Bubble gum, chocolate, and vanilla. These are just some of the flavors used to target young people into buying electronic cigarettes. The Upfront Magazine article, Smoke Signals, by Alessandra Potenza reveals the horrors of the new devices that are making smoking glamorous again. As a teen I see more and more people being lured into smoking e-cigarettes and am scared as it becomes more popular. It's strange to think that in a few years kids will be able to smoke without being looked at twice. Thinking it's much better than tobacco when really it's just as dangerous.
While I read the article I think that Alessandra Potenza wanted the readers to know that a little to much of anything is never good and not using something for the right reason leads to trouble in the long run. Potenza first starts the article with an example of a 26 year old girl who tried her first e-cigarette out of curiosity and never stopped after that. We learn that the cigarettes are really for tobacco smokers who are trying to quit. For that process the electronic cigarettes seem to work. Still they are luring kids in with flavors and fancy commercials and may be starting a wave of nicotine addiction. The e-cigarettes not only have nicotine but many other cancer causing chemicals. The article also mentions how U.S. officials are trying to ban electronic cigarettes or at least regulate them. After all the work of "de-glamorizing" cigarettes a new wave of commercials and ads is drawing people back in. Still the article does slightly mention how some doctors think its much better than smoking and could help a lot of people quit.
During the article, the author used a lot of craft moves that made me feel a little bit frightened of the dangers of smoking and cautious about whats to come in the future. Pontenza makes the reader feel this way by having paragraphs about how terrified government and doctors are about the electronic cigarettes. Also she mentions a lot about how other countries are banning or setting strict laws against the new devices. This brings up the question the readers mind, "If so many other countries aren't allowing e-cigs than why are we?" Thinking about this worries me and makes me wonder what will happen with this issue in the future. Also the author used many crazy statistics that I had to read again. Like, "retail sales of e-cigs are expected to total $1.7 billion this year" and "the share of young people using e-cigarettes doubled in 2012 from the previous year." These facts made me realize just how many kids were starting to smoke. The article says even helping adults quit smoking tobacco has loop-holes. Mainly because you can smoke them anywhere and they resemble cigarettes.
Overall I think this article makes me think about just how powerful commercials and flavors like bubble gum are. It scares me to think something like smoking that has taken us such a long time to do less. Is now entering society again. Now since it's just without tobacco people think it's okay for young adults. Now more and more we will be seeing people in public places producing this vapor. I can't imagine a couple of teenagers just openly smoking electric cigarettes. But if these patterns keep up then teens are going to start smoking regularly. At least government needs to restrict and regulate the use of the e-cigarettes. Maybe even so that just people struggling to quit smoking tobacco will able to use them . Or so that, just because they don't have tobacco, these companies won't be able to spend so much money on creating commercials and ads to lure people into buying them. I think we need to show teens the dangers of these new devices and make sure people don't get hooked in a never ending cycle leading them to health problems in the future.
