“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.” – Tom Waits
As a conscious human living in America you have probably been aware for some time now that smoking is bad. It increases the incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, birth defects and dead puppies. But young adults of the 18-to-25 variety – especially those of the lady persuasion – are smoking more than any other age group, even though they’ve grown up with the most complete access to information on smoking’s attendant health risks. Seriously, is this because of Mad Men?
Health organizations and anti-smoking activists have herded American smokers out of the public sphere, hustling them away from parks, bars, restaurants, airports, federal buildings, and malls, generally for the greater good. Fewer smokers lighting-up in fewer places is good news for public health and sanitation. Yet while the number of American smokers has decreased almost by half since the 1960s, the number of young adults who smoke has remained steady for the last decade. At a certain point, anti-smoking ads featuring hundreds of ‘dead’ baby dolls stop being effective and start being ridiculous. Demonizing smoking as being its own separate brand of evil (as opposed to obesity or binge drinking) doesn’t do much to reduce smoking, although it does go a long way toward making nonsmokers feel morally superior.
Accepting that for a certain subset of the population smoking will most likely always be a popular recreational activity may be more useful in reducing its environmental impact than trying to shame smokers into hiding. The electronic cigarette, or ‘e-cigarette’, a reusable, battery-powered nicotine-delivery system is a definite step in the right direction. It’s still chocked full of all those hard-to-pronounce chemicals like acetylpyrazine and terpineol (in other words, it’s still not good for you), and its legal status in many countries is still under review. It vaporizes a liquid nicotine cartridge (rather than using fire, as a traditional cigarette), has no disposable filters to end up in the trash or on the sidewalk, and comes recommended as a better alternative to cigarettes, pipes and cigars by the American Association of Public Health Physicians.
The e-cigarette isn’t green by any stretch of the imagination. Quitting smoking, or not starting at all, is still ideal. But anything that reduces the incidence of second-hand smoke and hazardous litter is something worth investigating. Plus, you’ll still look totally cool puffing away. Don Draper might just approve.
Image: SuperFantastic