Non- Fiction Reading response on "Smoke signals"

The article “Smoke signals”, by Alessandria Potenza is about the electronic cigarettes and how they are getting increasingly popular among young people. The article first talks about a 26 year old named Tiffany Harvey that has never smoked in her life, than she saw an electronic cigarette on Instagram, so she bought one and has been an e-cigarette smoker ever since. Electronic cigarettes are battery powered cigarettes that vaporize a liquid called nicotine.  The article says that, e-cigarettes are taking off in the U.S.A.  E-cigarettes also contain several toxic cancer causing chemicals. For that reason the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried to ban them. Another  reason the FDA wanted to ban them was because some e-cigarettes have flavors like chocolate and vanilla.  Those flavors are very appealing to young people so the FDA banned all flavoring except flavors found in regular cigarettes. But even though e-cigarettes have toxic chemicals in them many doctors believe that e-cigarettes are the solution to help people quit smoking.   

             I think the author’s purpose for writing this article is to show that e-cigarettes may not be  such a bad thing despite the health problems it has. This is because according to the authors sources, e-cigarettes help some people quit smoking or at least quit smoking tobacco. The author also wants the reader know that young people smoking e-cigarettes have increased over the years and that young people that are smoking tobacco cigarettes have decreased over the years. Proving that it is helping people quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. One example that shows that  young people smoking e-cigarettes have increased is in this part of the text, “A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that the share of young people using e-cigarettes doubled in 2012.”  This proves that young people smoking e-cigarettes have increased. My thoughts on this article are that e-cigarettes can help solve the problems of smoking. I think that  e-cigarettes can destroy the tobacco cigarette industry and help people quit smoking because according to this article, “A growing number of doctors, however, are looking at e-cigarettes as the longest sought solution for of the deadliest-and most avoidable- public-health problems: cigarette smoking… ‘It’s a heck of a lot better than smoking tobacco,’ says Michael Spiegel, an expert on tobacco control.”  This shows why I think e-cigarettes can help solve the problems of smoking because the article states that a lot of doctors agree that e-cigarettes are solution for smoking and that e-cigarettes are better than smoking  tobacco cigarettes.

            This article has changed my thinking of electronic cigarettes, because I thought that electronic cigarettes would be much worse than regular tobacco cigarettes. But it turned out that electronic cigarettes are not as bad as tobacco cigarettes and they e-cigarettes can even help some people quit smoking. This text makes me wonder and want to do further research on, who first made cigarettes and why?