June 25, 2014 • 31 mins
What's the story behind e-cigarettes? How do they work? Are they less harmful than normal cigarettes?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from stuff
dot Com. There everybody, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
and today we have some listener mail to get through.
This comes to us from Josh via Facebook, who says, greetings,
I've recently quit smoking cigarettes after twelve years, but after
(00:27):
abstaining for six months, my savior has come under fire.
I'm speaking about the sig vaporisers. Of course, please do
an episode on it. First of all, Josh, well done
for the congratulation for the under fire pun as well. Well,
I was talking about quitting smoking also, I mean it's
as we're gonna discuss, that is not an easy thing
(00:48):
to do. And before we get into this episode, we
have a couple of articles I want to I want
to mention at the top because how Stuff Works has
got some great stuff on here. If you really want
to dig down deep and read these articles, they're they're
really well done, so check them both out. One is
on how electronic cigarettes work by Susan Cassidy and another
is how nicotine works by Maria Tremarchi and and Meager O'Connell.
(01:14):
Both of those are going to be articles that will
be referencing throughout this episode. And the reason for that
is because we kind of need to talk about lots
of different factors here, not just the technology involved. So first,
electronic cigarettes siggs. Yes, they are electronic cigarettes or smokeless
cigarettes or vapes which you vape while you are vaping. Yeah, vapes,
(01:40):
vapes typ vaporizing. But although people will call call it vaping,
vapes tend to be the name of usually the either
the liquid which that's also a thing, which is essentially
your your liquid, uh, nicotine liquid, smoke stuff. It's not
really electronic liquid, nor does it always have nicotine in it.
(02:02):
But we'll get to that as well. But some people
refer to the actual devices of vepes. It's kind of
a weird. It's this whole culture thing. Uh. There are
people on the House of Works staff who have used
these electronic devices in various ways. So, um, I have
gotten to see ones that are shaped like a pipe,
which I had never seen before. I had seen them
(02:23):
that look kind of like electronic you know, cigarettes, like
maybe even cigarettes in the long electric the long cigarette holder,
so you can look like you are a caricature off
the cover of the New Yorker, um, except that you
have a little led light at the end instead of
an actual ember. So you probably have seen these. They
are these Usually they look like some form of cigarette
(02:46):
or pen or something. Two people put in their mouths.
They inhale and they puff out a little bit of
what looks to be smoke. Usually. But how recent is
this idea? I mean it only came out like a
like like a year or two ago, right, uh yeah,
Although they became popular recently, the idea goes back until
(03:10):
ninete April seventeen specifically, is when a patent was filed
for granted. I suppose it was filed filed. It wasn't
until I think sixty six that it was granted, But
it was for a smokeless, non tobacco cigarette, which is
essentially the ancestor to the East SIGs we see today.
Not not that I don't know of any that were
(03:33):
produced based off this first design, but it had the
same basic components. Um not not designed the same way
as today's e cigarettes, but the same you know, elements
that you would find in the ones of today. Right.
This modern movement started as an industry in China. NPR
credits the inventor is being one home Lick, Right, yeah,
(03:55):
Han Lick He used a cartridge that had liquid nicotine
mixed in a propolene glycol solution. We'll talk a little
bit more about propoline glicoon the second fun stuff, and
put that in an electronic device and called it essentially
the equivalent of an electronic cigarette. The market, um, it
was successful in China, you could say it was incredibly successful.
(04:18):
So in the early to mid two thousand's it got
um well, it really made a name for itself, and
then it started to expand beyond the Chinese market. Right.
They were introduced in the US market in two thousands
seven and have become really huge. The market is worth
over two billion dollars per year according to some estimates. Yikes. Alright,
So before we talk about the the technology, let's talk
(04:41):
about nicotine itself and what it does. Share. What happens
when you when you smoke a nicotine cigarette, when you
inhale nicotine in one form or another? Good question. So
with a with a classic cigarette, what you do is
you've got tobacco, right, that's your basic plant, and the
nicotine is released in the smoke generated by burning that tobacco.
(05:02):
So by inhaling the smoke, you are transmitting that that
nicotine into your system, transferring it, I guess I should
say rather so it gets absorbed through the mucoastal linings
and the nose, mouth, and lungs when you inhale this,
and then the nicotine travels through the bloodstream to the brain.
There it has a party time with your adrenal glands
(05:22):
to produce epinephrin, also known as adrenaline. Any of you
guys out there who are big fans of the stuff
you should know podcast have heard those guys talk about
adrenaline a lot. You know. This is the whole fighter
flight reflex thing. That's that's the thing that really fuels that. So, yeah,
same sort of stuff here. As a result, you have
some other physiological effects take place, including an increase in
(05:44):
your heart rate and blood pressure, and it stimulates dopamine production,
dopamine being the neuro transmitter that controls the pleasure center
in your brain. Yeah, this would be one of those
reasons why people who crave a cigarette get that calming effect.
They get that play as you're released when they are
smoking a cigarettes. Not just that uh it feels like
(06:05):
they're doing something familiar, although that may play a part two.
It's that they're literally releasing a neurotransmitter that affects the
pleasure center of the brain. Now, nicotine does not have
to necessarily be inhaled. It can be absorbed through other means,
like in the gastro intestinal tract or through the skin,
which is why you have things like nicotine gum and
nicotine skin patches for people who are trying to break
(06:27):
themselves in the habit of smoking. Now, it's a stimulant,
but like I said, smokers talk about the calming effect
it has when they're craving a cigarette, which may partially
be a ritual yeah, more than anything else, that whole
routine of of whatever steps a smoker goes through before
they light up, because this is a very ritualized. It's
part of the habit. Absolutely. Yeah, So you know you
(06:49):
might see people who are tapping their cigarettes in a
certain number of times. All these sort of these things
are comforting because they are ritualized. On top of that,
you have that dopamine release that also has that calming effect.
And when you get down to it, nicotine is an
incredibly addictive drug, as addictive as like heroin and cocaine. Yeah,
(07:09):
you probably have heard that before in health class or
or a science class is absolutely true. It is, and
we're now we're not saying necessarily that it has the
same uh effect on your system as those other drugs,
but it's certainly as addictive. So once you have developed
this physical and psychological addiction to a substance, when you
(07:30):
get that substance, like if you're craving that substance and
you get it, then you feel a relief, even if
it's a stimulant, right, And nicotine by itself is not
necessarily the worst thing for you, but getting it through
tobacco smoke is pretty nasty, yeah, because you've got a
lot of other things in cigarettes besides just the nicotine,
And that's where you see things like toxins and carcinogens
(07:52):
that will cause health problems down the road for a
lot of people. So while nicotine itself may not necessarily
have that toxicity or carcinogenic property, the stuff that goes
along with regular cigarettes certainly does. So we all know
smoking is bad for you. We're not going to spend
a whole lot of time talking about that, yeah, I mean,
(08:13):
especially because smokers themselves seem to know it. As according
to a report that was put out by the U
s Department of Health and Human Services. Almost se of
adult smokers surveyed so that they wanted to quit, and
some reported having attempted to quit in the previous year.
