The war on things that happen to look like smoking has reached 33,000 feet. The Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it would ban the use of e-cigarettes on commercial airplanes. (Many airlines had already taken the action, before the government decided to step in.)
It’s not entirely obvious why the DOT took this step; unlike actual cigarettes, e-cigs contain no tobacco. They emit vapor, rather than carcinogenic second-hand smoke. And so, the DOT claims that it is merely clarifying things: “The Department took a practical approach to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes by applying the same restrictions to both,” said DOT chief Anthony Foxx in a statement. In other words, e-cigarettes look too much like actual cigarettes. It’s very confusing!
The DOT also noted that “the prior rule did not explicitly define ‘smoking.'” And so the agency up with a new definition of what constitutes “smoking.” Using an atomizer to convert liquid nicotine into vapor now counts as “smoking,” despite the absence of ash, fire, and er, smoke. Somebody call Merriam-Webster.
