DEBATE over e-cigarettes — battery-powered cigarette look-alikes that heat liquid nicotine but emit a harmless vapor — is raging.New York City and Chicago are considering adding e-cigarettes to their bans on smoking in bars, restaurants and parks, and Los Angeles is moving to restrict e-cigarette sales, even though e-cigarettes don’t generate smoke and, while not proved to be entirely safe for users, are undoubtedly less hazardous than tobacco cigarettes.The evidence, while still thin, suggests that many e-cigarette users, hoping to kick the habit, use e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to tobacco.Research also suggests that e-cigarettes may be better at helping to sustain smoking cessation than pharmaceutical products like nicotine patches or gums.No one believes nicotine addiction is a good thing, and our qualified support for e-cigarettes is not one we reach lightly.Although some e-cigarette manufacturers have no links to the tobacco industry, Big Tobacco is consuming an ever-greater share of the e-cigarette market.

It is hard for public health advocates like us to look favorably on anything the industry wants.But history shows that harm reduction — the doctrine that many risks cannot be eradicated and that efforts are best spent on minimizing the resulting harm — has had an important place in antismoking efforts and suggests that regulation is better than prohibition.It’s been only a half-century since the federal government took an interest in making tobacco products safer.In 1964, Surgeon General Luther L. Terry issued a watershed report definitively linking smoking with lung cancer.But he also described research into new kinds of cigarettes as “a promising avenue for further development.” In the early 1970s, the government spent some $6 million a year to try to develop safer tobacco products.Even the health secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr., who called smoking “Public Enemy No.1,” saw, in 1978, a place for “research aimed at creating a less hazardous cigarette.” As late as 1981, the surgeon general advised smokers who couldn’t or wouldn’t quit to switch to low-tar and low-nicotine brands.

The American Cancer Society, while worried that the development of less hazardous cigarettes might derail efforts to deter people from smoking or getting them to quit, supported “frank scientific discussion about the possibilities of developing cigarettes that will be less harmful and still satisfying to smokers.” This effort came to a halt in the 1980s, when stunning revelations from high-profile court cases demonstrated that the tobacco industry had lied about the dangers of smoking for decades and even manipulated the levels of nicotine in its products to ensure that smokers stayed hooked.The magnitude of the deception made it nearly impossible to consider the possibility of a “safer” tobacco product.It inspired, among advocates, opposition to anything less than total cessation.This new stance was supported by the availability of over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapies and a focus on protection of bystanders from secondhand smoke.As the head of the American Heart Association put it in 2000: “There is no such thing as a safer cigarette.”The irony is that, during these same years, AIDS prompted public health advocates to support needle exchange for users of intravenous drugs, a harm-reduction approach that also drew fire from those who favored complete elimination of drug use.

Fears that such programs would lead to greater illicit drug use have been definitively put to rest.Of course the analogy is not exact: Unlike clean needles, which present no independent harms to injecting drug users, less risky alternatives to smoking, like smokeless chewing tobacco and the moist tobacco product known as snus, carry a grave risk: oral cancers.e cigarette pigalleE-cigarettes potentially overcome that barrier.pink e cigaretteMost experts consider nicotine harmful only at extremely high doses.e cigarette pour ou contreTobacco control advocates tolerate the long-term use of therapies like the nicotine patch and nicotine gum despite their approval only as temporary smoking-cessation aids.e cigarette tobacconist

In 2000, the chairman of a Public Health Service panel called tobacco dependence a “chronic condition that warrants repeated treatment,” even if that meant treating smokers “for the rest of their lives.”Advocates fear that e-cigarettes will serve as a gateway to deadly cigarettes — or sustain smokers in public settings where lighting up is banned.utilisation e cigarette“Waiting to act,” New York City’s health commissioner, Thomas A. Farley, said, “is a risk we should not take.” But there is a price to such rigidity.e cigarette websitesEmotion should not rule out harm reduction, even if eradication of smoking is the ultimate goal.Banning vaping in public won’t help.Instead, e-cigarettes should be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as products “sold or distributed for use to reduce harm or the risk of tobacco-related disease.” The industry can’t be trusted to provide safer products.

