E-cigarettes may be bad, but cancer is worse
By Zuzanna Koziatek
After the Trump administration vowed to ban flavored e-cigarettes earlier this September, an avalanche of new measures against them surfaced. Starting in October, New York will no longer permit the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, giving retailers two weeks to get all flavors, aside from menthol and tobacco, off their shelves. Walmart also recently announced that it will no longer carry e-cigarettes.
There’s a problem with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eradicating all e-cigarette flavors: it’s really screwing us over — and by us, I mean the millions of people who used to be dedicated cigarette smokers before discovering devices like the JUUL.
I am 24 years old and have been smoking menthol cigarettes since I was 15. After spending one long decade with the utmost devotion to Camel cigarettes — and I mean it when I say that this has been my longest committed relationship — I finally moved on to the JUUL.
This is a relatively new development in my life, as I only made this transition in September of this year. It hasn’t even been two weeks, and now the government is telling me to leave my new, supportive boyfriend to go back to my toxic, controlling ex-boyfriend?
Granted, there have been a handful of vaping-related deaths across the United States, but no one is able to point to a specific ingredient or manufacturer as the cause. I’m not suggesting that e-cigarettes are healthy. However, they are healthier and help you transition away from cigarettes, which contain way more carcinogenic chemicals.
When I do go back to the quite recent times spent every single morning with a cup of coffee and cigarettes outside, inhaling and exhaling and anxiously puffing away my precious life some more, the idea of this ban just boils my blood.
Every single morning for the past decade has looked very much the same for me. I was poisoning myself with clouds on top of clouds of cigarettes, coughing and gagging and reeking of smoke. And I have long hair, so yes, indeed, I reeked of smoke. I also woke up with a smoker’s cough, and this no longer seems to be an issue.
Why can’t we ban something like McDonald’s or Burger King if we are going to be hysterical over a few deaths? Give me a break.
Ultimately, please let me live my life free of cigarettes.