Can electronic cigarettes revolutionize the status of tobacco and traditional cigarettes in our postmodern society? Perhaps a new day for cigarettes is dawning in the digital age. It certainly has been a long time in coming.
Tobacco has long been a staple crop in Western (and global) culture through the most recent centuries. In the New World, brave interlopers settling the Carolinas in the late 1500s eventually helped tobacco become a fact of life in the United States of America. The Native American Indians already had their peace pipes. Sir Walter Raleigh is remembered as a soldier, spy and explorer who helped to make tobacco popular in Great Britain. Moreover, Raleigh financed a colony on Roanoke Island, and he was eventually imprisoned and executed for treason.
Since then, the celebration of tobacco has ebbed and flowed. The “Mad Men” era of the 1950s might have constituted the apex of commercial (traditional) cigarettes. This despite the dirty ashtrays, feted breath, smell of smoke on your clothing and bedding and other annoyances. For many, the idea of dating a smoker became a deal-breaker, even back then. Still, smoking was popular, and it was something everyone did – or so it seemed. That was until the medical community and consumer advocates got their act together concerning teenaged smoking and providing warning labels.
Much has changed in the tobacco world since then. Hostility to tobacco and tobacco-related products has exploded almost exponentially. (This does not include the ban on the highly coveted cigars once imported to American shores from the island outpost of Cuba.) Even Major League Baseball has been forced to address health concerns regarding chewing tobacco. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City became an anti-smoking ordinance champion. Non-smokers don’t seem to mind cigarette smoking being banned from the public sphere, as well as many private enclaves.
Estimating that there are 320 million Americans, about 40 million of them still smoke – despite the long-establish dangerous link to lung and other cancers. Smoking damages every human organ. Around 20 percent of all deaths in the U.S. are related in some fashion to smoking.
But now e-cigarettes and the brave new world of “vaping” are changing the equation for smokers. By 2013, more than a quarter-million American middle- and high-school students who had never smoked a traditional tobacco cigarette had smoked an e-cigarette. This was three times as many since 2011 – just two years prior – according to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control. (As an ancillary cultural product, “Saturday Night Live’s” skit on “e-meth” provides a silly yet disturbing look at a tangential genre. Watch it here.)
What makes e-cigarettes and “vaping” a possibly preferable alternative to traditional cigarettes? The chart above sets out the most salient facts. Throat and mouth cancer are terrible fates one would not wish upon their very worst enemies. Roughly 70 percent of smokers say they’d like to give up cigarettes. We all know quitting cigarettes, like giving up alcohol after a lifetime of binging, is easier said than done. Enter the e-cigarettes. Sales of such products have risen above $3 billion annually. Even with cutbacks in the U.S. market, cigarette makers could still reap great profits in nations like South Korea and Vietnam. E-Cigarettes are a game-changer and market disrupter. More than 20 percent of regular smokers say they’ve dabbled with electronic cigarettes. That number is sure to increase.
How does “vaping work?” The device heats up a liquid which is then “vaped.” Regular tobacco is not being burned, per se. Forget your matches. Vapers don’t need to ask for a light because a lithium battery provides the magic. Lithium is a “rare earth metal” that is coveted by mainland China and is uniquely available in nations like Afghanistan. Without access to such metals, the postmodern world would be a very different place in terms of high technology.
The tip of an e-cig has an LED, or light-emitting diodes. They are similar to the red glow seen on a digital alarm clock. First produced in China, e-cigs are a hit in the U.S. market as a unique innovation. There’s still nicotine and other chemicals in an e-cig, but some say that’s part of its allure. Little sins and vices all have their price. In this life, you pay as you go. Sometimes, you pay with all you have.
We live in a dangerous world. Fukushima, nuclear waste, pollution, the “Colony Collapse Disorder” of the honeybees and other ills inform the daily headlines. Alcohol, illegal narcotics and prescriptions drugs all can be dangerous. For example, ecstasy induces hypothermia. Any use of cocaine is a life-threatening event. Drunken drivers kill with impunity on America’s roads and highways. Yet with e-cigarettes, does America have a chance to turn the proverbial corner toward a healthier trajectory in relation to tobacco?
What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? None other than famed author Stephen King speculated about this notion in his epic teleplay, “The Storm of the Century.” Watch it here. Walking in the footsteps of tobacco pioneer Sir Walter Raleigh, let us also ask what happened to all of the people who have disappeared from tobacco-related cancer. If the makers and promoters of e-cigarettes have their way, in future centuries, a similar set of haunting theories may arise about how the linkage between traditional cigarettes and cancer also vanished without a trace.
