Beginning in the Fall of 2013, KCC will be an entirely smoke-free campus. The campus was mostly smoke free — except for a few designated areas — during the 2012-2013 school year. Now, you must be off-campus to even think about lighting that cigarette, blue lights included.
Don’t even think about it! Mahalo. Photo: Dusty Behner
According to the office of the chancellor’s email sent out March 6, “KCC Tobacco Products Policy Task Force included e-cigarettes in its prohibition of the use of all tobacco products … in all areas of the campus beginning Fall 2013.”
Don’t believe me? Use the tool at the top to search your hawaii.edu email for “e-cigarettes” and a message from the Chancellor’s office will come up.
Everybody knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for you and second hand smoke is bad for the people around you, but aren’t e-cigs supposed to be safe? They are marketed as the safe alternative to smoking cigarettes and a smoking cessation tool, but are they really, truly, and for-realsies safe?
Asbestos use in houses, lead paint, CFCs (the stuff that used to be in aerosol cans that ruins the ozone), and BPA in plastic water bottles were all thought to be safe at one point. After years of testing, we know now that all of those things are either carcinogens or super bad for us and the environment.
According to Discovery Health, e-cigs haven’t had enough testing done to support the health claims that they make. Uh oh.
The Discover Health website writes that the FDA is conducting studies about e-cigs and the effects of inhaling pure nicotine. Not enough is known about adverse effects of it, since e-cigarettes are so new.
There is an entire about.com website dedicated to the invention of e-cigs. It says they were first invented by a pharmacist in China in 2003 who then began selling them in 2004.
Along with the possible adverse health effects of nicotine, the FDA is also concerned about quality control of e-cig products. Because they don’t contain tobacco, e-cigs are currently not regulated by US Federal tobacco laws or anyone else.
Furthermore, Discovery Health says some manufacturers might not be disclosing all of the information about the kinds of chemicals in their products.
About.com says that a “(t)oxic substance found in an examination of e-cigs by the FDA included things like diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical used in antifreeze.”
I know you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah, but regular cigarettes have tons of bad chemicals in them, including formaldehyde, so this must be better since they’ve only found this one bad chemical. I just need my nicotine fix, at least this is a little better for me.”
The problem is, you might not be getting the fix that you need.
The FDA is also looking into the amount of nicotine that is actually in the e-cigs because it might be different from what the label says they contain. Remember how they aren’t being regulated by anyone?
KapCC is not the only place to ban the use of e-cigs. Australia, Canada, Israel and Mexico have all banned them, according to Discovery Health.
If Mexico and Israel, some seriously dangerous places to live, have banned e-cigs, that means they can’t be good.
Also, the companies that sell e-cigs have dropped the claims that they are smoking cessation tools according to Discovery Health. Nicotine is extremely addictive, and since no one is regulating e-cigs, they may have more nicotine they claim. This way, companies can get people hooked faster, and nicotine will have a stronger hold on customers and their wallets than it already did.
The upside to e-cigs is that they emit no foul odors, you can take Stephen Dorff’s word for it, the blue e-cigs commercial actor. Since e-cigs are not regulated they can be purchased on the Internet by minors with no legal ramifications and because they leave no foul odors, Mom or Tutu will have a harder time stopping the behavior.
My mom caught me and put an end to my high school smoking days because she smelled it on me. Now, even the most responsible parents will have a hard time keeping their kids away from nicotine.
While you may not offend your fellow classmates with second hand smoke or by stinking like an ashtray in class any more now that you’ve got that expensive e-cig, you’ve gotta wait until you pull out of the parking lot to push the button this fall.