Up in Smoke

“I really miss smoking,” my 85 year-old mother confessed to me a few days ago.  She stopped at the age of 70 after many decades of smoking.
It wasn’t so very long ago that I might have said the same thing.

I was a smoker from my mid-teens to my early 50s and did my share of damage to my lungs which I continue to pay for today.  My husband told me before we married that if I continued to smoke, we wouldn’t make it as a couple.  Ok, I was a sneaky smoker for the last months of our courtship and first years of our marriage; he knew it and loathed it but didn’t threaten to divorce me, thank god. 

Lord knows I tried to quit – many times – beginning in my early 20s.  As smoking became increasingly unacceptable socially, the physical isolation of standing outside in the pouring rain or on a 10 degree day just to have a cigarette got to me.  And then, in a sure sign from God, I got pneumonia and that did it.  After years of patches and gum and pills and hypnosis, I finally went cold turkey and my smoking days came to an end.

For the first year or two after my last cigarette, I couldn’t have a glass of wine or a stressful day at the office without fondly recalling the significant relaxation “benefits” of smoking.  But by the third year, something surprising and wonderful happened:  I realized that I had lost that compulsiveness and wacky thinking that always anticipated my next cigarette.  Before, if I was at home when the craving hit (and it did, often), I started plotting my escape to the grocery store or cleaners or mall so I could have a cigarette. If I was at work, I’d count down the minutes until I could take a small break and step outside for a butt – and then, once outside, serially smoke 2 or 3 cigarettes in order to “dose up” until the next crashing nicotine craving.

All of this is to say that the growing e-cigarette phenomenon is really concerning.

First, the positive news for smokers:  E-cigarettes don’t stink, so you don’t stink after smoking (or “vaporing”) one.  You use the device over and over again, so it ultimately reduces the cost compared to regular cigarettes.  And you don’t inhale smoke, which means you can smoke in bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.  Wow. 

Now the bad news:  E-smokers inhale water vapor filled with flavored nicotine from a cartridge inserted into the device. The vapor exhales like smoke without the particulate matter and tar of cigarettes but you do have the nicotine dependence. 

Did I not just say nicotine addiction is crazy making? (See paragraph 4 of this post as a reminder).

As they become more widely used, e-cigarettes are raising serious concerns and questions about public health, nicotine addiction and etiquette issues over where and when you vapor.  More concerning to me is that they are making smoking (which it is, regardless of the vapor v. smoke question) cool again to young people.

The safety of e-cigarettes is based on a false premise; nicotine is a drug.  E-cigarettes are drug delivery devices.  And as someone once said to me, getting over nicotine is the most difficult addiction to overcome.  Here’s hoping that parents remain vigilant as these products become more visible in daily living environments.  Let’s not vaporize the real progress that’s been made in battling nicotine addiction in the past 10 years or all that good, hard work will go up in smoke.  Again.

As for me, I’m coming up on my 7^th anniversary without a cigarette.  And no, I don’t miss it.