The historical mistake was not the pursuit of a safer cigarette, but championing that cause with dishonest partners.If e-cigarettes can reduce, even slightly, the blight of six million tobacco-related deaths a year, trying to force them out of sight is counterproductive.Following a 50-year concerted effort by U.S.regulators to help Americans drop their tobacco habit, the proof is in the pudding of their success based on a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released late last year.In its report the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that there are now just 42.1 million people aged 18 and up that are lighting up compared to 45.1 million in 2005.This marks an all-time record low in terms of the percentage of adults (17.8%) that smoke.Furthermore, the number of heavy smokers is on the decline.Just 7.1% now smoke 30 or more cigarettes per day compared to 12.7% in 2005.Smokers in the 20-29 cigarette per day category also saw a decline.Innovative products do their part This drop in tobacco users is great news, as smoking has been linked to an increased risk for heart disease and lung cancer.

Part of this drop can be attributed to improved education of the American public that's highlighted the dangers of smoking, especially with America's youth.The other component is improved access to smoking cessation agents.One of the most popular products that Americans are using to help kick the habit is electronic cigarettes.An electronic cigarette heats a flavored liquid containing nicotine into a vapor which is then inhaled by the user.The presumption is that simply inhaling the nicotine vapor and liquid is much healthier than inhaling tobacco smoke, which is known to contain a number of carcinogens.Per a CDC study in September, 8% of adults had at one time used an electronic cigarette.The rapid rise of electronic cigarettes allowed Lorillard (NYSE:LO) to garner about half of all U.S.e-cigarette market with its Blu brand, which is actually being divested due to Lorillard's purchase by Reynolds American (NYSE:RAI).Electronic cigarettes are viewed by tobacco companies as a solid hedge against a five-decade decline in adult smoking rates.

But, it turns out the benefits of electronic cigarettes may actually be outweighed by their risks.Electronic cigarettes: Not as great as first advertised?According to a study released just three weeks ago by National Jewish Health, a nonprofit hospital organization focused on improving patients' respiratory health, the liquid used in electronic cigarettes has been linked to a considerably higher risk of respiratory viral infections.What's more, it didn't matter whether or not nicotine was present in the liquid solution.The findings showed it was the liquid vapor itself that can damage epithelial cells in users' airways and lead to an increased risk of viral infections.The study utilized human epithelial cells at one end of a sterile container and an electronic cigarette at the other.Scientists noted that within minutes of being exposed to the electronic cigarette vapor, an immune response was witnessed in the epithelial cell samples as measured by an increase in IL-6 protein levels.Further, this increase in IL-6 protein levels lasted for up to 48 hours.

The implication is that vaping liquid damages the cells in our airways almost immediately by causing inflammation, and its effects aren't gone for up to two days later.Worries are mounting The truly scary thing for electronic cigarette users and manufacturers is that this latest study from National Jewish Health is just one of many growing concerns about electronic cigarette usage.For starters, there's pressure building regarding the way that electronic cigarette manufacturers and liquid vapor producers are marketing their product.With more than 400 flavor combinations, some of which seem geared toward a younger generation (e.g., bubble gum, mango, and caramel apple), consumers have to wonder whether these companies are truly trying to get users off cigarettes, or if they're trying to hook a new generation of young adults on nicotine.To be fair, an argument could be made for both sides here with many newer companies trying to completely disassociate themselves from cigarettes by utilizing crazy flavors.

However, it's clear that e-cig producers' marketing tactics are under fire.The bigger concern here might be the eventual involvement of the Food and Drug Administration.Everything will depend on whether or not the FDA decides to classify electronic cigarettes and their liquids as tobacco products or not.If they are eventually reclassified as tobacco products they'll be fully regulated, right down to each new vaping flavor that's introduced.Why might the FDA regulate the electronic cigarette industry?Actually, there are a few reasons.First, we don't really know a lot about the long-term health effects of e-cigs (and National Jewish Health's study isn't helping their cause).Secondly, and adding to the point above, there's concern that minors' access to electronic cigarettes could be too easy if they aren't regulated.Finally, it's a simple matter of quality control.No one really has any clue if new vaping liquid flavors are of the same quality as prior vaping liquid.Having the FDA step in would ensure that the quality of liquid remains consistent.

In addition, we'd also have a better idea of what's in the liquid.Here's what I'm doing Considering the growing evidence that's working against the long-term safety and proliferation of electronic cigarettes, my inclination for the time being, as an investor, is to stick to the sidelines.Even though e-cig usage appears to have ballooned from five years ago, it's really plateaued over the past year on the heels of new safety studies and questionable marketing tactics.I find it very plausible that the FDA is going to step in and regulate the electronic cigarette industry sooner than later, if not for the purpose of regulating the production of the vaping liquid, then for the sake of ensuring that minors don't have access to the product.We obviously still have a lot of data to pour through over the long-term, which could dramatically change the way we currently view electronic cigarettes.However, the way things stand now, the risks of investing in this sector appear to greatly outweigh its potential rewards.