E-cigarettes have become popular over the last year. The main difference between e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes is that the electronic ones do not produce much smoke or smell and they merely attempt to simulate most of the things about traditional cigarette smoking. Because of this, e-cigarettes could be very beneficial devices to our society because they could help a lot to reduce the amount of air pollution caused by smokers. However, some people think that e-cigarettes should be banned and not allowed for public use. But the main arguments I have heard for this are all arguments against smoking because of the stigma surrounding the activity. According to Forbes, an NYC council banned public vaping (e-cigarettes) just because it looked too much like regular smoking.
I appreciate this because I recently went to China and it was very common for people to smoke indoors. Believe it or not, they even smoke in elevators with no concern for second hand smoke. The problem with E-cigarettes to me, is the negative externality imposed on children. Even though it isn’t really smoking, it still looks like smoking. To make matters worse, it looks sort of cool with the blue light the lights up to ensure you know it is working. I would be interested if this will lead to an increase in child tobacco abuse in areas where people use E-cigs more frequently, and I am in support of policies that ban the use of them indoors despite their “lack of smoke”.