In the last week alone, Time, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NBC News, and dozens of local papers and news broadcasters have run hit pieces on America’s most popular electronic cigarette, JUUL. This moral panic isn’t organic. It is a coordinated attack orchestrated by nanny-state activists funded by the likes of Mike Bloomberg. These crusaders are doing a great disservice to consumer freedom without regard for the truth or its impact on public health. We deserve better.
Electronic cigarettes like JUUL, Vuse, Mark Ten, Logic, and NJOY are sold in convenience stores across the country as an alternative to traditional cigarettes for consumers aged 18 and above. A battery is used to heat nicotine containing liquid contained in a “pod,” or closed system, that is disposed after use. The products deliver the nicotine without the carcinogens, tar, or chemicals.
Globally reputable organizations like Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians estimate that vapor products are at least 95 percent less harmful than traditional cigarettes. Scott Gottlieb, who currently serves as the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, also believes that with regards to e-cigarettes, there are “benefits that we must consider.”
“Slick, slender, and the newest craze among kids!” NBC News recently opined. “It seems like it’s just as bad as smoking a cigarette. Just kind of packaged prettier!” the mother of a high school teen proclaimed, without a concern in the world for reality.
Despite a great awakening by a few well-intentioned parents, e-cigarettes and vapor products aren’t new. They have been on the market for nearly a decade. During that time, teen smoking rates have plummeted to the lowest levels they’ve been in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even when youth experimentation with e-cigarettes rose between 2011 and 2015, cigarette use fell. In fact, even experimentation with e-cigarettes fell in 2016, down to 11.3 percent from 16 percent the year prior.
What’s recent is simply the dramatic growth in JUUL’s market share compared to the others: nearly 55 percent, according to Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog. In public affairs, it’s easier to demonize one company than an entire industry. That’s what’s happening here.
We live in times where our youth eat detergent pods and snort condoms as part of a larger internet-seeking fame epidemic. Prohibition of these products would be silly, despite the demonstrable health risks associated with misuse. The measured and more appropriate response includes child-resistant packaging and a stern conversation between parents and their reckless experimental teens. For e-cigarettes, the former is already codified as a federal law. You can’t legislate the latter.
Instead of prohibition, which has created nothing but black markets and criminals, further market innovations should be encouraged. Instead of using the federal regulatory system to kill a product that can successfully help smokers quit their deadly habit, it could be used to bring new products to market that reduce the misuse of products like JUUL. If the government permitted it, those technologies could include devices that are disabled when they’re brought onto high school property.
Provincial prohibitionists like Matt Meyers at the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, however, are incapable of embracing innovation because the “quit or die” principle has guided their entire careers. Unless you’re willing to entirely quit, there is no middle ground for health, and if that dooms 37 million Americans to smoking (the current number in U.S.), than so be it.
We’re better than that. We’re better than this crusade against innovation. We’re better than the sophistry and fear-mongering. Let’s not ignore that there are products on the market today that can help millions of Americans quit the deadliest habit known to man, smoking. Dooming to death tens of millions of smokers who want to quit by restricting their access to products like JUUL is antithetical to both common sense and public health. This fear-mongering has real consequences because people begin to believe that e-cigarettes are as or more dangerous than cigarettes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The crusaders against Americans who vape need to grow up. These bullies are acting more childish than experimental teens ever could.
Paul Blair (@gopaulblair) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the strategic initiatives director at Americans for Tax Reform.
