Many Offices Giving The Green Light To Vape

Forget a foosball table. Vaping an E-Cigarette at your desk in the new workplace benefit of choice.

Just eight years after their introduction in the U.S., E-Cigarette devices have expanded to a nearly $2 billion industry. Last week, the FDA took the first steps to extend its authority from traditional tobacco products to the new devices. Meanwhile, employees are using E-Cigarettes and, in the absence of firm federal guidelines, some managers are making their own determinations about whether to allow them in the office.

Cheryl Dooley, CEO of the Ebsco Spring Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, brought her 28 smoking employees $100 vaping devices and allows them to be used in the company building. She did if after switching to a nicotine vaporizer helped her kick a 40 year, one to two pack a day habit that led to a blood clot forming in her lung.

“Every smoker wants to quit.” she said, and if she could switch from traditional cigarettes to ones that use a battery-powered atomizer to steam liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor, she wanted her employees to benefit, too. “They’re like family to me.”

She’s also seen an uptick in productivity.

“Nobody’s sneaking out.” she said. “The office people are always at their desk.” The previously high-traffic “Smoke Hole,” a covered picnic bench area set aside as a designated smoking area is largely empty.

No wonder that some employers, mainly small business owners, are letting their workers fire up e-cigarettes inside the office. Its novelty means numbers are hazy, said Greg Conley, a board member of the American Vaping Association, which receives funding from both E-Cigarette companies and donations.

“Nationwide, it’s a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of thing,” said Conley.

Ten states and 172 cities and counties have enacted laws restricting or prohibiting the use of E-Cigarettes in certain workplace venues. 

Eric Bowler, a 28 year old software developer in Manassas, Virginia, takes about 10 puffs a day at his desk. He exhales it into a small desk fan to dissipate the vapor so it doesn’t bother his co-worker, who sits at a desk 4 feet away.

“Only one boss ever saw vapor coming out of my mouth. He said, ‘Whoa, what is that’ I said, ‘Just vapor.’ He chuckled and smirked and walked away.”

Then there’s the clandestine approach.

“I suspect there’s plenty of ‘vaping in the boy’s room,'” said Conley.

Taking a few discreet puffs seems to be more accepted at smaller firms and creative ventures. “I see them around,” said Sterling Proffer, general manager of the edgy, youth-oriented VICE news in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At a co-working office space in Manhattan rented by tech startups, operational manager Karen James says she’s seen through the glass doors several clients use vaporizers in their offices.

“I have not received any complaints regarding any of my clients vaping, and until that happens my CEO is unconcerned about enforcing anything,” she said. “The vapor dissipates too quickly, if we exhale it all all, and leaves no lingering odors.”

And when allowing vaping improves the bottom line, it’s hard for a manager to say no.

“It was a distraction,” said Carol Keiling, president of Safety Harbour Insurance Inc., in St. James City, Florida, of her employees’ previous smoking habits. Frequently she found customers would have to be told to wait for a call back because their agent was outside on an “ill-times” smoke break.

Then one of her employees started using an E-Cigarette. At first she was banished outside with the other smokers, but after Keiling, a non-smoker, realized there was no odor, she relaxed her policies.

Now as long as there are no customers present, she lets the three of her employees who are former cigarette smokers freely vape at their desks inside the five-person office.

“They’re more productive. They’re at their desks more often. The odor problem is gone.”

Letting her workers vape at their desks is also saving Keiling on the company’s health insurance plan.

“Technically they’re non-smokers now,” said Keiling.