Banning E-Cigarettes Might Be More Pressing Than Raising The Legal Smoking Age

Banning E-cigarettes might be more pressing than raising the legal smoking age to 21 because it gets more people hooked on nicotine.

Raising the legal smoking age is an extremely important measure that needs to be taken by the authorities nationwide and even worldwide. Hawaii has recently raised the smoking age to 21 and has become the first American state to make the change.

This is expected to be an extremely effective method of cutting down the number of teenagers who start smoking. Since there is extensive data that suggests that as many as 9 out of 10 smokers have taken up the habit during their teenage years, then it makes sense to make them wait a little longer until they are deemed mature enough to make their decisions regarding smoking.

It does make sense to a certain extent, but only from the standpoint regarding the necessity of lowering the smokers’ rates. When the issue of maturity is considered to be decisive factor in this measure, the situation becomes tense to say the lease. There are many more things that an 18-year-old is allowed to to that require him to think like an adult, like driving, buying a house or enrolling in the army.

If these things are available to teenagers because they are considered to be mature enough to decide if they want to be a part of them, than why should smoking be any different? Isn’t having a lower legal age for admittance in the military than for smoking promoting a double standard?

But while this issue is being heavily debated, younger and younger people are taking up the habit of vaping, which is extremely dangerous itself. While there are some laws that regulate the use of e-cigarettes, it is still pretty easy to find loopholes.

Initially, e-cigarettes were depicted as being safe, but the most important piece of information that has somehow fallen through the cracks is that e-cigarettes are safer than regular cigarettes, but not a safe product themselves.

After depicting their ingredients as natural in the beginning, came the avalanche of incredibly tasty flavors, such as gummy bears and cotton candy, that has totally won over the young population. And it seems that the road was pretty short from a few people taking up vaping to it becoming widely practiced among young people.

It even became associated with being cool, and extremely fast. All of a sudden, every cool person was suddenly surrounded by thick white vapor and had en entire collection of neat tricks.

But unfortunately, no matter how good cotton candy vaping tastes like, it still contains nicotine, just as regular cigarettes do and it still contains chemicals that are very bad news for your body, since they have carcinogenic effects themselves. So, instead of introducing a better alternative to smoking, the e-cigarette production companies have gotten a lot of people hooked on tasty nicotine vapor.

While it is still being debated whether e-cigarettes are a form of gateway drugs that lead people towards regular cigarettes, the main issue is that they are getting them addicted to nicotine. Furthermore, a young person is more likely to try an e-cigarette that tastes like taffy, rather than a regular cigarette, since very few smokers depict their first experience as tasty.

It remains to be seen just how strict the law will be with e-cigarettes in the future, but it is becoming more and more clear that the issue has taken massive proportions and that it needs to regulated before it creates an entirely different type of nicotine addicts.
Image Source: pureorganicvapors.com