E-cigarette airline passenger detained in Portland

[Bazz]

Continental Airlines passenger arrested and may face Federal charges.

As these faux cigarettes are not banned by the TSA I imagine the Federal charge would be one of failing to comply with the instructions of the cabin staff which I believe is a Federal offence.


http://bit.ly/whP9Ea

I don't quite understand why they ban these things. I did used to smoke but haven't in recent years, but surely its not smoking.

One person said that it because it looks like smoking, but if I look like I'm flying the plane but only pretending, then I'm not flying the plane.

Is the clever thing to go into the loos and smoke them there? They have smoke detectors but surely not nicotine inhalation device detectors?

I smoke infrequently, but I think the days of placebos let alone real ones in the air are long gone. These devices do heat up quite a lot, some produce a little smoke, and to the ignorant they may encourage others to smoke.

Am dead against it.

Besides, people should be able to control themselves - I bet in this case there were ahem 'other' factors too.

Throwing federal law against the culprit seems to be to be indicative of the top handed way the world has become however.

[mitchja]

Also a firm believer of self-control here too. I've never tried one of these as a smoker here, but I believe they give off water vapour instead of smoke.

I was told the reason why these e-cigarettes are also banned was to stop other pax seeing you use them and thinking that it's OK to smoke onboard.

The blanket ban (which I quite agree with) is there in order to stop the 'well he/she is smoking, so why can't I as well?' arguments.

Also a firm believer of self-control here too. I've never tried one of these as a smoker here, but I believe they give off water vapour instead of smoke.

Not a smoker here, and little knowledge so istbc, but I think the water vapour contains nicotine, obviously the whole point of the thing. So why should people around the "smoker" also inhale the nicotine laced vapour? It's not just a fire risk issue, but also people that don't want to inhale the nicotine produced shouldn't have to.