-cigarette companies want to hook children on nicotine.

"I am an adult," the West Virginia Democrat said.e cigarette jac"Would I be attracted to Cherry Crush, Chocolate Treat, Peachy Keen, Vanilla Dreams?e zigarette koblenzCall it the Rockefeller Rule: If an e-cigarette flavor does not appeal to this particular 77-year-old senator, it could not possibly appeal to anyone older than 17.e cigarette lisburn road belfastRebutting that claim, Jason Healy, founder and president of Blu eCigs, cited a customer survey that found "the average age of a cherry smoker is in the high 40s."e cigarette order canada

Survey results released last Thursday by E-Cigarette Forum, an online gathering spot for vaping enthusiasts, reinforce Healy's point, showing that grownups prefer the flavors that Rockefeller insists are strictly for kids.e-cigarette nebulizerThe survey, conducted in late June and early July, included more than 10,000 members of E-Cigarette Forum, 78 percent of whom live in the United States.e cigarette mauvais goutTheir ages ranged from 18 to "65 and over," with 74 percent between 22 and 54.When they were asked which flavor they used most, 22 percent said tobacco, while an additional 3 percent said menthol tobacco.In other words, three-quarters of these adult vapers favor flavors other than tobacco, including fruit (31 percent), bakery/dessert (19 percent), and savory/spice (5 percent).

That make sense, because the proliferation of flavors—The New York Times reports that "more than 7,000 flavors are now available and, by one estimate, nearly 250 more are being introduced every month"—is especially evident among vapers who, like most of the participants in this survey, use devices with refillable tanks, rather than e-cigarettes that are either entirely disposable or take disposable cartridges.Refillable vaporizers, available mainly online or in specialized outlets, are less likely to interest teenagers than the cheaper "cigalikes" sold in supermarkets and convenience stores.The new survey also provides further evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit, a proposition that Rockefeller and other critics question.Eighty-nine percent of the respondents reported that they had smoked at least 10 cigarettes a day before they started vaping, and 88 percent said they were not currently smokers.Those findings are similar to the results of another survey focusing on people who participate in online vaping forums, reported last April in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

That study, which included more than 19,000 vapers from around the world, found that almost all of them (99.5 percent) were smokers when they started vaping.Four-fifths of them had stopped smoking completely, while the rest had reduced their cigarette consumption, on average, from 20 to four per day.It should be emphasized that neither of these studies was designed to capture a representative sample of all vapers.Instead they focus on the most enthusiastic among them, whom you would expect to have had especially satisfying experiences with e-cigarettes.The high success rates in these surveys therefore are unlikely to be seen among the broader group of smokers who try to quit with e-cigarettes, let alone among smokers who merely try the product out.But these surveys do indicate that e-cigarettes have helped many smokers quit.It borders on bizarre that critics like Rockefeller continue to question the existence of those former smokers, even while arguing that e-cigarettes should be restricted or banned based on the entirely hypothetical risk that vaping will lead to smoking among teenagers who otherwise never would have tried tobacco.

But what do you expect from a politician who thinks a sample of one—himself—is perfectly adequate to reach sweeping conclusions about a product's intended use?Notably, two-thirds of the ex-smokers in the E-Cigarette Forum survey said nontobacco flavors were important in helping them quit.Survey data reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health last December likewise indicate that flavor variety is important in quitting.That study, which involved about 4,500 vapers, found that they tended to prefer tobacco-flavored fluid initially but later switched to other flavors.Most reported using more than one flavor on a daily basis and said the variety made the experience more interesting and enjoyable.Nontobacco flavors  may assist in quitting because learning to associate your nicotine fix with a new taste creates an additional barrier to backsliding: Returning to conventional cigarettes would mean getting used to the flavor of tobacco smoke again.