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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

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EDITORIAL: Drag from the future

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They’re not your mother’s cigarettes. In fact, when she was blowing smoke like a chimney in the girls’ high school bathroom, she probably never imagined how far the tobacco industry would transcend.

This 4/20, we’re talking about a legal type of blazin’ up: e-cigarettes. But before we praise the trend, the Editorial Board has one question: is it healthy?

A New York Times article reported Thursday that the use of e-cigarettes among middle school and high school students tripled from the previous year. The percentage of high school students who use them is up to 13 percent now, which beats out traditional cigarettes that have been on a steady decline.

We’re pretty sure this can be explained by how they’re advertised. They’re not harmful to the environment, they don’t cause secondhand smoke and a lot of them are USB chargeable. What more could a young, worldly person ask for?

And let’s not forget the variety; flavors are more diverse than the rainbow.

Pancake-flavored vapor? Smells like teen marketing. Unless Baby Boomers have an unusual preference for ?pancakes, we’re quite sure the assortment of new flavors for e-cigarettes are meant to entice younger people to smoke them.

The buck doesn’t stop there. The popularity of hookah bars will tell you the old-age Persian waterpipe is on the rise. But before you pass that hose, take a minute to look at the facts.

According to the American Lung Association, research suggests one hookah session is like smoking 10 to 40 cigarettes in one sitting.

The National Institutes of Health supported a study that found a hookah sit-in offers more than just conversation with friends and rants against “the man”: 1.7 times the nicotine, 6.5 times the carbon monoxide and 46.5 times the tar of one cigarette.

Honestly, we have no idea how safe e-cigarettes are. Unlike hookah, which has been around for centuries and is still significantly unhealthy, there hasn’t been a lot of research on the long-term health effects of e-cigs.

The Food and Drug Administration has only started to begin the slow, grueling process of regulating them. The ball’s already begun to roll with e-cigs, and much like with the rise of cigarettes, we’ve lit up and promoted before ?knowing what it’s doing to our bodies.

We’ve traded in the manly American Cowboy Marlboro man for sexy twerking music videos with e-cigarette endorsements, like Lily Allen’s “Hard Out Here.” It’ll probably seem just as sad to see these new ads from hindsight, just like when we look at Joe Camel.

We’re not here to crash the party. If you’re looking for someone to bust you for your trips at the hookah bar, a quick call home will do just that.

But the Editorial Board believes history repeats itself simply because humans tend to make the same mistakes. Putting stuff into our bodies and playing the unsuspecting field mouse isn’t what we’re about. That’s how cigarettes had such a detrimental impact on the generations before us. Ignorance is bliss, but it doesn’t mean it’s healthy.

Don’t jump on the ‘healthy alternative’ bandwagon before we know what this substance actually does. If you’re going to smoke, don’t pretend it’s the holier-than-thou substitute to regular cigarettes. Otherwise, you’re just ?blowing smoke.

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