E-Cigarettes: New Spin on Old Habits

Just like the flip phone phased out into the smart phones we all know and love today, it would seem that smoking has moved in a similar direction, or has it? E-cigarettes, a relatively new-ish thing that has garnered a lot of popularity in the younger peoples these days seems to be making the rounds as people learn to love it, or hate it. But I can’t blame them as I read up more about the new [to me, at least] fad that seems to be the in thing.

As I understand it, e-cigarettes hail from the lovely land of the Chinese and are battery powered and sold with ‘refillable’ flavours as well as nicotine. Of course I’m guessing the attraction for the youth must be those flavours and I wonder what exactly is in that. According to researchers who took the time to study 30 e-cig liquids, taken from a number of different companies including the major manufacturers NJoy and Blu the study which contained a variety of flavours such as tobacco, menthol, cotton candy, bubble-gum, chocolate and other fruit flavours, it showed a number of chemicals which could potentially cause harm. The trouble it would seem that though the substance was safe in quantity, it wasn’t necessarily known whether it was really okay to directly inhale the stuff without consequence. Comforting thought that. 

Still I doubt that many kids care much about the science behind the fact that the thing lights up like a real cigarette while you use it and emits a cool white smoke you can make circles and other shapes with. You know, the real things to get excited about. Well, that and maybe the fact that e-cigs technically allow them to give the finger to the man as they ‘fall through the cracks of the law’. Considering that there barely exists any law against the electronic annoyance, you can be sure that many will take advantage of this as they stray from the old tobacco stick to the new shiny and improved one. Suddenly it becomes a question of conscience whether to ‘light up’ or not.

But is it okay for our youth to be puffing away?

In a recent article I read, a certain government body stated that ‘vaping’ is safer than smoking and this could lead to the end of traditional smoking. They go so far as to even want to get e-cigs licensed as a medicine and dispense it as such amongst the average consumer as a prescribed medication for quitting smoking. Yet in another article I read a conflicting argument is made, one I find myself agreeing with far more than the idea of making e-cigs so readily available.

The article in question states that someone who has vaped is more likely to move over to the traditional way of smoking. They backed this by some research they conducted amongst teenagers. I can’t help but think this is an obvious outcome, I mean tobacco and nicotine is after all a drug, a minor one yes but it is what it is.

It also leads me to see that not enough research has been made into e-cigs and how they affect people. Too much is unknown and all that is left is speculation and argument. It makes for a dangerous idea of what has been left in the hands of so many young people as we become the guinea pigs for the future to learn from. But I suppose that’s how it always is.

If anything is to come of the unchecked use of all this vaping though, it should probably be some laws and regulations though. That way, if there is any damage as the scientists fear, it wouldn’t have been for nothing.

Keeping Communication: The Struggles of Growing Up

Everybody grows up. It’s just part of life, one of those unavoidable things that just have to happen, one way or another. Going from that innocent child whose needs that every parent learns to know through the various signals from birth to the emotional mess that comes with being a hormonal adolescent, we all go through the process like clockwork. What’s interesting to note though is that despite our parents knowing us from birth, after learning every facial expression and nuance of ours, most times it becomes difficult for them to understand us as we transition through our troublesome years and somewhere along the line something happens in the adolescent phase as things get messy and the lines of communication go through a tough evolution that sometimes gets damaged along the way.

In a recent article I read, a study was conducted that measured the difference between the parent’s estimation of their child’s happiness and the child’s own estimation of their happiness. What was found was an interesting and significantly different result that highlighted that maybe our parents don’t always know us as well as we would like to think. 

The results showed that parents based their judgement on their own personal feelings, going so far as to assume that their children’s happiness was in line with their own emotional feelings instead of objectively assessing their child. It’s curious why they would do this, but I think it most probably stems from the fact that most parents feel that they know their children inside out, after all they raised them, right?

But what I feel these parents and in fact most parents don’t take into account is that children grow up, they change and become their own individuals that, though moulded by the lessons of their hopefully capable parent's hands, are also carved by the effects of outside influences that is the world around us. Just like they did before them, the children grow into their own people as they venture into the world. 

My guess is that the reason parents don’t know, or realise this change is happening is because those frayed lines of communication that evolve over time have either not been given the proper foundation they needed in order to grow from or the messy transition into adolescence has not been kind to either child or parent. But the bottom line over all, is communication. How else can such a disparity exist in the perceived happiness that parents have of their children versus what their children have themselves?

But communication isn’t easy. How can it be when you think you’ve known something for its whole life only to be told you know nothing? Truth is we want to believe so badly there is nothing we don’t know, but the arrogance of such confidence is where the cracks start to form and the children grow further away from who we know them to be and who they truly are.

Yeah communication is hard. It’s the process of continually discovering that the person who you think you know might just be someone else. The constant discovery of the old as it reshapes into the new. That little thing that makes misunderstandings just a little less awkward and brings about better companionship.

Maybe, just maybe, if there was better communication the difference between what parents perceive to be their children’s happiness and what actually is their happiness won‘t be so far apart and in the long run that messy hormonal phase won’t be so messy after all as parents finally grow to understand their children just a little better. After all, once a blue moon ago they were those children too.

The Curro Wave

Why is it, that man is so bent on repeating the mistakes of their predecessors? Are we so obsessed with our history that we would go so far as to repeat it in our actions simply to be closer to it? These are serious questions we must ask as we consider how we move forward in this world that seems to be crumbling as we try to move forward while constantly looking back.

In a recent article I read about the interesting politics of the merger, or rather the attempted merger of Curro holdings and Advtech. Two companies interested in the education sector and building facilities that would better provide the kind of standard education we want our youth to have as opposed to what our government is currently failing to give. Politics aside, the gist of things seem to be that Advtech seem unwilling to jump into bed with the infamous Curro group and it’s hard to blame them when you consider the damage their image suffered with that unfortunate segregation scandal a few months ago.

I find it interesting that a group such as this, an investment firm, who strive to increase their influence as they step into education, might not have alternate motives. Sure maybe their intentions were good, but I can’t blame Advtech for their reservations. The slip up that Curro tries so hard to brush aside as a simple mishap through misunderstanding just doesn’t cut it enough if you take a moment and think about things. Their defence that the children were in fact being segregated by language and not race doesn’t change the fact that they were ‘segregated’ period.

Have these people learned nothing from the past and the damaging consequences of any form of separation? I don’t know what’s worse though, that they might truly believe in this minor separation or that they intend to implement it in the many schools they speak about wanting to open up in their dreams of expansion.

I suppose it’s a good thing to see that some companies like Advtech see the wrong and danger in tying themselves onto a sinking ship like this, but they aren’t the ones we should worry about. The ones we should be concerned about are the companies and groups with money and influence who are willing to push this backwards dream forward. Because then not only does it stop being a sinking ship, it soon becomes a history lesson we are doomed to live through as it rides an unfortunate wave forward and what’s worse, it starts out in the education side of things.