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War on cigarettes is never-ending and now we have a new battlefield and two competitive camps: e-cigarettes and classic cigs. Vaping an electronic cigarette once in a while is believed to be much less harmful than the classic habit of holding that elegant stick in your hand and carelessly pumping nicotine and tar into your lungs.
To see how people perceive the shift from classic smoking to electronic vaping, a group of researchers asked more than 1.400 subjects over twenty what they thought about the new alternative to the old habit. Results showed that more than 10% of study subjects thought e-cigs are less harmful than tobacco ones, while 4,6% thought electronic smoking is pretty much as harmful as retrieving tar and other chemicals from classic tobacco. At the same time, 10% of the tested public thought e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking while 5, 4% of them thought that it’s just an easy replacement for an old habit that dies hard.
There are presently 2.6 million e-cigarette smokers in UK only, according to a report released by Darlington Times. In 2014, figures looked slightly different, with only 2, 1 million e-cig smokers all across the UK. It’s quite a jump in the numbers for a single year, as it seems classic smokers slowly shift towards the friendliest smoking alternative.
Electronic cigarette usage has increased among ex-smokers from 4, 5% to 6, 7%, slowly but surely taking over the tobacco markets. At the same time, non-smokers pick-up an e-cigarette 0,2% of the time.
Even if electronic cigarettes popularity is on constant increase, making us believe that it will help us quit smoking for good, there’s still a serious lack of research when it comes to the downsides of it. We are not yet sure that this is considerably less harmful than classic tobacco, even if it appears to be so.
However, some people started raising their voices and asking if e-cigs are indeed a good alternative. In 2014, 15% of UK population believed that electronic smoking is as harmful as the bad old habit and the numbers increased this year to 22%. Quite a jump, we would say, and this calls for some serious studies in this matter.
Classic smokers are most skeptical about electronic cigarettes. That strange looking fluid that makes nicotine vapors and throws them into our lungs is pretty much awkward, what else is there than a harmless substance that kicks the addiction out of our lungs?
Image Source: nbcnews.com