But how how do you go about breaking such a
strong psychological and physiological habit. Now, this is why we
(08:36):
saw the rise of things like nicotine gum and nicotine
skin patches, because that was all meant to kind of
help people first get rid of cigarettes, right, but they
still need to have that nicotine release or else they
are having these terms. Yeah, and the more you go
through withdrawal, the more likely you are to go back
(08:56):
to a bad habit. So that was meant to try
and help them trend position off to eventually wean themselves
off of nicotine entirely. That was the idea. Unless your
sherlock and you decide that you need like three or
four of them on you at a time in order
to really think clearly, by the way, do not do that.
That's a terrible idea, not recommended. You can. By the way,
this is a bit of a spoiler alert, but later
(09:17):
in the podcast, you can suffer nicotine poisoning and it
is serious stuff. Anyway, so the cigarettes are a little different,
you know, because it all depends on how First of all,
they were marketed for a really long time as a
means for people who are smokers to wean themselves off
of cigarettes and go to e cigarettes, which would be
in theory safer, right. I believe in the United Kingdom
(09:39):
they can only be sold and marketed furthermore, as a
device for smoking cessation. Interesting, and we'll talk more about
why that's interesting in a minute. But yeah, so some
people are using this as a way of quitting smoking.
Some people are using it as sort of just a transition,
like a lateral move, like they're not gonna quit, they're
(10:00):
just they're saying they're saying, well, i've heard that this
is safer than real cigarettes, so I'm going to switch
to this. And there's also some concern uh that this
could be enticing people to start smoking because of the
perceived safety benefit, right, the idea that oh I can
do this cool thing and I don't have all those
(10:20):
downsides of like lung cancer. That's awesome. Sign me up. Well,
hold on, folks, because we've got to talk about everything here. Also,
we should mention not all the cigarettes use nicotine. In
their um in their cartridges. Some of it is more
of a flavored liquid mixture, so you're breathing in flavored vapor,
(10:43):
but there could be other issues with that as well.
So anyway, now we've laid the groundwork, it's about time
to talk about how these things work. All right, So
these are electronic cigarettes. That means there's going to be
certain components that you would expect right off the bat. Uh,
some kind of electronics. Yeah, and electronics have to have power,
(11:04):
so therefore there's got to be a power source, which
means you're not going to see someone plug in a
cigarette and stand next to an outlet all day, I
would mention not all day. I mean, some of them
are rechargeable, so you can technically sort of USB plugged
them into an outlet. But at anyway, there's a battery
involved in in this cigarette looking thing. Um, And you know,
(11:28):
essentially they convert this liquid possibly liquid nicotine into a
vapor which the user then inhales, right, And the way
it converts liquid into a vapor, you know that we
kind of just sort of gloss over it, but no,
the way it's actually working is there's a heating element
inside these devices Normally you've got some sort of wick
that wicks in liquid and then wrapped around that wick
(11:48):
is a heating element, like a coil of wire. Okay,
Now we've talked about electric resistance a lot. Right. Resistance
is when you are passing a current through something, it
resists that and you lose some energy in the form
of heat. Uh. And this case, something that's a heating
element is designed to heat up. It's meant to have
(12:09):
a high resistance so that it heats up very quickly
with just a little bit of power running through it,
a little bit electricity running through it. So this heating
element heats up very quickly, converting that liquid into a gas,
which then you can inhale. Uh. And it's supposed to
warm it up. So it's a one it's supposed to
be a pleasant sensation, and two it's supposed to kind
(12:29):
of mimic the feeling you would have your inhaling smoke. Yeah,
because fire has Yeah. Turns out I have to remind
myself of that frequently at Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who has
ever been burnt by something like this, you you remember it.
So that that little element, that heating element that turns
the liquid into a vapor is usually called an atomizer. Uh.
(12:53):
This is something that you often will hear used in
in lots of different products, not just a heating element.
Atomizer doesn't have to have heat, turning something from a
liquid into a vapor, yeah, into some sort of vapor
or missed usually by making a liquid into very very
very very tiny droplets. So you like like an ald
(13:13):
like a perfume bottle as an atomizer in it so
that it can convert the liquid perfume into a missed
spray and uh, and so similar sort of thing here,
we also have the heating element. Now, generally speaking, this
whole process is usually triggered by a change in pressure,
meaning that when you're sucking on this electronic cigarette, that's
(13:34):
when it generates the vapor. It's it's the key. So
you've got a sensor in there that's more or less
detecting a drop in pressure which indicates someone's taking a puff,
and that's when it's doing it. You could have electronic
cigarettes where it doesn't do it based upon when you puff.
It could have a button on it and then you inhale.
But in general, the most the ones I've seen are
(13:55):
responsive to that that yeah, because it's because it's like
in trying to mimic what an actual cigarette is like.
So now in smoke tobacco, that nicotine it's found in
the smoke itself. But the SIGs don't actually create smoke.
You're not burning anything. So since you're not burning anything,
(14:16):
then you can't have smoke. Now, anyone who's seen or
used an e sig has seen that kind of cloud
that looks like smoke come out, and you might be thinking,
what's up with that. If it's not creating smoke, where's
this stuff coming from. Well, we've already talked about it
a little bit. It's it's a vapor and not vapors.
And I've got the vapors. No I can explain to
(14:36):
anyone who's not from the South what the vapors are,
but it is. It is a polite way of saying
that you're having some you're having some issues. So this
is a vapor that is made from propylene glycol, which
is the stuff in fog machine. Wait a minute, I've
been told more times than I care to admit not
to breathe in the fog generated by these fog machines.
