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Thinking e-cigarettes are a safer way to get your nicotine fix?  Think again. According to Lenny Bernstein at The Washington Post, t he Food and Drug Administration has decided to regulate e-cigarettes, which have quickly grown into a $2 billion a year enterprise.  Purveyors call it "vaping" to describe the nicotine blast they get from the flavored vapor that comes out of an e-cig as it's "burning."  But Bernstein points to some things you should know about these not-so-healthy smoking sticks. Most consist of  a rechargeable, battery-operated heating element, a replaceable cartridge that contains nicotine or other chemicals and an atomizer that, when heated, converts the liquid in the cartridge into a vapor, he reports. This vapor is inhaled. Nicotine concentrations vary depending on the user’s preference. On the plus side, e-cig manufacturers claim that they are  significantly less expensive  than tobacco cigarettes, which are heavily taxed, Bern...

You'd think that something that satisfied people while downplaying health risks would be a good thing.  But establishments from workplaces to hospitals to restaurants are saying, not so much. We're talking, of course, about e-cigarettes, or e-cigs, as they're called in the trade.  I write for a food blog, and restaurants are very concerned about pleasing some guests while not unsettling others who don't want to see smoke or a mist being puffed over other diners' heads. Some restaurants are going the way of the original cigarette, banning them entirely, while others are giving it a try, and allowing it. The draw is that e-cigs emit only water vapor so there's no toxic secondhand smoke.  They do contain nicotene but that's only inhaled by the smoker.  E-cigarette users call it "vaping."  And e--cigs come in all flavors. "I blow out a Bavarian cream vape, and it smells like Christmas at grandma's house," The Wall Street Journal quo...

It's been quite some time since cigarettes have been advertised as sophisticated and status-y, though, when I was growing up in the '60s and early '70s, smoking ads were as ubiquitous as well, commercials for Optimum. In those days the cancer sticks, as they were sometimes called, were allowed to be advertised on TV and smokers were everywhere, in the movies, TV shows, on magazine covers (remember magazines?). But over time, the ads have either disappeared, or changed.  At first I was fascinated by the woman who lost her fingers and toes to smoking, or the one who was bedridden after a stroke and had to be cared for, for everything, by her preteen son, or the man, hawking up his lungs in the mirror. But they're even more hard-core today.  I can barely watch the young man in bed who's had a stroke and lies motionless and barely breathing in a bed, his tormented eyes seeming, to me at least, to be beseeching the camera to let him die, now, or the gaunt man in t...