PRO/CON: Should we regulate e-cigs?

By Tribune News Service, adapted by Newsela staff

03.31.15

PRO: E-cigs shouldn't be banned, but they must be regulated

In 2014, the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was “vape.” Simply put, it's breathing water vapor in and out through an electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should take a hint from the dictionary. It should write its own definition of e-cigarettes. They contain liquid nicotine, so the FDA should define them as a tobacco product.

Congress created the FDA in 1906. The government was concerned then over the quality and safety of America’s food and drug supply. 

The agency was created to help people know whether a product is safe and healthy.

In short, the FDA was made to watch over products just like e-cigarettes.

Nicotine Is Not Harmless

E-cigarettes claim to be healthy, but there is no proof. Right now more than 16 million children can legally buy e-cigs and give themselves as much nicotine as they want. Nicotine is not harmless. Accidentally drinking liquid nicotine has caused a huge increase in poisonings — including the death of a toddler in New York state two months ago.

Sales of e-cigs are booming. Last year, analysts at Wells Fargo bank estimated that sales of e-cigarette and other products amount to $2.5 billion a year. They predict it will rise to $10 billion annually by 2017.

The growth of e-cigs is partly due to advertising. Yet, the other reason is the growth in the number of high school students using them. The variety of e-cig flavors attract young people. Cotton candy, gummy bear and root beer float are just some of them.

E-cigs should be regulated, not banned. The FDA is the only agency that can do that. The FDA should prevent sales and advertising to kids. It should also make sure that health claims made by e-cig companies are true. Finally, it should require companies to list what's in e-cig juice.

“Juice” sounds harmless, but it's far from it. It is, in fact, flavored nicotine liquid. The liquid nicotine is heated through the e-cig and turned into vapor that users then inhale and exhale. At least, people inhale this flavored vapor and not burning tobacco. Because burning tobacco releases thousands of chemicals, e-cigs are safer than cigarettes.

Stop And Think

But, then again, cigarettes kill 6 million people per year. One historian called them the deadliest invention in human history.

And here is the possible value of the e-cigarette: it could be a powerful tool for saving millions of lives if smokers switched from puffing to vaping, and then to nothing.

The problem is that the safety and health claims of e-cigarettes have not been proven. Online, some folks claim e-cigs have helped them kick the habit, yet it might just be a few people.

Initial evidence from a major new study should make people stop and think. Early findings from the study of 46,000 Americans by the National Institutes of Health and the FDA indicate that smokers frequently use both e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes.

These findings agree with other studies that found that rather than helping people quit smoking, e-cigarettes may actually make it harder for smokers to quit.

Beware Of Advertising

Nevertheless, e-cigarettes are frequently advertised as if they've been proven to be healthy. Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco found that 95 percent of e-cig websites either made outright claims that they had health benefits, or hinted there were some. Sixty-four percent made claims directly related to helping users quit smoking.

This is false advertising. Nicotine is addictive and it is a poison. The FDA should make both of these facts clear by requiring warning labels on e-cigarettes and bottles of e-juices. Skin contact with even small quantities of liquid nicotine can cause dizziness, vomiting and seizures. Swallowing it can be deadly.

A world in which a dangerous product is marketed and sold as a healthy one is exactly what the FDA exists to prevent.

E-cigarettes are not snake oil. But gummy bear, cotton candy and sour apple shouldn’t make them any easier to use.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Sarah Milov is an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia. She currently is writing a book about tobacco in the 20th century. Readers may write her at 435 Nau Hall South Lawn, Charlottesville, VA 22904.

This essay is available to Tribune News Service subscribers. Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Tribune or Newsela.

CON: Inhaling e-cigarettes is not like smoking cigarettes

In 1964, the office of the Surgeon General — the top government doctor — released its very first report on tobacco smoking.

It looked at scientific evidence from more than 7,000 articles on smoking and disease. Based on those studies, the report cited tobacco smoking as a major cause of lung and throat cancer.

The report launched a “war on smoking.” It soon led to health warnings on cigarette packages and bans on cigarette commercials on radio and television. In recent years, it has led to bans on smoking in public places, like restaurants.

Over this half-century of cigarette regulation, two facts have been impressed upon the nation: 1) smoking tobacco kills people; 2) once a person is addicted to smoking cigarettes, or, rather, to the nicotine one ingests by smoking cigarettes, it is very hard for a person to quit.

An Anti-Smoking Aid

Then an invention came along — e-cigarettes. They supply nicotine in much the same way as a tobacco cigarette. Yet, they don't appear to cause cancer or lung disease. Many people cheered the new invention.

Finally there was a product that could help those who were addicted. People who had tried other ways of quitting now had another anti-smoking aid to try.

Lives could be saved. People could replace their tobacco cigarettes with e-cigarettes. Instead of inhaling smoke and all its carcinogens — like tar — they'd just breathe water vapor. And that horrible smell would be replaced with just the light scent of a flavor like mint or strawberry.

Lives could be saved.

One would expect the public health community to be cheering loudly — and some some health professionals have, in fact, been supportive of e-cigarettes.

But some people appear to be addicted to regulation, and not to public health. For them, e-cigarettes challenge their beliefs.

Too Many Worries?

How can they try to ban a product that saves lives?

Many of these regulators are worried about the “what ifs.” “What if” vaping turns out to be harmful? “What if” people who vape decide to start smoking?

These “what ifs” are quite unlikely. However, it is on the basis of them that some people support bans. Some want bans on the sale of e-cigarettes. Others want to add grossly high taxes on e-cigarettes to discourage people from using them. Some even want outright bans on the use of e-cigarettes in public.

But such policies mean nicotine addicts will be less likely to use e-cigarettes. Instead, they may be more likely to keep smoking tobacco, which would obviously lead to more tobacco smoking and thus, more illness and death.

"Different Levels Of Risk"

The director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, made the key point clear: “People are smoking for the nicotine, but dying from the tar.”

He says e-cigarette regulation should take into account that different nicotine products "pose different levels of risk to the individual.” He believes they should be regulated according to their risks.

Which means America should not treat e-cigarettes and vaping just like tobacco smoking and smoke. Smoking is clearly far more dangerous than vaping.

In fact, vaping can cause people to voluntarily stop smoking. Because of that, we need carefully crafted rules. If they are well-written to steer Americans from smoking toward vaping as a replacement, it will provide “an extraordinary public health opportunity,” in Zeller's words.

Zeller makes a lot of sense. On the other side are the regulation nuts. These people are the enemy of public health.

Smoking kills. Vaping is a safer alternative. Our nation’s rules will save lives if they reflect this fact.

Questions:

1. What is e-cigs?

2. Is nicotine harmful to the body and how?

3. Why are high school students attracted to e-cigs?

4. How are e-cigs being advertised to the public?

5. What are the two facts of cigarettes impressed upon the nation?

6. In your opinion, should we regulate e-cigs and why?

7. How will the economic be affected by increase use of e-cigs?