An excellent radio program from earlier this year called ‘Inside Health’ discussing the implications of electronic cigarettes. For once, this discussion is actually very fair. Just so you know, the ecigarette discussion ends at about the 20 minute mark.

BBC Radio 4 Electronic Cigarette Broadcast

So what do you think? What are your views about ecigarettes, whether positive or negative? Let us know.

This article is by Paul Bergen of tobaccoharmreduction.org and is reprinted here for discussion purposes only:

Editor’s Note: This really has nothing to do with electronic or tobacco cigarettes at all, but it is still both very amusing and informative. I’m pretty sure everyone will enjoy this:

Electronic cigarettes come in at a time when the ways of using tobacco and/or nicotine today don’t exhibit quite the imagination when compared to days of yore.

Nowadays the choices are: inhaling, chewing and/or a little bit of snuffing.

Just a few mere centuries ago, the range included drinking liquids of steeped tobacco leaves, applying tobacco poultices, and engaging in enemas. Typically the last 2 were reserved in treating medical conditions and the last, tobacco enemas, was embraced by Europeans as a legitimate medical treatment and actually persisted for quite some time.

Since American Indians employed enemas in their medical treatments even before contact, the Europeans followed. And just as Europeans appropriated the consumption of tobacco by smoking pipes, cigars and snuffing, so too they introduced the practice of using tobacco smoke in rectal devices known as clysters….

The tobacco clyster, using either smoke or an infusion, depending on whose authority was being followed, was widely practiced well into the nineteenth century..Tobacco clysters were used in the hopes of treating ailments of the colon and the bowel. They were also recommended in attempts to resuscitate drowned individuals, as well as those who had suffocated, had convulsions and fits, or were frozen. (pgs 84-5: Goodman’s Tobacco in History)

You can see the bellows for the smoke in the fancy kit above.

Reading this passage reminded me of reading another years ago in an alternative health guide suggesting that, if someone was having a heart attack, you should immediately force a tablespoon of cayenne powder down their throat. Rather than sounding like good advice it sounded more like adding insult to injury (though having your tongue on fire might distract you from the chest pains).

Though today there is a thriving business in colonics, nobody seems to be working very hard to bring back the smoke enema. If they should, the anti-smoking folks would have to go back to the word farm to come up with a catchy term for the health risk… or would they be happy to leave it as ‘first-hand smoke’ (of which it neither, of course)?

No doubt once you’ve unclenched your kiester after getting your clyster you would be endangering the others in the vicinity with a lesser-known variation of second-hand smoke.

Last Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the FDA’s request to have the entire court review a December decision by a three-judge panel that went against the agency. In December of 2010, the court found that as long as electronic cigarettes aren’t marketed as a way to treat or cure a disease, i.e., smoking cessation aids, these products should be regulated as medicine products, and not as a drug or medical device.

“We are extremely pleased with the court’s decision to not rehear the case,” says Kevin Frija, President and CEO of Vapor Corp. “The government’s re-hearing request was unanimously denied, emphasizing the force of the panel’s original decision last December. This decision should finally resolve any lingering doubt which has challenged the electronic industry for quite some time now. There are over 1 billion smokers in the world today, and recreational tobacco is a $100 billion+ a year industry. Electronic cigarettes provide an alternative to traditional tobacco smoking, offering a number of advantages over traditional cigarettes — we believe it best to move this discussion outside of the courtroom,” added Mr. Frija.

Two studies were released on e-cigarettes earlier this week measuring their popularity and effectiveness. The studies came as e-cigarette fans and e-cigarette companies celebrated a recent victory in the appellate courts which prevented the FDA from banning the popular products. The studies show a growing trend of e-cigarette users in the country and survey e-cigarette users to determine its effectiveness and popularity.

One study from John Ayers, a public health doctoral candidate from John Hopkins, used the readily accessible keyword trending tool known as Google Insight to see how popular e-cigarettes were on search engines, and how they compared to similar devices. E-cigarettes and related terms have had a huge influx of searches from 2008 to 2010 and rank #1 in smoking cessation item related terms.

The other study from Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel surveyed 5,000 e-cigarette smokers to see what their experience was like six months after receiving their electronic cigarettes. Their results were 49% of people said they had quit smoking for an unspecified amount of time and 31% said they were not smoking at all after six months. The study concluded by stating, “if proven safe, e-cigarettes may be a potentially important tool for harm reduction……and worthy of further investigation”.

These types of studies are backed up by the experiences shared by e-cigarette smokers around the country who think this product is a better alternative than traditional cigarettes.

Electric cigarettes not only offer tremendous health benefits to their users, but typically allow for huge monetary savings over a tobacco cigarette, as well. Input your information below to immediately see the savings you could be enjoying by switching to an e-cig.