(14:59):
It's actually been a p as a food additive by
the FDA because it's a it's a nice stable solvent
for stuff like food coloring and flavoring, and one of
its physical properties is that it vaporizes into a fog
when it's heated or briskly shaken. It Also it also
absorbs water, so it's used to maintain moisture levels and
some medications and foods and cosmetics. UM. It's furthermore f
(15:21):
y i uh component of anti freeze and some de
icing solutions. It's a solvent in some paints and plastics,
and it's used to make polyesters. But that doesn't mean
that your e cigarette is filled with anti freeze. They
just share a common component, right, Which is interesting because
we have a study we'll be talking about where one
of the things they found as a study by the
(15:42):
FDA was saying that there was a chemical in there
that was found in anti freeze, and I wonder if
it was this one, because if it were, that's not
that's a little misleading. Yes, it's kind of like saying
that a derivative of formaldehyde has all the properties of
formaldehyde and it doesn't and it doesn't, or like saying like, well,
this carbon based thing is made with carbon, which which
(16:03):
is bad. That's it's far too simple. The answer to
this question is always looked deeper, all right, So these
cartridges can contain the nicotine or be nicotine free. And
the thing is that manufacturers can actually tweak exactly how
much nicotine is in a cartridge. So theoretically they could
(16:23):
make a line of different cartridges with different amounts of
nicotine in each different version. And they certainly do sell
cartridges with that are marketed as having different amounts of
nicotine in them. Which so that you can step down exactly, Yeah,
you can, you can start to step Yeah, the intent
is to step down, but you know, we've got some
(16:46):
people out there who are real go getters. But the
idea is to step down so that you can wean
yourself off of cigarettes entirely, uh, mostly to wean yourself
off nicotine entirely. We should be more specific, honestly. So, um,
you can also just make it flavored. So some of
the flavors, and there are things like you can get
caramel or coffee or apple or Earl Gray tea or
(17:06):
I mean there's there's lots of different ones. Yeah, when
you go into a vape shop, they will often have
an entire wall dedicated to different flavors. This, by the way,
has created some uh some questions recently in in legal circles.
Will get to that about how how these flavors may
or may not be a good idea. So one about
(17:27):
health concerns. We know the health concerns with cigarettes. We've
got decades and decades of research. Yes, I think it
goes back to the nineteen thirties. So and since this
is a relatively new product on the mass market, Unfortunately
the answers that we don't know what the health effects
maybe yeah, in fact there are We're not saying there
(17:47):
are no studies out there were has Most of the
studies that are out there are either inconclusive or they
conflict with each other, so inclusion is hard to to
come to. And at any rate this these have only
been running since at best the mid two thousands. So first,
there's not a lot we don't know. The World Health
(18:08):
Organization w h O, part of the u N has
been looking into it, but no conclusive findings. Um, there's there.
And then there's the issue. The FDA has done some
studies on various cartridges. This is the one I was
talking about earlier that showed that ingredients that were listed
were not always what you got in the actual cartridge.
They would test the chemicals within the cartridge and then
(18:29):
see if it matches up with what was essentially on
the list of ingredients, and they said that the concentrations
didn't match up all the time, So sometimes you've got
more or less nicotine than what was being advertised, or
that you were even getting other chemicals that were not
listed on the ingredients at all, including some toxins. In
this case, the one of the ones they mentioned was
it's one that's found an anti freeze, and that made
(18:50):
me wonder if it was the the the fog stuff. Uh.
At any rate, I mean, it's interesting to me that
the FDA put out the study because the FDA does
not regulate yeah, this liquid. There's still a lot of
debate on whether or not the FDA will. Uh. It
confuses me. I mean, granted, there's not necessarily nicotine in everything,
(19:13):
but they did find that even some of the ones
that said there was no nicotine in it, there was
totally nicotine in it. Um. So again, this is a
case by case basis. It's not like you know, you
can't point to the entire industry and say this is
a problem. It may just be something that a couple
of different manufacturers have issues. Oh sure, I mean, but
but part of the problem is that there are tons
of manufacturers out there. Yeah. Yeah, there's no standardization here. Uh,
(19:36):
there can be lots of different types of cartridges and atomizers.
The atomizer can affect how much of a given chemical
you inhale per puff versus just the cartridge itself. So
it could be that there's just a component inside the
e cigarette that is causing people to get either more
or less of a particular chemical per puff than what
(19:56):
was intended. Uh. So there's a lot of a lot
of variable is here, and that's part of what makes
doing a study so difficult, because it's not just the
the chemical that you have to look at, it's the
entire picture, and because there's so many different variations on it,
it's hard to draw any hard conclusions, especially this early on. So, uh,
(20:18):
we don't know what kind of health hazards there could
be using the cigarettes, And we don't even technically know
whether or not, I mean, you know, medically conclusively. Research wise,
we don't know whether e cigarettes actually help people quit smoking. Yes,
there is a lot of conflicting reports out there. There are,
i should say, a lot of conflicting reports out there
that that state whether or not they are helpful for
(20:41):
people who are trying to quit. Some of them say absolutely,
some of them say absolutely not, and they should not
ever be marketed that way. So it's it's lots of
conflicting information. Yeah, there's also been some research indicating that
these things aren't necessarily as safe as they're being marketed as. Um.
(21:03):
Some studies have shown diminished lung function, airway resistance, and
cellular changes that may lead to lung cancer in people
who use e cigarettes. And it may even be that
those devices are releasing stuff into our lungs that that
normal cigarettes wouldn't, like metals. Yeah, that's that's not good
stuff or other or other byproducts. Yeah, exactly. And also,
(21:25):
when you get down to it, even if even if
we say that maybe these health hazards, maybe studies will
bear out over time that it's it's not as big
a concern and that they are in fact safer than cigarettes,
and maybe even that they help you in the long
run get rid of that addiction. Here's the thing, if
you're using those nicotine cartridges, you're still delivering a dose
of a highly addictive substance to your your bloodstream, and
(21:49):
that addiction creates that physical and psychological craving that you
feel necessary to to uh appease on a regular basis.
So people who would think, oh, I want to try
this out because it's safer and it looks like it's
kind of kind of an interesting, uh cool like blade
it's a blade runner way of smoking. Um, it turns
(22:12):
out that you know, you're you're subjecting yourself to a
very addictive substance that you could then you know, develop
a habit, and that can get pretty expensive, uh, even
if the health hazards are not that that great in
the long run. Uh. Also, you can develop a tolerance
to drugs, which means you need to have more of
whatever the drug is in order for it to have
(22:33):
the same sort of effect both physically and psychologically. And
it is possible to overdose on nicotine. So this case,
if you were to get too much nicotine in your
system too quickly, that stimulating effect of the drug quickly
shifts into a depressant and you become a victim of
nicotine poisoning. Now, the most common symptom of nicotine poisoning
(22:57):
is vomiting, so that's not pleasant, but there are more
or serious symptoms that can also follow, including seizures, abnormal
heart rhythms, and fluctuating blood pressure. Regular cigarettes might actually
have the benefit over over e cigarettes here because liquid nicotine,
like we said earlier, can be you know, ingested or
absorbed through the skin, and as little as a tablespoon
(23:17):
of the liquid sold for e cigarettes can could possibly
kill an adult human person. Uh. Calls to poison control
centers regarding this kind of thing are on the rise
from one per month in to as many as two
hundred and fifteen per month here in the United States. Yikes. Now,
and the interest of full disclosure, there are some possible
(23:39):
benefits to nicotine as well. Yeah, now, those benefits are
pretty interesting. They may play a part in helping reduce
the risk of developing things like Parkinson's disease in Alzheimer's.
