E-cigarettes have taken the world by storm in the recent years helping many people to quell their cigarette habit. Laws took a while to catch up with the times and now there are some cities that are banning vaping in certain public places. There have been studies on the actual risk of vaping around others that we will dive into in this piece. Both sides of the story will be presented here as well as data on studies that have gone into 2nd hand vaping.
London Bans Vaping On Public Transport
London and New York City are two of the largest metropolises to crack down on the vaping in public places. London banned E-cigarettes on most forms of public transportation. This includes trains, buses, and subways where you can no longer smoke or a fine is imposed on the offender. The ban states that this is happening to protect the safety of the other passengers onboard. Transport for London or TfL says that they have not had any issues regarding the ban although many who smoke E-cigarettes know that concealing the “smoke” from their device with small inhales would not be the most difficult thing to do. People who break the rule are given a warning by workers on the public transport and then fined. There has not been any fines imposed on anyone as of yet. This begs the question, are the workers of the TfL enforcing these laws or have people just conformed to these rules although many E-cigarette advocated think the ban crosses the line. Many of the opponent to the ban do not believe that the ban has been decided on based on any real facts.
New York City Bans Public Vaping
The New York City council at the end of 2013 voted to ban the use of E-cigarettes in all the places that smoking tobacco is restricted. This is everywhere except private residences and some outdoor venues, parks are not included in this ban though. The ban began in the beginning of May and just recently business owners had their deadline come up where they had to post “No Vaping” signs. One would think that a city as large as New York would have a myriad of reasons of what they banned the use of these devices. This is not because 2nd hand vaping causes health problems or even because it comes with a harsh smell. It is because the E-cigarettes look too much like regular tobacco cigarettes. They wanted to make it easier for bar owners and workers to enforce the no smoking rules by outlawing the smoking of anything. They wanted to cut down on confusion and confrontation, it seems like the New York City council does not trust the citizens of the city to act like adults when somebody confuses an E-cigarette for a real cigarette. Some members of the council think that the E-cigarettes looking like real cigarettes will confuse children and undermine the antismoking campaigns. They also base their argument that smoking is bad for the health but took no real steps to look at the facts
The Studies
A new study that looks at passive vaping has been published within the last couple of months and the results are just as many supporters of vaping thought. There was nicotine that was absorbed by the people who were exposed to the 2nd hand vaping but it was minimal to say the least. The levels of the people who were exposed to the 2nd hand vaping had cotinine levels or nicotine levels that were around 1200 lower than active smokers. Although the nicotine is absorbed by people around you, it is such a minimal amount that it will not cause harm to those around you. The levels of nicotine in the passive vaping group were so low that they had no biological impact in any shape or form. If you ask whether the regulations favored the study, this still had no biological impact even if the study was run by the anti-vaping association also known as the New York City council. There are numerous studies covering all aspects of e cig use and it’s health effects. The ‘Info Center’ on e cig news website Ecigclick covers and comments on the main studies carried out over the last couple of years. There aren’t many products that show research on themselves if they are detrimental to your health and post them on their product pages.
Looking At The Facts
The stigma against smoking tobacco has been well documented within the last 20 years alone. This stigma of the damage of second hand smoke is now impacting people who are not hurting anybody. If the major cities had done any research to see whether vaping would impact the people around the smokers, they would have seen that nothing of the sort happens. London said that this was for the good and safety of people on public transit which was obviously false according to the studies that have been done. New York City gave the “think of the children” excuse as well as the people would be confused whether somebody is smoking a real or e-cigarette. As you can see, the stigma against smoking e-cigarettes has been completely derived from the war against tobacco. Tobacco had thousands of studies on it before it was banned in public places. Many of these studies were thrown aside because big tobacco had the ears of many powerful people. The fact that big tobacco had manipulated in the past led to such a quick decision here because everybody wanted to jump on this issue even though it is obviously a nonissue.
The fact that E-cigarettes have been banned could mean nothing to some people whether they are smokers or nonsmokers. The fact that cities took it upon themselves to ban vaping without any real research should be the things that concerns citizens from both places. E-cigarettes have been proven to be the safer alternative to smoking cigarettes time and time again. Many people even use E-Cigarettes with zero nicotine because they enjoy the taste which leads trace 2nd hand nicotine consumption that a mouse would struggle to feel. Don’t let city councils play big brother on the issues that they have no idea about and would rather make a decision than a real informed decision.
