Thursday, September 5, 2013

E-Cigarette Use Doubles Amoung Students

Week #1 Article #1
1. Tavernise, Sabrina (2013, September 5). E-cigarette use doubles among students, survey shows. The New York Times.

2. Category of problem: Human Heath

3. Level of problem: State and National

4.The article concerns: The potential for e-cigarettes to become a path to smoking among young people who otherwise would not have experimented.

5. Why this is important to individuals/families OR How does this affect individuals/families?
        E-cigarettes are shown to be less harmful than smoking regular cigarettes but it is being exposed to kids as young as junior high who have never smoked real cigarettes but are curious about these, which could become a gateway to smoking real cigarettes. Also, since E-cigarettes are a newer tobacco product we don't quite understand the long term effects of these products which could potentially be hazardous for long term health.

6. My input:
     I am kind of on the fence about this topic because there are both pros and cons about this topic. For me, the pros consist of that there is no tobacco in these products which makes it a lot healthier to smoke because your basically just inhaling and exhaling flavored water vapor which is way less harmless than all the nasty ingredients that are in real cigarettes. Also, I know a lot of people who were smoking packs of cigarettes a week and they switched to the E-cigarette which is actually helping them quit, rather than going cold turkey, because they have something less harmful to smoke on every once in a while when they are craving it. On the other hand, it is being exposed to all age groups of people, and these young kids are thinking "Oh cool a new gadget, I wanna try it." Some of these kids never even tried a real cigarette, but by trying the E-cigarette it might potentially make them wanna try the real thing next. Also, who knows that in years to come it won't cause more health problems, it's something that hasn't been around for a very long time so we don't necessarily know the long term effect yet. Overall for me, the problem isn't the E-cigarette itself, it's the fact that it is a potential gateway to conventional cigarettes, especially to younger kids.




http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/e-cigarette-use-doubles-among-students-survey-shows.html?ref=health&_r=0

No comments:

Post a Comment