Now imagine that an alternative comes to the market, an innovative device that can help people wean themselves from the deadly product. It has the same look and feel as the lethal product indeed, that s a large part of its appeal. It, too, is addictive. But the ingredients that kill people are absent.

This, of course, is no imaginary scenario. The lethal product is cigarettes, which use nicotine to addict and combustible tobacco to kill. And the alternative is electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without the tobacco, and emit a vapor that almost instantly evaporates. Yes, users can be hooked on nicotine, which is a stimulant. But people who vape are not going to die, at least not from inhaling their cigarette.

You d think that the public health community would be cheering at the introduction of electronic cigarettes. We all know how hard it is to quit smoking. We also know that nicotine replacement therapies, like the patch, haven t worked especially well. The electronic cigarette is the first harm reduction product to gain serious traction among American smokers.

Yet the public health community is not cheering. Far from it groups like the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids are united in their opposition to e cigarettes. They want to see them stigmatized like tobacco cigarettes. They want to see them regulated like cigarettes, too, which essentially means limited marketing and a ban on their use wherever tobacco cigarettes are banned.

Thomas Farley, New York City s health commissioner, trotted out most of the rationales against e cigarettes the other day at a City Council hearing. (The City Council is considering a bill, strongly supported by the Bloomberg administration, that would forbid the use of an e cigarette anywhere that cigarettes are banned.) E cigarettes, he said, are so new we know very little about them. Thanks to e cigarettes, smoking is becoming glamorous again, and could become socially acceptable. The number of high school students who have tried electronic cigarettes doubled from 2011 to 2012. He made a particular point of showing how closely e cigarettes resembled old fashioned tobacco cigarettes.

The reason to fear this resemblance, say opponents of electronic cigarettes, is that vaping could wind up acting as a gateway to smoking. Yet, so far, the evidence suggests just the opposite. Several recent studies have strongly suggested that the majority of e cigarette users are people who are trying to quit their tobacco habit. The number of people who have done the opposite gone from e cigarettes to cigarettes is minuscule. What the data is showing is that virtually all the experimentation with e cigarettes is happening among people who are already smokers, says Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Health.

Siegel is a fierce critic of tobacco companies, but he s also not afraid to criticize the anti tobacco advocates when they stretch the truth. When we got to talking about the opposition to e cigarettes in the public health community, he said, The antismoking movement is so opposed to the idea of smoking it has transcended the science, and become a moral crusade. I think there is an ideological mind set in which anything that looks like smoking is bad. That mind set has trounced the science.

Another person who considers e cigarettes promising is David Abrams, the executive director of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies. It s a disruptive technology, he said, that might give cigarettes a run for their money. In his view, the anti tobacco advocates had spent so many years arguing from a total abstinence framework, that they haven t been able to move from that position. Yet, he noted, the country has long tolerated many similar harm reduction strategies, including needle exchanges and methadone maintenance.

None of this is to say that electronic cigarettes should be free of regulation. But they should be regulated for what they are a pharmaceutical product that delivers nicotine, not a conduit for tobacco poison. Let them make health claims which they can t now do so long as they are backed up with real science. And, most of all, use e cigarettes to help make real cigarettes obsolete.

At that recent New York City Council meeting, one of the fiercest critics to testify was Kevin O Flaherty of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck and it sounds like a duck and it looks like a duck, it is a duck, he said.

Is this what passes for science when you oppose electronic cigarettes?

E-cigarettes: second-hand smoke, vaping, and the price of fda regulations – hit & run : reason.com

New tobacco directive could lead to a ban on refillable e-cigarettes in the european union

Earlier this week, the FDA proposed regulations for electronic cigarettes, which Reason‘s Jacob Sullum says are mostly mild but could set the stage for more expansive bans later.

This evening, have a nice vape and enjoy Reason TV’s documentary short about e cigarettes, those who would ban them, and the science or lack thereof underlying the public health crusade against them.

Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer “E Cigarettes Second Hand Smoke, Vaping, and the Price of FDA Regulations”

Originally published on October 29, 2013. Original text is below

Electronic cigarettes are creating a frenzy among politicians, health experts, and the media. Local banson using e cigarettes indoors are popping up all over the country, and many interest groups are clamoring for top down FDA regulations, which are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

E Cigarettes currently exist in a complete no man s land, says Heather Wipfli, associate director for the USC Institute for Global Health. Skeptics such as Wipfli worry about the lack of long term data available because the product is so new.

But according to the Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association s Greg Conley, calls for regulation are “a perverse interpretation of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle holds that until all possible risks are assessed, new technologies shouldn’t be allowed to move forward.

Conley points to preliminary studies, like this one from Drexel University, which confirm these smokeless, tobacco less, tar less products are not a cause for concern or at least not a cause for the same concerns that accompany traditional cigarettes and second hand smoke.

That Drexel University professor concluded that there was absolutely no worry about risks to bystanders from e cigarette vapor, says Conley.

The ingredients of e cigarettes certainly have very little in common with tobacco cigarettes. Nicotine, the only ingredient found in both products, is mainly used to wean smokers off traditional cigarettes and is not one of the harm inducing ingredients associated with lung cancer in smokers. The other ingredients in the e juice at the core of e cigarettes are propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and food flavorings all of which are used in other food products.

All we are doing is steaming up food ingredients to create a vapor, says Ed Refuerzo, co owner of The Vape Studio in West Los Angeles. The Vape Studio is one of the many boutique e cigarette shops popping up that might be significantly affected or even shut down by both local legislation and FDA regulations.

Conley says it’s the currently unregulated customizability of the e juice that allows these small businesses to thrive. The availability of liquids is what is allowing a lot of these small stores to open and prosper because they are able to mix their own liquid and sell it to consumers without having to go through a big manufacturing process, says Conley.

The higher costs of complying with regulations would most likely be passed on to consumers, which would impact people who are looking towards e cigarettes as an effective way to quit smoking.

We re using technology, and that s what we do in America, we use technology to solve really complicated problems, says Craig Weiss, president and CEO of NJOY. NJOY is a leading manufacturer of electronic cigarettes and a donor to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason TV. Weiss says that despite regulations, the potential of the industry is only just starting to be realized.

The electronic industry is growing at quite a dramatic pace. It s more than doubled each of the last four or five years,” says Weiss. “This piece of technology could have such an potential impact on the world.

About 6 minutes.