Would you eat a candy bar if the side effects were unknown?
Would you swim in a pool if someone told you the chemicals in the water were unknown?
Most people would not do either, but the most daring of people probably would. Vaping is in many ways the same. Nobody knows the side effects from vaping because it’s a new way of consuming nicotine.
So new, in fact, that doctors and government officials are not able to report possible side effects, because they are not yet observable in a large population.
Side effects cause people to weigh risk.
Most drivers wear seat belts, not only because it is the law, but because everyone has heard about or seen a terrible vehicle accident in which a seat belt might have saved a life.
Most Americans no longer smoke cigarettes because millions of people have seen close loved ones die from a smoking-related illness.
Almost everyone in Western society can tell an individual about the risk of not wearing a seat belt and the risk of smoking – but not the unknown risk of vaping.
The unknown attracts.
The Wright Brothers would never have built the airplane if they had not been attracted to the unknown. Millions of American teenagers are the same way.
Perhaps there are massive, terrible side effects from vaping – just no evidence, yet. Decades ago, people did not know the dangers of smoking, and look how that turned out. Someday, use of e-cigarettes could have a similar outcome.
Millions of teenagers are joining the bandwagon, and vaping without worry, because side effects are unseen.
We’ve been taught since an early age about the negative effects of tobacco, after our elders witnessed the horrors smoking has caused for millions of people.
Tobacco use among teens is the lowest in history because people saw the suffering and took action to protect themselves and their children from that fate.
Smoking was immensely popular in the 1940s and 1950s, accepted everywhere in our culture. Its inherent harmfulness did not become apparent until the 1960s and 1970s. Millions took the risk back then, attracted by the unknown, and we all know how that ended.
I hope young people today do not make the same mistake, and don’t realize it until decades down the road.
Sadly, that’s what could happen.
