Canada : E-cigarettes help smokers kick the tobacco habit, but are they safe?

Via The Globe and Mail, excerpt :

" Puffing on slim metal tubes loaded with pale yellow liquid, two London businessmen say they have between their lips a cure for what the U.N. calls “one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced”.

Electronic cigarettes are the future, they argue. Cheaper, cleaner and cooler than smoking, “vaping” - using a vaporizer to inhale nicotine infused with exotic flavors ranging from pina colada to bubblegum - will spell the end of tobacco.

“After I first tried this, I left half a cigarette in the ashtray and never went back,” says Zoltan Kore, who co-runs the newly opened London e-cigarette shop “Smoke No Smoke”.

“I’m not a smoker now, I’m a vaper,” says business partner Gabor Kovacs. “The awful morning coughing fits have gone, and the waking up in the night struggling to breathe has gone, too.”

Such stories - and hopes of persuading the rest of the world’s billion smokers to stub out their tar and toxin-loaded cigarettes, cutting a catalogue of chronic disease risks as they do - are tantalizing for public health experts."