The sound of clicking lighters is increasingly being replaced by glowing light and silent vapor. This is a part of a trend across the nation toward the adoption of e-cigarettes as a replacement for old-fashioned tobacco smokes.
But if a measure before the Los Angeles City Council gains traction, you might soon see this trend snuffed out.
The Arts, Parks, Health, Aging and River Committee recently submitted a proposal to the L.A. City Council to ban e-cigarette usage at farmers markets, parks, beaches, bars and nightclubs, among other areas. The proposal needs to be approved by the city council before it can become a law.
Citizens of Los Angeles can and should be able to use their own discretion when using e-cigarettes in closed buildings and public locations, especially when outdoors. These regulations infringe on personal freedoms. What people choose to put in their own body is a personal choice that should not be regulated by a city council, provided the choice does not harm other residents.
The push for regulation on e-cigarettes has already led to ordinances limiting their use in public places in both New York and Chicago. These cities appear to have jumped the gun on federal regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with the regulation of nicotine products.
This type of regulation has also hit closer to home. Beverly Hills is working to implement restrictions on where e-cigarettes can be used, where they can be sold and who can purchase them, with the mayor citing opposition to smoking as the reason.
But the sweeping trend of regulation is premature. The lack of peer-reviewed studies on e-cigarettes has spooked local officials into instituting regulations that are as strict as those governing cigarette smoke. What little data there is though, supports the idea that e-cigarettes are safer than normal cigarettes.
Whereas normal cigarettes are regulated because of the health risks associated with secondhand smoke, e-cigarette users exhale mostly water vapor.
In fact, a Drexel University study found that vapors from e-cigarettes “fall well below the threshold for concern for compounds with known toxicity.”
E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco, tar and some of the other toxic chemicals found in a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, for example. When an e-cigarette is used, the nicotine solution inside the cartridge is vaporized, the nicotine is absorbed by the person inhaling the product and the vapor is exhaled.
Nicotine, which is found in e-cigarettes, is extremely addicting and does hold its own health risks, so regulating who can buy e-cigarettes and at what age makes sense. This means identification should be required with purchase.
But dictating where you can ingest legal chemicals is clearly over-regulation.
The proposed Los Angeles ordinance must be approved by the entire council before becoming a law. If passed, the regulations would lead to unfortunate consequences for Westwood businesses such as smoke shops and corner stores, which would be impacted by the ban.
In particular, heavy regulation of e-cigarettes would make them less convenient and less appealing, resulting in a drop in sales.
Another repercussion of regulation is that, paradoxically, it could lead to fewer people quitting smoking.
The text of the ordinance states that allowing public use of e-cigarettes may “reverse the progress that has been made over the years to discourage smoking.”
But e-cigarettes have actually been used by smokers as a way to temper or satisfy their nicotine habit without the damaging tar and many of the toxins found in normal cigarettes. A small study done by the University of Catania in Italy found that e-cigarettes “substantially decreased cigarette consumption without causing significant side effects in smokers not intending to quit.”
Although it may be rude to pull out an e-cigarette in a restaurant to satisfy a nicotine craving, Los Angeles residents should retain the freedom to use e-cigarettes when they choose.
Like consuming alcohol, which many people find distasteful and which carries its own health risks, smoking an e-cigarette is a personal choice. Until the federal agency in charge of regulating tobacco products makes rules dictating the use of e-cigarettes, individual cities should not either, especially if their efforts essentially amount to nothing more than a moral crusade.
In April 2009, Obama’s FDA revealed its unscientific, unethical and inhumane policy to deceive Americans about e-cigs and defend the FDA’s e-cig ban and nearly 1,000 product seizures by US Customs agents: “We don’t want the public to perceive them as a safer alternative to cigarettes.”
http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/features/ecigarettes-under-fire
In July 2009, Obama appointee (and former Waxman staffer) FDA Deputy Commissioner Josh Sharfstein held a press conference with CDC OSH Director Matt McKenna and Big Pharma front groups (to defend FDA’s e-cig ban from lawsuits filed by two e-cig companies whose products were seized) to falsely claim e-cigs are carcinogenic and toxic, are target marketed to children, are addicting children, can be gateways to cigarettes, may renormalize smoking, and don’t help people quit smoking.
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm173175.htm
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/NewsEvents/Newsroom/MediaTranscripts/UCM173405.pdf
Thankfully for the rule of law, public health, civil liberties, market competition and common sense, all 12 federal appeals court judges upheld Judge Richard Leon’s Janaury 15, 2010 ruling striking down FDA’s
e-cig ban as unlawful.
