Before I began college, I couldn’t have identified an electronic cigarette if I saw one.
To my surprise, during my first semester at San Jose State University, I sat next to a student who was openly smoking an e-cigarette in my community health class. Since I didn’t know much about e-cigarettes, he was nice enough to explain to me how they work.
While smoking a traditional cigarette in a classroom is unthinkable, much less a health class, e-cigarettes have emerged as a strangely acceptable practice.
This trend will erode the progress that has been made over decades in the fight against tobacco.
Although I always knew cigarettes could kill, the “truth campaign” helped me learn just how far the tobacco companies were willing to go to keep people addicted. These days it seems that health organizations are fighting the same battles they did years ago, but this time against e-cigarettes.
I’m taking notice because now it’s personal. They are targeting my generation. This is about teens and young adults, those who will write the next chapter of California’s history.
Have you noticed that e-cigarette marketing is more pervasive than traditional cigarettes, and that the ads seem to be speaking to you specifically? That’s because e-cigarettes are heavily advertised and targeting young adults through television and radio – channels where cigarette ads were banned more than 40 years ago. They can even pass out samples at concerts, bars and festivals.
What I’ve come to learn is that of the more than $80 million spent on e-cigarette advertising in 2013, the vast majority came from Big Tobacco, according to the State Health Officer’s Report on e-Cigarettes. This is because they own most of the e-cigarette brands now. Lorillard, the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, bought Blu, the clear market leader in e-cigarettes.
In the last three years, the amount of e-cigarette advertising rose more than 1,200 percent, clearly showing that the tobacco industry is investing in a new market, according to the report. They are aiming to recruit the next generation of smokers to replace the one they are killing off now with traditional tobacco cigarettes.
And there’s a lot they’re not telling us about what’s actually in e-cigarettes.
E-cigarette companies are currently not required to disclose the ingredients or toxins in their products. There are no safety or health standards associated with e-cigarettes. Right now, pet food has more safety standards than e-cigarettes do.
Take a look at the facts behind the recent growth in e-cigarette use, noted by the report on e-Cigarettes:
- E-cigarettes contain nicotine, a highly addictive substance (as addictive as heroin).
- E-cigarette use among young adults, ages 18 to 29, increased from 2.3 percent in 2012 to 7.6 percent in 2013. Young adults in California are three times more likely to use e-cigarettes than those 30 and older.
- E-cigarettes are purposefully marketed to a younger audience with fruit, candy and alcohol flavored e-juice.
- E-cigarettes pose health risks not just to those who use them, but also to people who may be exposed to the secondhand aerosol emitted from e-cigarettes, which contains harmful chemicals. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not justharmless water vapor.
What really scares me is that with all this e-cigarette marketing and rapidly increasing usage, the act of smoking seems normal again. This directly undermines California’s progress to establish tobacco-free norms, which reduced smoking rates by 50 percent according to the Report on E-Cigarettes, saving people’s lives and reducing healthcare costs.
The California Department of Public Health recently released its first campaign to educate Californians on the health risks of e-cigarettes, shedding light on these aggressive marketing practices used to recruit the next generation of smokers.
As students who are taught to question our surroundings, I encourage you to get smart and educate yourself about e-cigarettes. Together we can ensure that the youth do not fall victim to the tobacco industry’s targeted marketing and rewrite the history we should be living.
Isra Ahmad is a COUGH student advisor board member.