The Deadly Crusade Against E-cigarettes

What the critics see as a bug is actually a feature: e-cigarettes can work as a public health tool precisely because of their resemblance to the real thing.

It’s among the most important public health problems in the world — preventing the devastation wreaked by smoking. Experts predict the global death toll of cigarettes will approach 1 billion lives lost this century. But misguided or agenda-driven public health officials worldwide are condemning one hope for slowing this catastrophe — electronic cigarettes, or “e-cigarettes,” and certain low-risk tobacco products that have the potential to reduce the risk caused by smoking.
Public health officials are gathered at a conclave in Seoul, South Korea, for the revision of an international tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). They’ll be taking up e-cigarettes and perhaps even calling for a ban.
The logic employed by these critics is that since e-cigarettes look like actual cigarettes, they must be curbed as well.
But what the critics see as a bug is actually a feature: e-cigarettes can work as a public health tool precisely because of their resemblance to the real thing.
E-cigarettes work by giving addicted smokers the nicotine they crave, without the toxic smoke. They supply a variable amount of nicotine in a watery vapor and produce a red glow at the tip when puffed upon.
That similarity — especially the nicotine, the addictive substance smokers crave — is what is best about e-cigarettes. The nicotine “hit” they supply matches, more or less, that of inhaling cigarette smoke, as do the behavioral mannerisms of holding the thing as though it was their familiar “friend,” the conventional cigarette.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/november/the-deadly-crusade-against-e-cigarettes