McLanahan’s grocery store is located in Jamaica Junction or Chromic Town and it is here where the rise of electronic cigarettes is quite evident. The grocery store displays popular electronic cigarettes and a multitude of accessories that can be used for ecigs.
Popularity Of Ecigs Rising Too
Ecigarette sales are on the rise especially among young adults and college students. Some of them use eigs as means to dump traditional cigarettes. Others use ecigs to satisfy oral cravings using a device they believe is less harmful than cigarettes.
The fame of these devices was recently underscored when editors of Oxford Dictionaries named the term vape as 2014 word of the day. Vape could refer to a verb that involves inhaling and exhaling the vapors that an electronic cigarette produces. The term could also be a noun that refers to the ecigarette or vaporizer.
According to Casper Grathwohl, president of the Oxford Dictionaries Division, the term is at the center of various rich cultural discussions involving debates over public versus private rights, public health and regulation and also relationship to vices.
Hope For Smokers
Maggie Kaleita is a senior from Pennsylvania who used to smoke tobacco cigarettes until her diagnosis of Ewing’s sarcoma, which is a cancer that affects bones of children and of young adults up to 30 years old.
Maggie said that after getting cancer, one cannot even think of smoking cigarettes without the feeling of guilt and ecigarettes were great alternatives. She works as a cashier at the McLanahan’s grocery store that sells combustible cigarettes and electronic cigarettes that are displayed behind the counter.
Smoke shops and hookah lounges also emerged in major cities and small college towns. Young adults have begun the vaping trend. Electronic cigarettes come by various monikers like ecig, personal vaporizer, electronic nicotine delivery system or ENDS.
Although they also come in different versions or models, they all operate the same by vaporizing the eliquid that is frequently laced with nicotine. They produce vapors that look like smoke, but contain no tar, toxins or carcinogens that tobacco smoke is simply loaded of.
According to Wells Fargo Securities, ecig sales increased by more than 200% in 2013 compared to sales in 2012. Last year, ecig sales reached up to $1.7 million. Vaping is projected by analysts to surpass traditional smoking in the next 10 years. According to SFATA or Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, the number of stores selling ecigs has also quadrupled.
Liz Hamilton is an employee at Jamaica Junction and she said that eliquids have vegetable base with delicious flavoring. There are no carcinogens that are ever present in regular cigarettes.
There have been several studies that found ecig vapors also contain some carcinogenic chemicals. However, these chemicals appear only in trace levels or levels that are way lower than the levels accepted to cause harms to health of users and bystanders. Chemicals in ecig vapors have been found far less than those levels in tobacco smoke. These levels are only similar to the carcinogen levels in nicotine replacement therapies.
Although regulators and prohibitionists have been proclaiming that safety of vaping is not yet known along with other problems they have imagined would come from using ecigarettes; many smokers and consumers are deciding to use them. Hamilton said that vaping is a trend that catches on in the State College. She said that the concept of inhaling flavored nicotine steam came from the Tastypuff concept wherein flavored droplets can be put on a cigarette. Hamilton said that Tastypuff had been popular for a long time. Anyone who buys ecigs always approves the delicious taste of the products. Zachary Boyer is manager at the Chronic Town, who successfully used ecigs as means to stop smoking.
