North Texas Daily

Along with physical health, mental health and personal well-being has gone past being a fad into becoming a cultural notion that is here to stay. Speaking of new cultural notions, e-cigarettes have completely blown up in the face of natural cigarettes.

E-cigarette devices are sometimes called e-cigs, vapes or vape pens. One of the more prominent e-cig devices is Juul, an American electronic cigarette company that was established in 2015. E-cigarettes have been around for a few years now but have recently gained massive traction due to negative media controversy.

More than 80 percent of the reported cases of death from lung illnesses are from users who utilize THC vaporizer products, according to Truthintiative.org.

I am however definitely not supportive of underage consumption of nicotine nor non-health related usage of THC. I do however feel that e-cigarettes should be treated as tobacco products only to be utilized in designated areas for of-age individuals.

With all that being said, here are key reasons UNT should not ban e-cigarettes and why they have a real possibility of not perpetuating harmful environments for students of this university:

They are a healthier alternative to cigarettes:

This one is obvious, but there are many more harmful toxins in cigarettes compared to e-cigarettes. Cigarette tar is a leading cause of cancer and there is no tar in e-cigs. Although there are still potential health risks, the risks for of-age adults are not anywhere near the same as a traditional pack of cigarettes.

It can help make quitting cigarettes easier:

For people who consume nicotine, utilizing an e-cig provides a better alternative to smoking cigarettes. The harm of smoking is exponentially high with almost half a million deaths per year in the U.S. Deaths related to e-cigs are nowhere near these numbers, which is vital to possibly enable nicotine consumers to find these products as a better alternative.

Litter Reduction:

With the use of e-cigs, they are generally rechargeable which makes for the consumer to only utilize one device. Although most of these products do call for a replacement “pod,” there is not a vast amount of litter that is occurring from these. When you walk around it is common to see cigarette butts laying on the ground everywhere, but seeing empty pods and devices laying on the ground is certainly less common.

No offensive scent:

The scent that comes from an e-cigarette doesn’t offend people. There is not a scent that sticks to clothes, hands, mouths, or interiors of vehicles. While a traditional cigarette smoker finds it hard to conceal their smoking habit, an e-cig user does not have that problem for themselves. The same way that people shower to make sure that they are clean, we all also shower to make sure we don’t offend other people with our bad body odor. This can be said in parallel terms for e-cigarette usage.

Bans can perpetuate unsafe alternatives:

The reality is that nicotine has been introduced worldwide and its consumption will more than likely not ever go away. The e-cigarette market was valued at $11.5 billion in 2018, according to psmarketresearch.com. When something is banned from society, the people who were already using the product still go and find the thing that they want. If e-cigarettes are banned, nicotine users will go out of their way to find it which has the potential to create greater damage. So why not just regulate instead? Regulation of e-cigarettes would be a smarter alternative than a straight up ban.

There shouldn’t be any marketing and advertising geared to e-cigarettes toward the young people of America. For the people who are wanting to partake in using nicotine however, e-cigarettes are simply the best possible alternative.

Featured Illustration: Miranda Thomas