It might be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
But self medicating is not a good idea, right. This
(24:00):
is the kind of thing that a professional would be Yeah,
you would want to have a doctor overseeing the sort
of thing so that you make sure you have the
right amount of the active ingredient. So that's one of
those things again getting up on a little bit of
a tangent here, but the idea that you know you're
going through a very specific prescribed amount that is geared
(24:21):
to helping you, as opposed to taking something that may
or may not have that right amount. You could be
over medicating or under medicating. That's neither of those options
are good, and the chances of you hitting exactly what
you need when you need it are low. So see
a doctor's what we're saying before you start trying to
do that sort of thing. Now as we're recording this
(24:43):
podcast right now, there are actual debates going on in
the Senate about whether the stig manufacturers are aiming at
younger customer basis. And this is similar to a controversy
that has happened in the past about cigarette companies traditional
cigarettes using cartoon characters with their next as part of
advertising campaign. Right, and I wanted to talk a little
(25:04):
bit about the history of tobacco and legislation at this
point because it's really interesting and and it comes back
into eat cigarettes in just a moment here. So okay,
medical research linking negative health effects to tobacco use goes
all the way back to nineteen thirty nine, and that's
when the first studies started being published about it. UM.
Tobacco products had to have warning labels on them starting
(25:27):
in nineteen sixties six and as as part of this
general push that was happening here in the US at
the time. We're talking all about the U S in
this in this section because we're from the United States.
Other countries have perhaps a similar timeline with vaguely different
results here and there, But at any rate, UM in one,
(25:49):
cigarette television and radio commercials were outlawed here when Nixon
signed the Cigarette Smoking Act into law. At the time,
tobacco was the leading product category that was featured in
television commercials, and I remember hearing radio commercials for cigarettes,
like if you ever listened to any old radio programming
where they incorporate yeah, it was almost always it was
(26:12):
it was a soap or a cigarette, or some form
of hair product. Um. The use of cartoon characters to
market tobacco products wasn't banned until the nineteen nineties or
early two thousand's, but that was that wasn't legislation as
much as it was part of this multi hundred billion
(26:33):
dollars settlement that the entire tobacco industry came to in
a series of lawsuits that were levied at it by
state governments looking for reparation for healthcare costs. Yeah, it
was one of those things where they said, well, we're
already going to have to pay all this money. We
don't want to fight this battle about whether or not
we're marketing to kids. And when we're talking about the
(26:54):
SIGs marketing to kids, remember when I mentioned all those flavors.
There are senators who are saying things like you should
not be marketing certain types of flavors because they are
flavors that are appealing specifically to children, things like candy
flavor cherry and cotton candy and etcetera, etcetera. And Uh,
part of part of the reason that all of my
goth friends were really upset in the early two thousands
(27:15):
was that stuff like clove cigarettes were outlawed. You know,
that was part of that legislation, part of that settlement
that prevented that was hoping to prevent youth from picking
up this habit or tobacco companies from marketing to youth
and and the cigarettes right are not under the same restriction,
and there's a growing number of commercials for them on
the air. So a lot of detractors are suggesting the
(27:37):
tobacco companies are going to start using this market to
get younger generations addicted to their products. Um And indeed,
the tobacco industry is officially getting into the east cigarette market.
Camel maker Reynolds American is taking its views brand East
cigarette to the national market starting June tween. We're recording
(27:58):
this podcast, by the way, on June nineteen, and Marlboro
maker Newmark will have its own called Mark ten, out
by the end of the year. Now, the FDA is
still debating about whether or not it will start to
impose regulations and oversee things like the cigarettes. I thought
that was kind of weird that that debate still going on,
(28:19):
because ultimately, again you're talking mainly about the delivery system
for nicotine, which is a known drug, So I would
think that would be a uh, something that would easily
fall under the purview of the FDA, But what do
I know. Lots of states, though, have already started imposing
regulations on East cigarettes. As of June thirty eight states
have restricted the sale of the cigarettes by by age
(28:41):
you know, kids can buy. I'm like a five year
old couldn't walk up to the counter, But what age
that is depends from state to state. UM A few
states have banned the use of the cigarettes anywhere that
regular cigarettes are banned, and some states have even started
taxing e cigarettes, although I think Minnesota is currently the
only state that's doing so at a comparable rate to
(29:02):
that of regular cigarettes. Right. So, again, the other thing
we're ending here is that using the SIGs to to
get yourself off of smoking regular cigarettes may or may
not work. We don't know. The studies are inconclusive and
it and we just don't know. So it may sound
like a lot of the stuff we've been saying have
(29:22):
all been negatives about the cigarettes, but really what we're
saying is that we don't have enough information to draw
any conclusions one way or the other. It would be
it would be premature for us to say the cigarettes
are purely bad and no one should use them. It
would also be equally premature for us to say the
cigarettes are a much safer alternative to any other type
of smoking. And if you're trying to get off smoking,
(29:42):
it's a great way of doing that. We just can't
say those things and and science can't say those things yet.
You know, if you're an adult and you're smoker and
you are trying to stop smoking, then, because we love
you and we want you to continue listening to this
show for years and years and years to come, we
congratulate you, yes, um. And if you're trying to use
(30:03):
the cigrettes to do that, then we If that is
your method, then we wish you the absolute best, and
it may very well work for you. We just can't
say one way or the other. Yea. Yeah, But just
as a consumer, you know, always always try to be
intelligent about your decisions and listen to science when you can.
Right now, I'm hoping very much that that science will
(30:23):
get on it. Yeah, me too, and and have a
really more definitive answer for these questions so that people
can make responsible choices. That's that's ultimately what we want.
So thank you so much for writing in and asking
us the question. Remember, if you guys have any suggestions
for future episodes, maybe there's some other technology and you've
(30:44):
always wondered what the heck is the story behind that.
Let us know, send us a message on Facebook, Twitter
or Tumbler or handle it. All three is tech stuff
hs w our mythical email address should be tech stuff
at our stuff works dot com. That that should be
kicking in any now. The more frequently I bring it
up like that, the more likely someone will be motivated
(31:07):
to make sure it happens. Um, but yes, we are going.
We are still working on that. Uh Dan, who knows?
Maybe now it's working. Give it a shot, Send an
emails tex stuff at how stuff works dot com. Why
not what happens? Let's know on Twitter you don't hear
response and we will talk to you again really soon
(31:29):
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
at how stuff works dot com
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from stuff
dot Com. There everybody, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
and today we have some listener mail to get through.
