What was once thought of as a passing fad has become a lasting standard among college smokers. Those unassuming little grey boxes, with their LED displays and tiny buttons along with the smokers who exhale thick plumes of vapor have become far more present on the MSU campus than they were in the past.
Vaping is here to stay.
New vape shops have been opening up across the Lansing area, some only a few weeks old. This up tick in demand for vapor products is being met via these new shops as well as long-time establishments, such as Wild Side Smoke Shop on Grand River Avenue.
“We’ll probably sell one to two vapes a day just from people trying to quit cigarettes,” Zane Perez, a Wild Side Smoke Shop employee and Lansing Community College marketing sophomore, said.
While not everyone has taken up vaping for purposes of quitting smoking, many cigarette smokers have found a vape to be the perfect tool to kick the habit.
“I smoked cigarettes for a year or two prior to vaping,” Jake Reske, an MSU graduate research assistant, said. “I wanted to quit and I had a cold at the time, and smoking had previously made my throat hurt worse while sick. ... I went to a local store that stocked vaping supplies and bought myself a relatively nice one. And for the first two months with it, I didn’t touch a cigarette.”
For some students, vaping’s appeal might not be surrounding health concerns.
“A lot of the frat guys kind of obviously are more vaping because that’s a lot more of a trendier thing,” media and information senior Alex Grein said. “Then it goes on to the people who have all the crazy mechanical mods and spend hundreds of dollars on their vaping unit and they’re almost trying to one up each other. You know there’s different subcommunities.”
Despite the positive outlook and health benefits purported by vape users, MSU’s policies toward the trend imply the university is more skeptical.
The tobacco-free ordinance, passed by the MSU Board of Trustees in June, stipulates that “the ordinance also prohibits e-cigarettes and vaporizers. All FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy products are permitted for cessation use.” The tobacco-free ordinance will go into effect Aug. 15.
Few studies have been done in the United States on the safety of e-cigarettes and vaporizers and whether they are a healthier alternative to traditional smoking products.
Complicating this further, the Food and Drug Administration currently only regulates cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. It is currently putting forth a proposal to extend its regulatory powers over new tobacco products like e-cigarettes and vaporizers.
In light of the ambiguous approach being taken by the federal government, most states have adopted regulations of their own. Michigan’s Senate passed a bill in May restricting the sale of e-cigarettes to minors under the age of 18. The bill also requires stores selling vape products to own and display a specific license separate from a tobacco one, should it sell both.
Even with these restrictions, MSU’s stance towards e-cigarettes and vaporizers puts them in the same category as regular tobacco goods. And being defined as such, they will be banned on campus as part of MSU’s tobacco-free ordinance.
“Vaping is a method of putting nicotine in your system and what we are doing with our tobacco-free policy is to begin to construct a cultural value that does not include nicotine inhalation,” said Student Health Services, or SHS, promotion coordinator and member of the Tobacco-Free MSU Task Force Dennis Martell.
The ordinance is flexible however. As Kathi Braunlich, marketing and communications manager of SHS explained, new developments from the FDA could alter MSU’s approach to restricting access to vaporizers.
“If e-cigs and/or vaporizers become FDA approved nicotine replacement therapy products, and are being used for purposes of cessation, they will be permitted,” she said.
