Jacob Sullum on Jay Rockefeller's Irrational Hostility Toward E-Cigarettes


Senate Science, Commerce, & Transportation Committee

"I'm ashamed of you," Jay Rockefeller told Jason Healy and Craig Weiss during a Senate hearing last week. "I don't know how you go to sleep at night.…You're what's wrong with this country." What had Healy and Weiss done to rouse Rockefeller's ire? As the presidents of two leading electronic cigarette companies, they had promoted what Healy plausibly called "the most significant tobacco harm reduction product ever." Jacob Sullum says Rockefeller's sanctimonious outburst illustrates the baffling hostility to that product among people who claim to care about smoking-related disease and death.