This comes to us from Josh via Facebook, who says, greetings,
I've recently quit smoking cigarettes after twelve years, but after
(00:27):
abstaining for six months, my savior has come under fire.
I'm speaking about the sig vaporisers. Of course, please do
an episode on it. First of all, Josh, well done
for the congratulation for the under fire pun as well. Well,
I was talking about quitting smoking also, I mean it's
as we're gonna discuss, that is not an easy thing
(00:48):
to do. And before we get into this episode, we
have a couple of articles I want to I want
to mention at the top because how Stuff Works has
got some great stuff on here. If you really want
to dig down deep and read these articles, they're they're
really well done, so check them both out. One is
on how electronic cigarettes work by Susan Cassidy and another
is how nicotine works by Maria Tremarchi and and Meager O'Connell.
(01:14):
Both of those are going to be articles that will
be referencing throughout this episode. And the reason for that
is because we kind of need to talk about lots
of different factors here, not just the technology involved. So first,
electronic cigarettes siggs. Yes, they are electronic cigarettes or smokeless
cigarettes or vapes which you vape while you are vaping. Yeah, vapes,
(01:40):
vapes typ vaporizing. But although people will call call it vaping,
vapes tend to be the name of usually the either
the liquid which that's also a thing, which is essentially
your your liquid, uh, nicotine liquid, smoke stuff. It's not
really electronic liquid, nor does it always have nicotine in it.
(02:02):
But we'll get to that as well. But some people
refer to the actual devices of vepes. It's kind of
a weird. It's this whole culture thing. Uh. There are
people on the House of Works staff who have used
these electronic devices in various ways. So, um, I have
gotten to see ones that are shaped like a pipe,
which I had never seen before. I had seen them
(02:23):
that look kind of like electronic you know, cigarettes, like
maybe even cigarettes in the long electric the long cigarette holder,
so you can look like you are a caricature off
the cover of the New Yorker, um, except that you
have a little led light at the end instead of
an actual ember. So you probably have seen these. They
are these Usually they look like some form of cigarette
(02:46):
or pen or something. Two people put in their mouths.
They inhale and they puff out a little bit of
what looks to be smoke. Usually. But how recent is
this idea? I mean it only came out like a
like like a year or two ago, right, uh yeah,
Although they became popular recently, the idea goes back until
(03:10):
ninete April seventeen specifically, is when a patent was filed
for granted. I suppose it was filed filed. It wasn't
until I think sixty six that it was granted, But
it was for a smokeless, non tobacco cigarette, which is
essentially the ancestor to the East SIGs we see today.
Not not that I don't know of any that were
(03:33):
produced based off this first design, but it had the
same basic components. Um not not designed the same way
as today's e cigarettes, but the same you know, elements
that you would find in the ones of today. Right.
This modern movement started as an industry in China. NPR
credits the inventor is being one home Lick, Right, yeah,
(03:55):
Han Lick He used a cartridge that had liquid nicotine
mixed in a propolene glycol solution. We'll talk a little
bit more about propoline glicoon the second fun stuff, and
put that in an electronic device and called it essentially
the equivalent of an electronic cigarette. The market, um, it
was successful in China, you could say it was incredibly successful.
(04:18):
So in the early to mid two thousand's it got
um well, it really made a name for itself, and
then it started to expand beyond the Chinese market. Right.
They were introduced in the US market in two thousands
seven and have become really huge. The market is worth
over two billion dollars per year according to some estimates. Yikes. Alright,
So before we talk about the the technology, let's talk
(04:41):
about nicotine itself and what it does. Share. What happens
when you when you smoke a nicotine cigarette, when you
inhale nicotine in one form or another? Good question. So
with a with a classic cigarette, what you do is
you've got tobacco, right, that's your basic plant, and the
nicotine is released in the smoke generated by burning that tobacco.
(05:02):
So by inhaling the smoke, you are transmitting that that
nicotine into your system, transferring it, I guess I should
say rather so it gets absorbed through the mucoastal linings
and the nose, mouth, and lungs when you inhale this,
and then the nicotine travels through the bloodstream to the brain.
There it has a party time with your adrenal glands
(05:22):
to produce epinephrin, also known as adrenaline. Any of you
guys out there who are big fans of the stuff
you should know podcast have heard those guys talk about
adrenaline a lot. You know. This is the whole fighter
flight reflex thing. That's that's the thing that really fuels that. So, yeah,
same sort of stuff here. As a result, you have
some other physiological effects take place, including an increase in
(05:44):
your heart rate and blood pressure, and it stimulates dopamine production,
dopamine being the neuro transmitter that controls the pleasure center
in your brain. Yeah, this would be one of those
reasons why people who crave a cigarette get that calming effect.
They get that play as you're released when they are
smoking a cigarettes. Not just that uh it feels like
(06:05):
they're doing something familiar, although that may play a part two.
It's that they're literally releasing a neurotransmitter that affects the
pleasure center of the brain. Now, nicotine does not have
to necessarily be inhaled. It can be absorbed through other means,
like in the gastro intestinal tract or through the skin,
which is why you have things like nicotine gum and
nicotine skin patches for people who are trying to break
(06:27):
themselves in the habit of smoking. Now, it's a stimulant,
but like I said, smokers talk about the calming effect
it has when they're craving a cigarette, which may partially
be a ritual yeah, more than anything else, that whole
routine of of whatever steps a smoker goes through before
they light up, because this is a very ritualized. It's
part of the habit. Absolutely. Yeah, So you know you
(06:49):
might see people who are tapping their cigarettes in a
certain number of times. All these sort of these things
are comforting because they are ritualized. On top of that,
you have that dopamine release that also has that calming effect.
And when you get down to it, nicotine is an
incredibly addictive drug, as addictive as like heroin and cocaine. Yeah,
(07:09):
you probably have heard that before in health class or
or a science class is absolutely true. It is, and
we're now we're not saying necessarily that it has the
same uh effect on your system as those other drugs,
but it's certainly as addictive. So once you have developed
this physical and psychological addiction to a substance, when you
(07:30):
get that substance, like if you're craving that substance and
you get it, then you feel a relief, even if
it's a stimulant, right, And nicotine by itself is not
necessarily the worst thing for you, but getting it through
tobacco smoke is pretty nasty, yeah, because you've got a
lot of other things in cigarettes besides just the nicotine,
And that's where you see things like toxins and carcinogens
(07:52):
that will cause health problems down the road for a
lot of people. So while nicotine itself may not necessarily
have that toxicity or carcinogenic property, the stuff that goes
along with regular cigarettes certainly does. So we all know
smoking is bad for you. We're not going to spend
a whole lot of time talking about that, yeah, I mean,
(08:13):
especially because smokers themselves seem to know it. As according
to a report that was put out by the U
s Department of Health and Human Services. Almost se of
adult smokers surveyed so that they wanted to quit, and
some reported having attempted to quit in the previous year.
