Comparing Traditional Cigarettes with E-Cigarettes

In the mid 90s, The Maher Law Firm played an integral part in the historic battle against   Big Tobacco, helping the State of Florida win an $11.3 billion settlement. Now, decades later, there’s another tobacco villain killing our friends and family—electronic cigarettes.

E-CIGARETTES VS. REGULAR CIGARETTES

The dangers of conventional cigarettes are well known by now. It’s telling that most doctor visits begin with "Are you a smoker?” Taxes on packs of cigarettes are now sky high in order to discourage smoking. Black label warnings are on every carton of cigarettes. You can’t smoke in most restaurants and hotels anymore. The list goes on and on.

But what about e-cigarettes? They’re marketed as a healthier option to those still wishing to smoke. But are they?

As of October 2019, there have been 26 confirmed deaths linked to e-cigarette use and more than 1,299 probable cases of lung injuries. The latest reported death was a man from Missouri in his mid-40s with normal lung function before he began vaping in May. He was hospitalized on August 22 and died less than one month later.

"Once the lungs are injured by vaping, we don’t know how quickly it worsens or if it depends on other risk factors,” said Dr. Michael Pilsco, Mercy Hospital St. Louis’ critical care pulmonologist and medical director of Mercy’s extracorporeal membrane oxygenation program.

And this is the case for most of e-cigarette use—we simply just do not yet know all the health implications of vaping. All the big guns, from the CDC to the FDA to local health departments are currently investigating this multistate outbreak of lung injury associated with e-cig use.

E-CIGARETTES CONTAIN NICOTINE AND HARMFUL TOXINS

Two things are very clear: 1) e-cigarettes always contain nicotine, sometimes at the same or higher levels of combustible cigarettes; and, 2) e-cigs are NOT free of toxins and still deliver harmful chemicals.

According to Truth Initiative, America’s largest nonprofit public health organization dedicated to ridding the world of tobacco use, only 37 percent of current youth and young adult JUUL users knew that the product they were using contained nicotine. Let it be known: e-cigs absolutely contain the highly addictive drug, nicotine, found in conventional cigarettes.

HOW DO E-CIGS WORK?

E-cigarettes heat a liquid, a concoction of flavorings, nicotine and humectants, to a high enough temperature to produce an aerosol that you inhale. While using an e-cigarette is often referred to as "vaping,” the e-cigs actually produces an aerosol, not a vapor. Why does this matter? A vapor is just a gas form of a substance; it’s pure. On the flip side, an aerosol like that produced by e-cigs, contains tiny chemical particles from the liquid and the device. So when you vape, you’re actually inhaling metals from the heating coil inside the e-cig, among other things.

TARGETING MINORS

Prior to the State of Florida’s historic lawsuit against Big Tobacco in the mid-1990’s, the tobacco industry actively engaged in a massive marketing campaign to sell cigarettes to children. After Florida’s settlement with Big Tobacco, the industry agreed to stop doing so. But now JUUL, with its electronic cigarettes have taken up where the cigarette industry left off. The JUUL ads have portrayed vaping as cool and sophisticated, and as a result, many, many kids have become addicted to nicotine after many years of smoking being on the decline.