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Even After 200 Protesters 'Vaped' In Front Of Their Faces, NY City Council May Still Ban E-Cigs Today

Dec 19, 2013, 22:34 IST

REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

For weeks, e-cig advocates around NYC have been mobilizing to convince City Council not to ban the product in indoors and in public places.

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An today, the Council will decide on the future of what could be massive industry - a $3 billion industry by 2015, if Citi is exact.

It's no secret that under Mayor Bloomberg New York City has undertaken a major public health initiative. Combustible cigarettes have already been banned in restaurants and public parks, but since the FDA has yet to rule on whether or not e-cigs are equally harmful, they have yet to be regulated.

Imagine it like this: On December 4th 200 protestors marched to City Hall to attend a hearing on e-cigs. Advocates on both sides presented to Council members, and all the while, the 200 protestors, lead by Talia Eisenberg (the proprietor of NYC's first e-cig bar, Henley Vaporium) sat in the room and puffed on their e-cigs.

They vaped.

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"They were open-minded," Eisenberg said of the Council. "They asked good questions but they were concerned there wasn't enough long term research on the product."

Henley is a shop that sells anything and everything you need to vaporize tobacco, from e-juice (a plant based liquid of pure nicotine) to disposable e-cigs, to top of the line e-juice vaporizers.

Eisenberg started the Henley line as smoker over three years ago. As the business grew, she and her partner Peter Denholtz, decided to build a brick and mortar shop in order to build a community. The shop's motto is "new ways for old habits."

"I see it every day," Eisenberg told Business Insider, "People that have smoked for 34 years picking up e-cigs and never smoking combustible cigarettes again."

Hanging out in the shop, we ran into some of them too.

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The argument on the other side, as Joe Nocera pointed out in a recent New York Times column, is that some believe "vaping" e-cigs could be a gateway to smoking, or that it could glamorize the combustible cigarettes.

From the NYT:

Yet, so far, the evidence suggests just the opposite. Several recent studies have strongly suggested that the majority of e-cigarette users are people who are trying to quit their tobacco habit. The number of people who have done the opposite - gone from e-cigarettes to cigarettes - is minuscule. "What the data is showing is that virtually all the experimentation with e-cigarettes is happening among people who are already smokers," says Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Health.

Still, as Thomas Farley, New York City's health commissioner pointed out at the e-cig hearing earlier this month, the number of high school students that have tired e-cigs doubled from 2011 to 2012.

That's not something Nanny Bloomberg is remotely interested in seeing more of.

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We'll let you know how it all turns out.

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