As he looks toward the Democratic presidential campaign soon to begin, Gov. Andrew Cuomo seems to be trying to leave his mark on New York. Unfortunately for the state’s residents, the mark he seems determined to make will be a craven abandonment of leadership in service to his rabid base.
Last month, he finally dropped the other shoe on the depressed Southern Tier by banning fracking, isolating those New Yorkers from the nation’s shale gas revolution and the economic boon attendant upon it. Now, he once again toes the left wing line on electronic cigarettes and vapor products (“e-cigs”), falsely designating them as tobacco products and banning flavored e-liquids. This, despite the facts clearly showing that e-cigs are significantly more likely to help addicted adult smokers quit than the “tried-and-true” FDA-approved products, as well as being less toxic than the drugs used for smoking cessation, and much cheaper too. Note: e-cigs contain no tobacco, and emit no smoke.
As for flavored vaping liquids, despite the baseless accusations by numerous “liberal” officials that e-cig companies use flavors to seduce kids, the facts are quite the opposite: surveys done both here and in Europe show that adults overwhelmingly prefer flavored nicotine liquids.
But what about “protecting the children”? Are e-cigs part of a new “Big Tobacco” plot by using “kid-friendly” flavors to attract and addict our nation’s youth? That’s one of the phony CDC alarms. But wait! Teen smoking rates are declining more rapidly than ever, while e-cig experimentation is definitely rising. Further, the big tobacco companies play only a small role in the e-cig marketplace: rather, the engine of this innovative technology comes from hundreds (or thousands) of small and medium-sized businesses.
What the duplicitous opponents of e-cigs always forget, is that there are still 42 million addicted smokers in our country, among whom almost one half million die from smoking each year (and twenty-fold that number are chronically ill). Three-quarters want to quit, but only one in twenty succeed in any given year.
How did fighting America’s most important public health problem — cigarette smoking — became so politicized and controversial? And why does the anti-e-cig hatred almost always come from the liberal Left? If their crusade against e-cigs were successful, the winners would be Big Pharma — sellers of hugely profitable but almost useless nicotine gum, patches and cessation drugs — and Big Tobacco, eager to keep selling their deadly cigarettes if the e-cig market is stifled by FDA over-regulation and official misleading alarmism.
The fact remains, however, that Cuomo needs to keep currying liberals’ favor to retain any hope of attaining that which his late father, Mario Cuomo, failed to accomplish: getting the Democratic nomination for president. He knows that flouting his base by allowing fracking, or by allowing smokers free access to this effective and safe method of quitting cigarettes, would doom his campaign. It’s just too bad that the best interests of New Yorkers have to be sacrificed on the altar of our governor’s ambition.
Gilbert Ross, M.D., is medical and executive director at the American Council on Science and Health.Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