But how how do you go about breaking such a
strong psychological and physiological habit. Now, this is why we
(08:36):
saw the rise of things like nicotine gum and nicotine
skin patches, because that was all meant to kind of
help people first get rid of cigarettes, right, but they
still need to have that nicotine release or else they
are having these terms. Yeah, and the more you go
through withdrawal, the more likely you are to go back
(08:56):
to a bad habit. So that was meant to try
and help them trend position off to eventually wean themselves
off of nicotine entirely. That was the idea. Unless your
sherlock and you decide that you need like three or
four of them on you at a time in order
to really think clearly, by the way, do not do that.
That's a terrible idea, not recommended. You can. By the way,
this is a bit of a spoiler alert, but later
(09:17):
in the podcast, you can suffer nicotine poisoning and it
is serious stuff. Anyway, so the cigarettes are a little different,
you know, because it all depends on how First of all,
they were marketed for a really long time as a
means for people who are smokers to wean themselves off
of cigarettes and go to e cigarettes, which would be
in theory safer, right. I believe in the United Kingdom
(09:39):
they can only be sold and marketed furthermore, as a
device for smoking cessation. Interesting, and we'll talk more about
why that's interesting in a minute. But yeah, so some
people are using this as a way of quitting smoking.
Some people are using it as sort of just a transition,
like a lateral move, like they're not gonna quit, they're
(10:00):
just they're saying they're saying, well, i've heard that this
is safer than real cigarettes, so I'm going to switch
to this. And there's also some concern uh that this
could be enticing people to start smoking because of the
perceived safety benefit, right, the idea that oh I can
do this cool thing and I don't have all those
(10:20):
downsides of like lung cancer. That's awesome. Sign me up. Well,
hold on, folks, because we've got to talk about everything here. Also,
we should mention not all the cigarettes use nicotine. In
their um in their cartridges. Some of it is more
of a flavored liquid mixture, so you're breathing in flavored vapor,
(10:43):
but there could be other issues with that as well.
So anyway, now we've laid the groundwork, it's about time
to talk about how these things work. All right, So
these are electronic cigarettes. That means there's going to be
certain components that you would expect right off the bat. Uh,
some kind of electronics. Yeah, and electronics have to have power,
(11:04):
so therefore there's got to be a power source, which
means you're not going to see someone plug in a
cigarette and stand next to an outlet all day, I
would mention not all day. I mean, some of them
are rechargeable, so you can technically sort of USB plugged
them into an outlet. But at anyway, there's a battery
involved in in this cigarette looking thing. Um, And you know,
(11:28):
essentially they convert this liquid possibly liquid nicotine into a
vapor which the user then inhales, right, And the way
it converts liquid into a vapor, you know that we
kind of just sort of gloss over it, but no,
the way it's actually working is there's a heating element
inside these devices Normally you've got some sort of wick
that wicks in liquid and then wrapped around that wick
(11:48):
is a heating element, like a coil of wire. Okay,
Now we've talked about electric resistance a lot. Right. Resistance
is when you are passing a current through something, it
resists that and you lose some energy in the form
of heat. Uh. And this case, something that's a heating
element is designed to heat up. It's meant to have
(12:09):
a high resistance so that it heats up very quickly
with just a little bit of power running through it,
a little bit electricity running through it. So this heating
element heats up very quickly, converting that liquid into a gas,
which then you can inhale. Uh. And it's supposed to
warm it up. So it's a one it's supposed to
be a pleasant sensation, and two it's supposed to kind
(12:29):
of mimic the feeling you would have your inhaling smoke. Yeah,
because fire has Yeah. Turns out I have to remind
myself of that frequently at Yeah. Yeah. Anyone who has
ever been burnt by something like this, you you remember it.
So that that little element, that heating element that turns
the liquid into a vapor is usually called an atomizer. Uh.
(12:53):
This is something that you often will hear used in
in lots of different products, not just a heating element.
Atomizer doesn't have to have heat, turning something from a
liquid into a vapor, yeah, into some sort of vapor
or missed usually by making a liquid into very very
very very tiny droplets. So you like like an ald
(13:13):
like a perfume bottle as an atomizer in it so
that it can convert the liquid perfume into a missed
spray and uh, and so similar sort of thing here,
we also have the heating element. Now, generally speaking, this
whole process is usually triggered by a change in pressure,
meaning that when you're sucking on this electronic cigarette, that's
(13:34):
when it generates the vapor. It's it's the key. So
you've got a sensor in there that's more or less
detecting a drop in pressure which indicates someone's taking a puff,
and that's when it's doing it. You could have electronic
cigarettes where it doesn't do it based upon when you puff.
It could have a button on it and then you inhale.
But in general, the most the ones I've seen are
(13:55):
responsive to that that yeah, because it's because it's like
in trying to mimic what an actual cigarette is like.
So now in smoke tobacco, that nicotine it's found in
the smoke itself. But the SIGs don't actually create smoke.
You're not burning anything. So since you're not burning anything,
(14:16):
then you can't have smoke. Now, anyone who's seen or
used an e sig has seen that kind of cloud
that looks like smoke come out, and you might be thinking,
what's up with that. If it's not creating smoke, where's
this stuff coming from. Well, we've already talked about it
a little bit. It's it's a vapor and not vapors.
And I've got the vapors. No I can explain to
(14:36):
anyone who's not from the South what the vapors are,
but it is. It is a polite way of saying
that you're having some you're having some issues. So this
is a vapor that is made from propylene glycol, which
is the stuff in fog machine. Wait a minute, I've
been told more times than I care to admit not
to breathe in the fog generated by these fog machines.
