E-Cigs Exonerated

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap radius”]B[/dropcap]ased on fear rather than fact, 21 states and 438 municipalities have enacted total or partial e-cigs bans. Although California has not passed a ban, it has not been for lack of trying. At the California legislature’s Second Extraordinary Session on Public Health, the Senate passed a restriction loaded bill, but with too little time left in the session, the bill never came up for a vote in the Assembly.

The feds had jumped into the fray back in 2009 with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claiming that e-cigs were an unapproved drug delivery device. In a lawsuit filed by e-cig manufacturers, the FDA was rebuffed from that approach when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ruled that e-cigs do not come under the purview of the FDA as long as they are not marketed as a smoking cessation product.

The ruling means that e-cigs can only be regulated in the same way that tobacco products are. Manufacturers can market them as a tasty trendy way to get nicotine stimulation, but not for what e-cigs would be most important for—getting people to stop smoking tobacco.

In CULTURE’s July 2014 column, I wrote that e-cigs “By not creating smoke, eliminate the carbon monoxide and all the carcinogens” and noting “it’s the smoke that is mostly responsible for the 400,000 American deaths each year from tobacco use.” Although I had no proof that e-cigs were significantly less dangerous, I put it forth as a good hypothesis based on common sense.

Turns out my common sense hypothesis was right on target. Using recent reports and studies to set the record straight, England’s Public Health Service issued a joint statement in September 2015 stating “We all agree that e-cigarettes are significantly less harmful than smoking.”

Commenting on the statement, Public Health Professor, Kevin Fenton explained “E-cigarettes are not completely risk-free but when compared to smoking, evidence shows they carry just a fraction of the harm.” That fraction turns out to be a phenomenal 95 percent less harmful.

England’s Public Health Service was concerned that, “millions of smokers have the impression that e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as tobacco.” They were fearful that this mistaken impression could lead people to resume smoking and that it was their “duty to provide reassurance for the 1.1 million e-cigarette users who have completely stopped smoking to prevent their relapse.”

Contradicting a University of Southern California study suggesting that e-cig use might lead teens to begin smoking cigarettes, author Professor Ann McNeil pointed out, “There is no evidence that e-cigarettes are undermining England’s falling smoking rates. Instead the evidence consistently finds that e-cigarettes are another tool for stopping smoking.”

E-cigs can significantly reduce smoking and by reducing smoking can significantly reduce the negative health consequences (like death) of smoking tobacco. Yet lawmakers fall all over themselves making it harder rather than easier for people to use e-cigs.

Admittedly, the nicotine found in e-cigs has zero medical use, but if e-cig users can only use e-cigs in the same places where tobacco is smoked, it is questionable whether e-cigs can  give them enough of a nicotine fix to overcome the temptations of cigarettes set aflame just a few feet from them.

With zero dangers from second hand vapors, e-cig restrictions don’t do anyone any good. This is especially true for cannabis consumers as laws curtailing e-cig use almost always treat cannabis the same as tobacco.

The effects of vaporizing cannabis comes on within minutes. Cannabis consumers who use it medically need to be able to use it where they are. If they are undergoing bouts of anxiety, stress, seizures or nausea, they shouldn’t have to search out a place where tobacco smoking is allowed in order to medicate with an e-pen vaporizer.

Rejecting science is par for the course for legislators who deny man-made climate change and evolution, but legislators who accept the science behind climate change and evolution somehow just fold when it comes to the science of e-cigs and cannabis. Reefer madness meets e-cig madness. Nothing good ever comes when decisions affecting public health are based on morality instead of science.