E-Cigarettes: Smoking Cessation Device or Big Tobacco’s New Frontier? Vapers Tell Their Stories in the Face of Pending Regulation by the United States Food and Drug Administration

Abstract

Electronic cigarettes provide an alternative to combustible tobacco. While clinical data about the health risks of e-cigarettes is limited, many vapers report improved wellbeing since switching from tobacco to these electronic devices. This thesis is a qualitative study that explores knowledge sharing and the use of e-cigarettes as a cessation device or harm reduction strategy. It also reveals the dynamics between power structures and individuals’ attitudes and behaviors that shape the production of knowledge required to make proactive, personal-health-related decisions. Examination of this issue contributes to the field of Critical Medical Anthropology by exploring e-cigarettes in historical context of tobacco use, the way e-cigarette users obtain and evaluate health risk information, tobacco corporations’ abuse of power, and distrust vapers feel for Big Tobacco and government.|Keywords: electronic cigarettes, e-cigarettes, vaping, vapes, harm reduction