What I read
According to “E-cigarettes can be key weapon against smoking, say MPs” (2018), the science and technology MPs' committee has released a report about e-cigarettes suggesting that many rules and regulations, that were meant for normal cigarettes, should be revised due to the fact that e-cigarettes are totally different from cigarettes and also much less harmful regarding current evidence, although many public spaces such as hospitals, buses, or subways usually prohibit vaping the same as smoking. They even proposed that e-cigarettes should be categorized as a medical tool for quitting smoking. While studies about e-cigarettes have been conducted, but the benefits are still inconclusive. There are many responses to the report on twitter, some people don’t mind vaping in public, while some people strongly opposed to the idea.
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My response
As I expected, I’ve learned a new word, ‘vaping’, from this article. After I looked at the oxford dictionary, I found out that ‘‘vaping’ was newly invented in 1980, specifically for e-cigarette. Both vaping and smoking look similar to me in terms of action, and that made me wonder why they had to coin a term for such activity. Perhaps, they might want to imply that e-cigarette is not the same as normal cigarette because most people perceive ‘smoking’ as something unhealthy, so for e-cigarette users they can use ‘to vape e-cigarette’ instead of ‘to smoke e-cigarette’’. And if you read the article, you will see that they used ‘vape’ a lot when they talking about e-cigarettes, while rarely used ‘smoke’. Could this be the real intention of inventing this new word?
To be honest, after I read this article it made me suspect whether there is something fishy going on; I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that there are some big tobacco companies pull strings behind this scheme. If I were one of MPs committee, I couldn’t come up with any good motivations why I should raise issues about e-cigarette regulations in the first place without being lobbied by someone. Especially when you look at the reason they use to support e-cigarettes, all they said is just it’s less harmful than conventional cigarettes. In fact, there is no such thing as a harmless substance, even water can be toxic if you drink too much let alone excessive vaping for long-term. Furthermore, I wonder what the benefits of vaping really are. If someone successfully gave up cigarettes by using e-cigarettes instead, then should they quit e-cigarettes afterward? To me, it sounds like recommending someone to stop drinking whiskey to drink beer. What good can come out of this? You just change from whiskey addiction to beer addiction, but you are still an alcoholic. The same goes for e-cigarette case, changing from cigarette addict to e-cigarette addict. Is this really a good thing to do?
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My question
If someone you know would like to quit smoking, would you recommend e-cigarettes to them?
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Reference
- E-cigarettes can be key weapon against smoking, say MPs. (2018, August 17). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45212444
Thank you Teng. I've only ever seen people vaping a couple of times, and I agree that it looks a bit odd. I think the first time I saw it was a group outside Chamchuri Square a few years ago. The billows of smoke coming from them were very impressive.
ReplyDeleteI generally think that less government regulation is a good thing. If people know the risks, it is properly there decision whether to engage in risky behaviour or not, and as Teng reminds us with his water example, everything is poisonous in a large enough dose, and people do sometimes overdose on water, although not nearly so many as overdose on alcohol and other popular drugs of addiction. But it it's morally acceptable for the law to criminalize things because they are harmful, then not only alcohol and cigarettes, both more dangerous drugs than things like marijuana and perhaps even yaa baa, then exactly the same reason requires that chocolate cake and other high-sugar foods should be illegal to produce, to deal and to use.
Since e-cigarettes do seem much less harmful than their traditional ancestors, I would definitely recommend them to someone who wanted to get off the more harmful traditional product, just as I recommend high cocoa chocolate to the high-sugar stuff that fills the shelves of many supermarkets and other convenience stores.
But the best solution is to drink more coffee, which is healthy and delicious in its pure black form freshly brewed without any strange things like milk or sugar added.
4:12 PM — afternoon coffee time.
The word vaping wasn't new to me, but I hadn't looked it up in the dictionary, and was surprised to learn, as Teng tells us, that it has been around since the 1980s. I would have guessed a much later origin, around the turn of the century.
DeleteI like your sentence, recommending someone to stop drinking whiskey to drink beer. From my perspective, to quit smoking will succeed since they have the highest inner to struggle. For example, their babies born can be one factor to make their decisions out of cigarette. On the contrary, attempting to quit smoke by paying something instead is not efficient solution even that the e-cigarette is looked to be better and used for alleviate smoking. Because I believe in setting your positive soul and mindset first as the former, then the latter will matter relied on you.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you explain the details from the article, its very understand to the people who read them.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I think e-cigarette are as dangerous as the cigarette. No matter how much they're trying to quit smoking, they might get addicted to the new ones