Electronic Cigarettes and Their Advantages
The Advantages of Electronic Cigarettes
Smoking is increasingly being considered more and more antisocial due to increasing health concerns. We all know that smoking is bad for us, but we do it anyway. Successive governments have been steadily reducing the proportion of smokers through higher taxation and no smoking laws that make smoking less convenient. Rather than being a social activity, smoking is rapidly becoming an anti-social practice, permissible in increasingly limited places. Electronic cigarettes address this issue because they are far less harmful that tobacco based cigarettes as well as being cheaper to use. You can also use them in many places where smoking has been prohibited.
The government is also raising the duty on cigarettes at every opportunity making smoking much less affordable for a large section of society.
Cost Savings
Electronic cigarettes are a much more affordable alternative. It the spring of 2013 a pack of 20 cigarettes costs about £8 depending on your brand. By comparison a 10 ml bottle of e-liquid costs £4.99 and is the equivalent of 10 packets of cigarettes. That’s a Saving of £75 every 10 days if you are a 20 a day smoker.
Huge cost savings are one of the main reasons for the growing popularity in e-cigarette vaporisers.
The tobacco industry is a very powerful political force, fighting to protect their business interests. The UK government meanwhile is taking steps to ‘protect’ us from ourselves while having to address the needs and concerns of the tobacco industry.
There will no doubt be a time when cigarettes are outlawed completely, but because it is such a massive industry, this can’t be done overnight. It is more of a phasing out of an industry over a few decades than instantly closing it down.
Due to the significant cost savings that electronic cigarettes offer, people are switching from tobacco to e-liquid in rapidly growing numbers. This is naturally making the tobacco industry quite nervous as they can see their sales being eroded at an alarming rate.
As a consequence of this uptake in e-cigarette usage, the tobacco industry is using its considerable political weight to fight back. There are several ongoing legal cases as well as Parliamentary debates about electronic cigarettes.
If usage continues to grow we can expect to see cigarette companies developing their own e-cigarettes in order to maintain their hold over the marketplace. We can additionally expect to see taxation on e-liquid so that the government can protect its current revenue streams.
Because electronic cigarettes are inherently less harmful than tobacco products you would expect the government to endorse their usage, but when there is billions of £’s at stake, such logic goes out of the window. While telling us that they have our health and well being at the heart of their policy decisions, government is more about generating revenue as it is protecting us from dangerous products.
We have all known since the 1960’s that cigarettes are dangerous. In fact they are far more harmful that banned materials such as Asbestos for example. I guess the Asbestos industry didn’t have the political clout needed at the time?!
If the Government wanted to protect us from ourselves they could outlaw tobacco based cigarettes today, so the fact that they don’t demonstrates to me that this is not about our health, rather it is about money, taxation and political pressure.
E-Cigarette Benefits & Advantages
– up to 1,000x less chemicals and Carcinogens
– no passive smoke
– can be used indoors in many public places
– no tar or carbon monoxide
– cost savings
– no smoke smell on clothes
– safe to use around children
– variety of pleasant flavoured eliquids to choose from
– no fag breath
– no fire risk
– no ashtrays
