E-cigarettes have been in the market for multiple years now. Still, there are no fixed regulations to guide their manufacture, no proper standardization of the various brands and the FDA hasn’t yet framed ground rules to monitor their production and marketing.

If that isn’t alarming enough for someone new to the whole e-cigarette phenomena and for the casual smoker looking up on starting an e-cig habit, there are now weekly reports from scientific labs about the e-cigarette, almost all of which seem to be negative.

If a product truly is that harmful, wouldn’t the FDA have already pulled it from the market? Yet, the e-cigarette user statistics is actively on the rise, with more smokers jumping on the bandwagon every day and the regulatory boards have done nothing to stop it, despite what seem to be overwhelming negative reports.

Accurate or exaggerated?

Just a while ago, there were loud reports proclaiming how the e-cigarette smoker’s immunity is badly compromised by their liquid nicotine vaporizing habit. Reports in bold headlines claimed that a type of highly virulent bacteria which is harmful to the body, called by the layman as “superbugs”, are actually made stronger and more resistant to antibiotics in the average e-cigarette user (who call themselves ‘vapers’).

Then there was the report that likened liquid nicotine to poison. According to that study, liquid nicotine exposure, especially for children, could be very highly toxic and may lead to severe nausea, increase in cell toxicity and even death in little children.

It even went on to say that doses as low as one heaping tablespoon of this e-liquid could cause severe increase in cell toxicity and may prove fatal even to an adult.

Lack of regulation

While these reports do stem from truth, most of it is due to the lack of regulation. The same brand of e-cigarette purchased by two different consumers can have differing battery and e-liquid vaporizing capacities, which may lead to unhealthy and increased levels of exposure to e-liquids in one consumer while another consumer vaping (term used to refer to e-cig puffing) on the same brand is relatively safe.

However, the reports and their loud, bold titles proclaiming how harmful e-cigarettes are do exaggerate a little bit. For example, the superbug report. The footnote in the conclusion talked about how in conventional paper-and-tobacco cigarettes, the smoker’s immunity is even more compromised and the bugs are even more resistant and strong, than in the body of the average vaper. Which essentially means that e-cigs aren’t causing all that much more damage than an normal smoking habit. So why the misleading titles?

The e-liquid scare

The liquid nicotine report does have its value. Liquid nicotine is a carcinogen and the e-cigarette phenomena has opened up its accessibility, made it a substance to be found in a day to day home where before it wasn’t.

Because of e-cigarettes, e-liquids like liquid nicotine now come packaged in easy-to-use vials and are even sold over-the-counter in many pharmacies and stores. That could prove ill-advised and dangerous.

So yes, the reports do have truth in them and the e-cigarette cannot be strongly termed beneficial or harmful one way or another, because it seems to be a fusion of both. However, the media hyping up and exaggerating the harmful effects alone screams of inside agenda against e-cigarettes rather than an objective discussion of a new electronic invention.