Why is vaping legal?

Did someone in a position of authority decide we need a high-tech, new way for people to kill themselves and create a major public-health disaster?

The sale of e-cigarettes is big business, but it’s still new enough that we could snuff it out. It’s different with tobacco, which dates back to pre-colonial times and is an accepted — more like tolerated — habit for millions of people.

But having seen the destruction of lives, and the multi-billion-dollar health-care costs of cigarette smoking, do we need an industry whose main consumer benefit is that it makes you smell bad only until it kills you? Will we have massive liability lawsuits against vaping companies 10 or 20 years from now, as we did with cigarette makers 20 years ago?

Does anyone doubt that, if tobacco was discovered yesterday and cigarettes were just now coming on the market, the Food and Drug Administration would permit their sale? How many smokers have you met who wish they’d never started — compared to how many non-smokers who say they’ve always wished they’d tried tobacco?

Personal disclosure, if you’re wondering: I smoked for 10 years, quit after numerous unsuccessful attempts, and I don’t know how I kicked the habit. I just got lucky. Once they started passing clean indoor air acts about 15 years after I quit, and I realized that we don’t have to go around in a haze of other people’s smoke everywhere, I became very much anti-smoking (not anti-smoker — there’s a difference).

More: Wisconsin brothers charged with operating counterfeit vaping cartridge operation

I believe the tobacco industry should be treated like any other business — any other business that markets dangerous addictive drugs to children, lies about it, and passes along the resulting medical expenses to the government in the form of Medicaid costs. In other words, since it’s too late to stop production, we should sue, tax and regulate the companies out of existence.

That won't happen with tobacco, but it's not too late with vaping.

Anti-smoking advertising and punitive taxes, along with price hikes caused by billion-dollar court judgments against tobacco companies, have driven adult smoking rates down to about 14 percent nationwide, the lowest ever recorded. That’s great, but tobacco has been around 500 years or so and we’ll always have it with us.

Vaping among teenagers, by contrast, increased from 20 to 27.5 percent between 2018 and 2019, according to a survey cited this week by USA Today. There have been recent news reports of a half-dozen deaths attributed to vaping, as well as hundreds of serious lung afflictions among young people. 

The White House is considering a ban on sale of flavored vape products to minors, and some states have already taken that step. But is there a certain number of deaths and lifelong injuries we need to record before we just force the product off the market entirely?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last Sunday issued an executive order banning flavored vaping products in his state. In Florida, Rep. Jackie Toledo, R-Tampa, has filed a bill (HB 151) raising the legal purchase age from 18 to 21.

Some commentators draw a false comparison to assault weapons, asking why we should ban vaping but not the guns used in most mass murders. Well, like it or not, there is a constitutional protection for keeping and bearing arms, which lawyers and lobbyists can argue over. There is nothing in the Constitution assuring the right to sell smoke — or, if you prefer, vapors.

Opponents of a ban argue that vaping is a useful alternative to tobacco, helping smokers kick cigarettes by substituting a less-dangerous vape gadget. That’s like saying a small-caliber pistol is better for playing Russian roulette.

E-cigarettes weren’t invented to help tobacco users step down to something less destructive. They were invented to hook teenagers on a product that offers no benefit and a lot of risk. Why else would the vaping fluids come in fruit and candy flavors? Do any non-users suddenly decide to take up the habit at 25 or 30?

Some will argue about big government, and the nanny state telling us what to do. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol or marijuana, and it won’t keep counterfeit or home-made vaping devices away from kids.

Sadly, vaping won’t stop completely until the kids decide it’s uncool. Adults can’t make something not cool in clothing, music of anything else we did when we were their age.

But at least with alcohol and other drugs, we try to prevent use by minors. The current efforts to get fruity flavors off the market and raise the legal purchasing age are a step in that direction, but a better solution would be to just stop the manufacture and sale of these new poison-delivery systems.


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