Article: California Undermines Public Health By Treating E-Cigarettes Like The Real Thing

Check out this well written article by author, editor, and columnist, Jacob Sullum, who (in his words) covers “the war on drugs from a conscientious objector’s perspective.” Original Forbes Article

Here is a snippet from the original article:

On May 4, the day before the Food and Drug Administration officially classified e-cigarettes as “tobacco products,” California did the same thing. Gov. Jerry Brown signed SBX2 5, which expands the definition of tobacco product under several statutes to include “an electronic device that delivers nicotine or other vaporized liquids to the person inhaling from the device.” Among other things, the change means that vaping will be banned everywhere that smoking is prohibited and, since another bill signed by Brown raises the age for buying tobacco products from 18 to 21, adults younger than 21 will no longer be allowed to buy e-cigarettes.

California’s policy shift is not as consequential as the onerous FDA regulations unveiled the next day, which will shut down thousands of e-cigarette and e-liquid businesses. But it is equally misguided, and the arguments used by its supporters show that the people driving policy in this area are either remarkably clueless or brazenly dishonest. Mark Leno, the state senator who introduced SBX2 5, might be both.

A riddle attributed to Abraham Lincoln asks: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. Likewise, legislators (or bureaucrats empowered by them) can call e-cigarettes “tobacco products,” but that does not change the fact that they contain no tobacco and generate no smoke.

Leno, a Democrat whose district includes San Francisco, has 18 posts on his website that mention e-cigarettes, one of which is titled “E-Cigarettes Are Tobacco Products.” Visitors who click on that link in the hope of finding something resembling an argument will be disappointed. The post consists of a photograph showing Leno posing with supporters of his bill next to a placard that says “E-Cigarettes Are Tobacco Products.”

It’s true that the nicotine e-cigarettes often are used to deliver is derived from tobacco, but that is also true of the nicotine in smoking cessation aids such as gum, patches, and inhalers, which neither the FDA nor the state of California considers tobacco products. Furthermore, Leno’s definition of tobacco product includes nicotine-free e-liquids and the devices that turn them into inhalable aerosols, neither of which have anything to do with tobacco.