(14:59):
It's actually been a p as a food additive by
the FDA because it's a it's a nice stable solvent
for stuff like food coloring and flavoring, and one of
its physical properties is that it vaporizes into a fog
when it's heated or briskly shaken. It Also it also
absorbs water, so it's used to maintain moisture levels and
some medications and foods and cosmetics. UM. It's furthermore f
(15:21):
y i uh component of anti freeze and some de
icing solutions. It's a solvent in some paints and plastics,
and it's used to make polyesters. But that doesn't mean
that your e cigarette is filled with anti freeze. They
just share a common component, right, Which is interesting because
we have a study we'll be talking about where one
of the things they found as a study by the
(15:42):
FDA was saying that there was a chemical in there
that was found in anti freeze, and I wonder if
it was this one, because if it were, that's not
that's a little misleading. Yes, it's kind of like saying
that a derivative of formaldehyde has all the properties of
formaldehyde and it doesn't and it doesn't, or like saying like, well,
this carbon based thing is made with carbon, which which
(16:03):
is bad. That's it's far too simple. The answer to
this question is always looked deeper, all right, So these
cartridges can contain the nicotine or be nicotine free. And
the thing is that manufacturers can actually tweak exactly how
much nicotine is in a cartridge. So theoretically they could
(16:23):
make a line of different cartridges with different amounts of
nicotine in each different version. And they certainly do sell
cartridges with that are marketed as having different amounts of
nicotine in them. Which so that you can step down exactly, Yeah,
you can, you can start to step Yeah, the intent
is to step down, but you know, we've got some
(16:46):
people out there who are real go getters. But the
idea is to step down so that you can wean
yourself off of cigarettes entirely, uh, mostly to wean yourself
off nicotine entirely. We should be more specific, honestly. So, um,
you can also just make it flavored. So some of
the flavors, and there are things like you can get
caramel or coffee or apple or Earl Gray tea or
(17:06):
I mean there's there's lots of different ones. Yeah, when
you go into a vape shop, they will often have
an entire wall dedicated to different flavors. This, by the way,
has created some uh some questions recently in in legal circles.
Will get to that about how how these flavors may
or may not be a good idea. So one about
(17:27):
health concerns. We know the health concerns with cigarettes. We've
got decades and decades of research. Yes, I think it
goes back to the nineteen thirties. So and since this
is a relatively new product on the mass market, Unfortunately
the answers that we don't know what the health effects
maybe yeah, in fact there are We're not saying there
(17:47):
are no studies out there were has Most of the
studies that are out there are either inconclusive or they
conflict with each other, so inclusion is hard to to
come to. And at any rate this these have only
been running since at best the mid two thousands. So first,
there's not a lot we don't know. The World Health
(18:08):
Organization w h O, part of the u N has
been looking into it, but no conclusive findings. Um, there's there.
And then there's the issue. The FDA has done some
studies on various cartridges. This is the one I was
talking about earlier that showed that ingredients that were listed
were not always what you got in the actual cartridge.
They would test the chemicals within the cartridge and then
(18:29):
see if it matches up with what was essentially on
the list of ingredients, and they said that the concentrations
didn't match up all the time, So sometimes you've got
more or less nicotine than what was being advertised, or
that you were even getting other chemicals that were not
listed on the ingredients at all, including some toxins. In
this case, the one of the ones they mentioned was
it's one that's found an anti freeze, and that made
(18:50):
me wonder if it was the the the fog stuff. Uh.
At any rate, I mean, it's interesting to me that
the FDA put out the study because the FDA does
not regulate yeah, this liquid. There's still a lot of
debate on whether or not the FDA will. Uh. It
confuses me. I mean, granted, there's not necessarily nicotine in everything,
(19:13):
but they did find that even some of the ones
that said there was no nicotine in it, there was
totally nicotine in it. Um. So again, this is a
case by case basis. It's not like you know, you
can't point to the entire industry and say this is
a problem. It may just be something that a couple
of different manufacturers have issues. Oh sure, I mean, but
but part of the problem is that there are tons
of manufacturers out there. Yeah. Yeah, there's no standardization here. Uh,
(19:36):
there can be lots of different types of cartridges and atomizers.
The atomizer can affect how much of a given chemical
you inhale per puff versus just the cartridge itself. So
it could be that there's just a component inside the
e cigarette that is causing people to get either more
or less of a particular chemical per puff than what
(19:56):
was intended. Uh. So there's a lot of a lot
of variable is here, and that's part of what makes
doing a study so difficult, because it's not just the
the chemical that you have to look at, it's the
entire picture, and because there's so many different variations on it,
it's hard to draw any hard conclusions, especially this early on. So, uh,
(20:18):
we don't know what kind of health hazards there could
be using the cigarettes, And we don't even technically know
whether or not, I mean, you know, medically conclusively. Research wise,
we don't know whether e cigarettes actually help people quit smoking. Yes,
there is a lot of conflicting reports out there. There are,
i should say, a lot of conflicting reports out there
that that state whether or not they are helpful for
(20:41):
people who are trying to quit. Some of them say absolutely,
some of them say absolutely not, and they should not
ever be marketed that way. So it's it's lots of
conflicting information. Yeah, there's also been some research indicating that
these things aren't necessarily as safe as they're being marketed as. Um.
(21:03):
Some studies have shown diminished lung function, airway resistance, and
cellular changes that may lead to lung cancer in people
who use e cigarettes. And it may even be that
those devices are releasing stuff into our lungs that that
normal cigarettes wouldn't, like metals. Yeah, that's that's not good
stuff or other or other byproducts. Yeah, exactly. And also,
(21:25):
when you get down to it, even if even if
we say that maybe these health hazards, maybe studies will
bear out over time that it's it's not as big
a concern and that they are in fact safer than cigarettes,
and maybe even that they help you in the long
run get rid of that addiction. Here's the thing, if
you're using those nicotine cartridges, you're still delivering a dose
of a highly addictive substance to your your bloodstream, and
(21:49):
that addiction creates that physical and psychological craving that you
feel necessary to to uh appease on a regular basis.
So people who would think, oh, I want to try
this out because it's safer and it looks like it's
kind of kind of an interesting, uh cool like blade
it's a blade runner way of smoking. Um, it turns
(22:12):
out that you know, you're you're subjecting yourself to a
very addictive substance that you could then you know, develop
a habit, and that can get pretty expensive, uh, even
if the health hazards are not that that great in
the long run. Uh. Also, you can develop a tolerance
to drugs, which means you need to have more of
whatever the drug is in order for it to have
(22:33):
the same sort of effect both physically and psychologically. And
it is possible to overdose on nicotine. So this case,
if you were to get too much nicotine in your
system too quickly, that stimulating effect of the drug quickly
shifts into a depressant and you become a victim of
nicotine poisoning. Now, the most common symptom of nicotine poisoning
(22:57):
is vomiting, so that's not pleasant, but there are more
or serious symptoms that can also follow, including seizures, abnormal
heart rhythms, and fluctuating blood pressure. Regular cigarettes might actually
have the benefit over over e cigarettes here because liquid nicotine,
like we said earlier, can be you know, ingested or
absorbed through the skin, and as little as a tablespoon
(23:17):
of the liquid sold for e cigarettes can could possibly
kill an adult human person. Uh. Calls to poison control
centers regarding this kind of thing are on the rise
from one per month in to as many as two
hundred and fifteen per month here in the United States. Yikes. Now,
and the interest of full disclosure, there are some possible
(23:39):
benefits to nicotine as well. Yeah, now, those benefits are
pretty interesting. They may play a part in helping reduce
the risk of developing things like Parkinson's disease in Alzheimer's.