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2009cv0771-54
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2009cv0771-55
During the past five years, the growing mountain of scientific and empirical evidence consistently indicates that e-cigarettes:
– are 99% (+/-1%) less hazardous than cigarettes,
– are consumed almost exclusively (i.e. > 99%) by smokers and former smokers
who quit by switching to e-cigs,
– have helped several million smokers quit and/or sharply reduce cigarette
consumption,
– have replaced (reduced consumption of) nearly 1 Billion packs of cigarettes
in the US in the past five years,
– are more effective than FDA approved nicotine gums, lozenges, patches and
inhalers for smoking cessation and reducing cigarette consumption,
– pose fewer risks than FDA approved Verenicline (Chantix) and Wellbutrin.
– emit similar trace levels of constituents as FDA approved nicotine inhalers, posing no risks to nonusers,
– have never been found to create nicotine dependence in any nonsmoker (youth or adult), and
– have never been found to precede cigarette smoking in any daily smoker.
But in response to losing the federal lawsuit filed by e-cig companies, on April 25, 2011 the FDA stated its intent to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products by imposing the “deeming” regulation and by imposing additional regulations on e-cigarettes.
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm252360.htm
Unfortunately for public health and the truth, the FDA’s deeming regulation would once again ban the sale of all e-cigs in the US (per Section 905(j) and Section 910 of the Tobacco Control Act).
Even if the FDA exempts e-cigarettes from the prohibition clauses in Sections 905 and 910, imposing the “deeming” regulation and additional regulations on e-cigarettes would likely ban 99% of the several thousand e-cigarette products now on the market, eliminate 99% of the approximately 500-1,000 e-cig manufacturers and importers, and basically give the entire e-cigarette industry to Big Tobacco (and perhaps one or two of the largest e-cigarette companies).
Six months ago, to lobby for the FDA “deeming” regulation, CDC Director
Tom Frieden and OSH Director Tim McAfee not only lied about the scientific
evidence on e-cigs (by falsely claiming nicotine damages the brain,
e-cigarettes are addictive, and are a gateway to cigarette smoking), but also
intentionally misrepresented their own NYTS survey findings (i.e. finding
that “past-month” use of an e-cig by teens increased from 1% in 2011
to 2% in 2012)
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6235a6.htm?s_cid=mm6235a6_w
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0905-ecigarette-use.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/52932213/#52932213
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50154438n
http://video.foxnews.com/v/2655099711001/e-cigarette-use-on-the-rise-slippery-slope-for-teens/?playlist_id=930909749001
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2013/09/05/e-cigarette-use-doubles-among-young-people
But in fact, the most important findings by far of the NYTS survey were that:
– teen smokers were >20 times more likely than nonsmokers to have reported “ever use” and “past-30-day-use” of e-cigs in both 2011 and 2012,
– <1% of teen nonsmokers reported “ever use” of e-cigs, and <.5% reported
past 30 day use of an e-cig in both 2011 and 2012,
– cigarette smoking declined from 2011 to 2012 as e-cig increased, and
– e-cigs are a gateway away from (not towards) cigarette smoking.
CDC's intentional misrepresentation of the scientific evidence and their own survey
data was unethical public health malpractice, state and local health officials (and many left wing Democrats led by e-cig prohibitionist Henry Waxman) have been repeating the false and misleading fear mongering claims about e-cigs by FDA and CDC to ban their use.
Meanwhile, Big Pharma funded e-cig prohibitionists (American Cancer Society, American Heart Assocaition, American Lung Association) have also been repeating the same false and misleading claims about e-cigs to protect the profits of Big Pharma's ineffective (for smoking cessation) nicotine gums, patches, lonzenges and inhalers, and less than safe Chantix.
In fact, smoker's and public health improve every time a smoker substitutes an e-cig instead of smoking a cigarette.
In sharp contrast, laws that ban e-cig use threaten the lives vapers and smokers, and protect cigarette markets.
For those reasons, elected officials should reject proposed e-cig usage bans, and public health officials should urge smokers to switch to e-cigs.
For disclosure, neither I nor Smokefree Pennsylvania has ever received funding from any tobacco, drug or e-cigarette company.
Bill Godshall
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
1926 Monongahela Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15218
412-351-5880
billgodshall@verizon.net