E-cigarettes: The coming crackdown

The nanny state wants to stub out your electronic cigarette, said Alec Torres in NationalReview.com. From Los Angeles to New York City, Utah to New Jersey, local and state lawmakers are rushing through legislation banning these battery-powered devices—which heat a nicotine solution into a water vapor that users suck in and exhale like smoke—from restaurants, offices, and other public spaces. Politicians argue that they’re protecting the public from secondhand vapor. What they’re actually doing is squashing “the most successful smoking-reduction product of the last 15 years.” E-cigarettes don’t burn tobacco or contain the carcinogenic tar and soot that make traditional cigarettes so dangerous, said Gilbert Ross in DailyCaller.com. Studies show the vapor they emit is harmless, and millions of Americans are now switching from “deadly cigarettes to low-risk e-cigs,” greatly reducing their risk of developing lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases.

Actually, the jury’s still out on whether e--cigarettes are safe, said Consumer Reports in an editorial. Even without the smoke, nicotine is a powerful, addictive drug that narrows blood vessels and drives up blood pressure. And because e-cigs “are unregulated, you don’t necessarily know what’s in them.” In 2009, the Food and Drug Administration found a toxic chemical used in antifreeze in some e-cigarette samples, and carcinogens in others. Worryingly, a growing number of kids are experimenting with these devices, said Janie Heath in HuffingtonPost.com. In 2012, 10 percent of high schoolers said they’d puffed on e-cigs—double the number in 2011—which come in an assortment of fruit flavors and brightly colored packages designed to appeal to teens. “These products are like training wheels for nicotine addiction, doled out with carelessness and impunity.”

Not for much longer, said Megan McArdle in Bloomberg Businessweek. The FDA is drafting new rules that will ban e-cigarettes from being sold or marketed to minors, and regulate what chemicals are in the vapor. At that point, anti-smoking campaigners will have to make a decision. If they think they can drive smoking rates to zero, they’ll use regulations, taxes, and warnings to aggressively discourage e-cig use, too. But if they accept that 10 to 20 percent of Americans will keep smoking for the foreseeable future—meaning “tobacco deaths will remain in the hundreds of thousands annually”—they will let e-cigs challenge Marlboros, Camels, and Newports for market share. Choose your poison.

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