Tobacco. Heroin. Opiates. We didn’t know. Initially, we didn’t know that those substances would turn into addictions. The beauty turned into a beast. In the beginning, physicians touted the benefits of tobacco: it relaxed you. Heroin was considered a non-addictive cure for morphine addiction, as well as a treatment for pneumonia, tuberculosis and coughs. (British mothers shipped heroin to their sons at the front during World War I.) As for opiates, they dulled excruciating pain. We blame Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Mobsters for hooking us; but, at least at the very start, a lot of “experts” didn’t know.
Today nifty e-cigarettes are morphing into a product not so nifty. At first, they seemed a marvel: you could inhale away without sending noxious smoke into the lungs of everybody near you. You could wean yourself off cigarettes. You could look chic, since the gizmos looked like flash drives.
The beauty is morphing. Now more than 800 injuries and 12 deaths have been linked to vaping. In 2016, the U.S. surgeon general outlined the dangers from inhaling nicotine, often mixed with THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the active chemical in cannabis.
The uptake is startling: 20% of high school seniors now vape, a 78% increase from last year. Five percent of middle school students vape. Vaping has outstripped tobacco usage among teenagers. You can buy flavored e-cigarettes; you can buy hoodies, watches, phone cases and backpacks designed expressly for vaping.
The question looms: what will Uncle Sam do?
States are stepping to the fore. This summer, Michigan was the first state to issue a total ban on the sale of e-cigarettes. New York followed, but banned only fruit and candy-flavored e-cigarettes (not the mint and menthol ones, which presumably draw adults rather than teenagers). Like Michigan, Massachusetts banned the sales of vaping products for four months; Rhode Island’s ban included only the flavored ones. Legislatures in Illinois, New Jersey and Delaware are proposing bans; and a few cities, notably San Francisco, the home of Juul, a leading manufacturer of e-cigarettes (and owned by Altria, maker of tobacco cigarettes), has banned the sale of e-cigarettes. At last, the federal government is stepping into the fray: the Food and Drug Administration is expected to launch restrictions, subject to public hearings.
We’ll see whether enough other forces wake up to the dangers.
Some retailers, moreover, are taking the e-cigarettes off their shelves in the U.S. Walmart has stopped selling them. Ditto for Rite Aid. CVS Health Corp., which barred cigarettes in 2014, never sold the e-version. (For gas stations, convenience stores and Walgreens, e-cigarettes remain lucrative.)
Even Juul has stopped advertising flavored e-cigarettes in the U.S., and has announced it won’t fight a possible federal ban on flavored vaping products.
Smooth sailing as we tamp down this growing addiction?
Maybe not.
Expect pushback. Some may argue that bans will hurt tobacco smokers trying to stop. Bans will drive small vaping stores into bankruptcy. Bans will force teenagers to embrace the real thing, tobacco, which is more toxic. Bans are not scientifically justified: we don’t know for certain what components are the toxic ones, or whether vape users were inhaling black-market products. Bans will encourage a black market. Bans will drive users onto the internet (where most teenagers are most comfortable shopping anyway). We don’t ban tobacco cigarettes’ sales to adults: why ban e-cigarettes to adults?
The arguments roll forth. The people who loathe big and little government will join forces, protesting against the nanny state.
As for Big Tobacco, which has a stake in e-cigarettes, it can wait out this battle, knowing that it will find a market overseas and knowing that bans on marketing will not necessarily end the use of vaping products.
For public health advocates, the alarms have been a wake-up call. We’ll see whether enough other forces wake up to the dangers of this technologically driven, 21st-century addiction.
Joan Retsinas is a columnist for The Progressive Populist.
