iThe answer is short: no.
At some point in every smoker’s life, we are told that smoking cigarettes are not safe and they will damage our health over time. We are told that cigarettes will damage our teeth, our lungs, and cause cancer. We are even told that the cigarettes will kill us. I myself am told this quite frequently. And to be fair, the individuals telling us this are not incorrect.
When you hear these statements from a well-being friend or relative, there is often an instinct to stop and consider the possibility of quitting. I, too, have considered quitting on many occasions, but I’m never sure where or how to begin. Quitting cold turkey isn’t an option, because that’s too difficult. However, on those occasions when I stop by the local convenience store to pick up cigarettes, I’ll inevitably walk by the E-Cigarette section.
There’s a certain lure involved with the E-cigarettes. I have tried them, and at the time I justified the purchase by reasoning that it was not an actual cigarette, and therefore must be safer. You shouldn’t believe this “safer” reasoning, however—that’s what the E-Cigarette companies want you to believe, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
In fact, the safety of an E-Cigarette was recently questioned in a civil lawsuit in California. While headed to the airport with her husband, Mrs. Jennifer Ries made the decision to charge her E-Cigrette via the USB port in her vehicle. While it was charging, Mrs. Ries observed a liquid dripping from the battery, and stated that it smelled like nail polish remover. She claimed that, without further warning, the E-cigarette battery exploded, and caused chemicals from the battery to land on her skin. As a result, she suffered from second degree burns to her legs, buttocks, and hands. These burns also resulted in permanent scars to her body.
During the trial, evidence was presented which showed that the E-Cigarettes failed to warn consumers that plugging into a USB port with too much voltage could cause the chemicals in a lithium ion battery to explode. The jury returned a $1.9 million verdict on behalf of the Ries family.
Unfortunately, what happened to Mrs. Ries can happen to any of us. The E-cigarette industry has only been around since 2007, and still remains largely unregulated. These E-Cigarette manufacturers want us to buy into their logic: it’s not a cigarette, so it must be safe. The Ries’ case is the perfect example to prove that this is false logic.
