Smoking Cessation Health Center

Are E-Cigarettes Here to Stay?

E-Cigarettes May Be Here to Stay continued...

"They feel like a cigarette, look like a cigarette, and you smoke it like a cigarette and see vapor when you exhale," he says. This is appealing to a smoker who is often as addicted to the nicotine as the actual act of smoking a cigarette.

They are not attracting new smokers, he says. "Very few never-smokers are using these products, so all the concerns that kids and nonsmokers are going to use them seem unfounded," Siegel says.

Gilbert Ross, MD, agrees. He is the executive director and medical director of the American Council on Science and Health, a New York City-based consumer education/public health organization.

"E-cigs contain only water vapor, safe [diluents] such as glycerin, and nicotine, in a cigarette-like delivery device, and [are] highly likely to be much less harmful than inhaling combusted tobacco smoke."