Humans have smoked various leafy, organic substances for thousands of years as a means of celebrating religious ceremonies, dealing with health problems, and having fun. One of the most popular such smoked substances throughout all of human history is tobacco, which is one of the most commonly smoked leafy, organic substances in today’s world, as well.
For the longest time – it’s fair, considering that modern medicine and academic research wasn’t around for most of human history, and all – people never knew that inhaling the smoke put out by lighting dried tobacco leaves on fire was seriously unhealthy.
Although the American public didn’t know that smoking tobacco, primarily in the form of pre-rolled cigarettes filled to the proverbial brim with additives that make smoking tobacco even more harmful, was such a serious health risk for many years, major federal lawsuits against the largest tobacco companies in the nation resulted in people finding out that smoking tobacco was really, really, really bad for their health. These lawsuits are what caused tobacco companies to start labeling their products as being unsafe, as well as non-cigarette tobacco products not being healthy alternatives to smoking cigarettes.
Tobacco companies have been toying with the ideas of delivering nicotine, the primarily addictive chemical in tobacco, through means of vapor since 1963. However, this really didn’t catch on until roughly a decade ago. Health concerns regarding cigarette smoking is what pushed most people to vaporizing solutions containing nicotine as a way of practicing harm reduction, or lowering physical and mental harms to themselves and reducing public health-related costs that society is forced to absorb. Today, countless people have switched from smoking cigarettes or otherwise consuming mainstream tobacco products to vaping as a way of staying safer while still getting their nicotine fix.
Although vaping is widely regarded as safer than smoking or otherwise consuming tobacco, not enough research has been done on the practice to know definitively just how harmful vaporizing is.
Today, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019, Michigan will become the first state in the union to outlaw e-cigarettes, which are also vaping devices, that are flavored. The purpose of doing so, according to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, is to curb the rash of young people that have taken up vaping as a result of cool, trendy products being marketed to them such as Juul, which relies on its very fruity-flavored reloadable cartridges to become so popular among young people, even those who are under the age of consent – 18.