It might be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
But self medicating is not a good idea, right. This
(24:00):
is the kind of thing that a professional would be Yeah,
you would want to have a doctor overseeing the sort
of thing so that you make sure you have the
right amount of the active ingredient. So that's one of
those things again getting up on a little bit of
a tangent here, but the idea that you know you're
going through a very specific prescribed amount that is geared
(24:21):
to helping you, as opposed to taking something that may
or may not have that right amount. You could be
over medicating or under medicating. That's neither of those options
are good, and the chances of you hitting exactly what
you need when you need it are low. So see
a doctor's what we're saying before you start trying to
do that sort of thing. Now as we're recording this
(24:43):
podcast right now, there are actual debates going on in
the Senate about whether the stig manufacturers are aiming at
younger customer basis. And this is similar to a controversy
that has happened in the past about cigarette companies traditional
cigarettes using cartoon characters with their next as part of
advertising campaign. Right, and I wanted to talk a little
(25:04):
bit about the history of tobacco and legislation at this
point because it's really interesting and and it comes back
into eat cigarettes in just a moment here. So okay,
medical research linking negative health effects to tobacco use goes
all the way back to nineteen thirty nine, and that's
when the first studies started being published about it. UM.
Tobacco products had to have warning labels on them starting
(25:27):
in nineteen sixties six and as as part of this
general push that was happening here in the US at
the time. We're talking all about the U S in
this in this section because we're from the United States.
Other countries have perhaps a similar timeline with vaguely different
results here and there, But at any rate, UM in one,
(25:49):
cigarette television and radio commercials were outlawed here when Nixon
signed the Cigarette Smoking Act into law. At the time,
tobacco was the leading product category that was featured in
television commercials, and I remember hearing radio commercials for cigarettes,
like if you ever listened to any old radio programming
where they incorporate yeah, it was almost always it was
(26:12):
it was a soap or a cigarette, or some form
of hair product. Um. The use of cartoon characters to
market tobacco products wasn't banned until the nineteen nineties or
early two thousand's, but that was that wasn't legislation as
much as it was part of this multi hundred billion
(26:33):
dollars settlement that the entire tobacco industry came to in
a series of lawsuits that were levied at it by
state governments looking for reparation for healthcare costs. Yeah, it
was one of those things where they said, well, we're
already going to have to pay all this money. We
don't want to fight this battle about whether or not
we're marketing to kids. And when we're talking about the
(26:54):
SIGs marketing to kids, remember when I mentioned all those flavors.
There are senators who are saying things like you should
not be marketing certain types of flavors because they are
flavors that are appealing specifically to children, things like candy
flavor cherry and cotton candy and etcetera, etcetera. And Uh,
part of part of the reason that all of my
goth friends were really upset in the early two thousands
(27:15):
was that stuff like clove cigarettes were outlawed. You know,
that was part of that legislation, part of that settlement
that prevented that was hoping to prevent youth from picking
up this habit or tobacco companies from marketing to youth
and and the cigarettes right are not under the same restriction,
and there's a growing number of commercials for them on
the air. So a lot of detractors are suggesting the
(27:37):
tobacco companies are going to start using this market to
get younger generations addicted to their products. Um And indeed,
the tobacco industry is officially getting into the east cigarette market.
Camel maker Reynolds American is taking its views brand East
cigarette to the national market starting June tween. We're recording
(27:58):
this podcast, by the way, on June nineteen, and Marlboro
maker Newmark will have its own called Mark ten, out
by the end of the year. Now, the FDA is
still debating about whether or not it will start to
impose regulations and oversee things like the cigarettes. I thought
that was kind of weird that that debate still going on,
(28:19):
because ultimately, again you're talking mainly about the delivery system
for nicotine, which is a known drug, So I would
think that would be a uh, something that would easily
fall under the purview of the FDA, But what do
I know. Lots of states, though, have already started imposing
regulations on East cigarettes. As of June thirty eight states
have restricted the sale of the cigarettes by by age
(28:41):
you know, kids can buy. I'm like a five year
old couldn't walk up to the counter, But what age
that is depends from state to state. UM A few
states have banned the use of the cigarettes anywhere that
regular cigarettes are banned, and some states have even started
taxing e cigarettes, although I think Minnesota is currently the
only state that's doing so at a comparable rate to
(29:02):
that of regular cigarettes. Right. So, again, the other thing
we're ending here is that using the SIGs to to
get yourself off of smoking regular cigarettes may or may
not work. We don't know. The studies are inconclusive and
it and we just don't know. So it may sound
like a lot of the stuff we've been saying have
(29:22):
all been negatives about the cigarettes, but really what we're
saying is that we don't have enough information to draw
any conclusions one way or the other. It would be
it would be premature for us to say the cigarettes
are purely bad and no one should use them. It
would also be equally premature for us to say the
cigarettes are a much safer alternative to any other type
of smoking. And if you're trying to get off smoking,
(29:42):
it's a great way of doing that. We just can't
say those things and and science can't say those things yet.
You know, if you're an adult and you're smoker and
you are trying to stop smoking, then, because we love
you and we want you to continue listening to this
show for years and years and years to come, we
congratulate you, yes, um. And if you're trying to use
(30:03):
the cigrettes to do that, then we If that is
your method, then we wish you the absolute best, and
it may very well work for you. We just can't
say one way or the other. Yea. Yeah, But just
as a consumer, you know, always always try to be
intelligent about your decisions and listen to science when you can.
Right now, I'm hoping very much that that science will
(30:23):
get on it. Yeah, me too, and and have a
really more definitive answer for these questions so that people
can make responsible choices. That's that's ultimately what we want.
So thank you so much for writing in and asking
us the question. Remember, if you guys have any suggestions
for future episodes, maybe there's some other technology and you've
(30:44):
always wondered what the heck is the story behind that.
Let us know, send us a message on Facebook, Twitter
or Tumbler or handle it. All three is tech stuff
hs w our mythical email address should be tech stuff
at our stuff works dot com. That that should be
kicking in any now. The more frequently I bring it
up like that, the more likely someone will be motivated
(31:07):
to make sure it happens. Um, but yes, we are going.
We are still working on that. Uh Dan, who knows?
Maybe now it's working. Give it a shot, Send an
emails tex stuff at how stuff works dot com. Why
not what happens? Let's know on Twitter you don't hear
response and we will talk to you again really soon
(31:29):
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
at how stuff works dot com
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