BANGOR, Maine - Bangor could soon become the second Maine city to pass an ordinance banning "vaping" in public places. Vaping is where a nicotine-infused, flavored solution is put into a vaporizer or e-cigarette where it gets heated and is then inhaled.
Public health officials say a ban in public places is appropriate, in part, because of the shortage of research on the health effects of vaping. But opponents say vaping should not be treated like smoking and will make it harder for people to quit cigarettes.
Alex Davenport used to smoke as much as a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes a day. "If you smoked cigarettes for a long time, you'll wake up, you'll feel phlegm in your throat, you'll be hacking it up all morning," he says.
Davenport, who's 24 and smoked for five years, doesn't have that problem anymore, thanks, he says, to vaping.
"How ya doin' buddy?" asks Dustin Fitzpatrick. "Oh, not too bad," Davenport replies. "Could I get two of the Ecuadorian Deloreans, lowest nicotine you got."
On a recent afternoon, Davenport has dropped by a Bangor shop called The Vapeway to pick up some e-liquid and a part for his vaporizer.
"I also need a new coil for Atlantis 2," he tells Fitzpatrick.
"Point-three or point-five?"
"Point-three please," Davenport says. "This tank is the Atlantis 2. I'm just getting a replacement atomizer for it. It's basically the coil that heats up the cotton that absorbs the e-juice inside. And that's essentially what creates the vapor."
The e-liquid is a mixture of vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, nicotine and flavoring. It comes in small bottles with names like Aviator, The Plume, The Czar and Queen's Custard.
"Look at it like fine wine," says Dustin Fitzpatrick, The Vapeway's owner. "There is a steeping process. The longer it sits, the more flavorful it becomes. The nicotine oxidizes with the flavoring."
Fitzpatrick opened The Vapeway three months ago motivated, in part, by his own experience quitting smoking with the help of vaping. The shop is just one of many that have opened across Maine as e-cigarettes grow in popularity. Right now, vapers in Bangor can inhale their favorite concoctions where they please, for the most part. But that may be about to change.
There's still a lot we don't know about vaping. The research is still just emerging," says Patty Hamilton, Bangor's public health director. Hamilton has been working with the city on an ordinance that would prohibit vaping in public places.
E-cigarettes have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a smoking cessation method. There's little reliable data on the dangers it poses. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Science, found small traces of formaldehyde in e-cigarettes operated at high voltages. But the chemical, a carcinogen, was not found in lower voltages.
The World Health Organization noted some risks in its own study last summer. But other research has downplayed the dangers of vaping. Hamilton says health officials see more and more young people picking up the habit.
"So we've had a threefold increase in the use of vaping among the under-18 population," she says. "So kids that, in the past, would have never considered smoking a cigarette are now vaping. So they're exposing themselves to nicotine, when they never have before. And so this is, of course, concerning to us because, although we're worried about smoking, we're also worried about nicotine."
Under state law, cigarette smoking is banned in all public places, including outdoor dining areas. If Bangor's City Council passes the vaping ban, it would become the second city in the state to do so. Earlier this spring, Portland outlawed vaping in public.
Vapeway owner Dustin Fitzpatrick says the Portland ban, and the proposed ordinance in Bangor, basically equates e-cigarettes with actual tobacco cigarettes. "E-liquid and e-cigarettes are not similar to tobacco cigarettes. So to associate both of those things in the same bill is just wrong, and it's giving vaping a bad image."
Fitzpatrick worries that outlawing the practice in public places will make it harder for others who are struggling to give up cigarettes. The Bangor City Council will consider the vaping ban in the coming weeks.