I stumbled across some info stating that dues to the metal element that creates the vapour the bi-product are carcinogens that are up to 10x stronger than a continental cigarette.
To be fair, you could stumble across some info stating that Argos are giving away £500 gift vouchers to everyone who forwards a Facebook post. Doesn’t mean it’s true (and ofc, doesn’t mean it isn’t either).
There’s two big problems with these things:
1) We’ve not really done enough research so they could be less or more harmful, we just don’t know yet. My understanding is that they don’t have as much nasty stuff in as traditional fags, but the vapour molecules are smaller than smoke and so get deeper in the lungs. Before we know what the long-term effects are we’d, well, need to look at it over a long term.
2) Legislation hasn’t caught up, so they’re legal in the same way that “100% LEGAL HIGHS!!” were for years. The advertisers have cottoned on though; I saw an ad on TV last night which was reminiscent of the old tobacco ads, basically a hot young model blowing smoke vapour at the screen in a suggestive manner. Can’t see them getting away with that for long, could easily have been glamorising smoking but for the voice over / caption showing the brand name.