The New York City Council will meet Thursday to vote on legislation that could ban smoking e-cigarettes in public indoor spaces like restaurants, bars and event venues.

According to NBC New York, Speaker Christie Quinn and Councilman James Gennaro sponsored the legislation to include electronic cigarettes in the city's ban on tobacco use in public places. Their reasoning is e-cigarettes are often made to resemble actual cigarettes and therefore threaten the "effective enforcement" of the ban.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is known for his administration's fight against smoking tobacco. He recently put into place landmark legislation that rose the age for legal purchase of tobacco to 21.

City health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said the risks of e-cigarettes are still unknown. Several studies have been done to try and learn, but so far, all that may be determined is their use may be growing in popularity as an alternative to cigarettes, not a way to stop.

"They may introduce a new generation to nicotine addiction, which could lead to their smoking combustion cigarettes," he said.

The legislation has at least one surprise supporter, the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association's co-founder and CEO Thomas Kiklas. He said he is in favor of including e-cigarettes in the city's ban on indoor public spaces.

Utah, North Dakota, New Jersey and Washington D.C. have already passed legislation banning e-cigarettes wherever tobacco was already prohibited, Reuters reported. Richard Carmona, a former U.S. Surgeon General said the new NYC legislation would actually be counterproductive to the fight against tobacco.

"I'm extremely concerned that a well-intentioned but scientifically unsupported effort like the current proposal to include electronic cigarettes in New York's current smoking ban, could constitute a giant step backward in the effort to defeat tobacco smoking," Carmona, who is now a board member for NJOY, one of the country's biggest e-cigarette manufacturer, wrote to the city council.

While we may not have the answer to whether e-cigarettes are actually safe or not, the Lancet recently published a study suggesting they are just as effective as nicotine patches in helping smokers quit.