Since 2010, the Food and Drug Administration is debating just how to regulate the selling of e-cigarettes. The FDA should hurry up. These batterypowered devices, which make an inhalable vapor and heat a nicotine solution, are exploding in popularity - driven mostly by a tobacco market looking for new addicts.
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Addiction itself does lie at the center of the Food And Drug Administration's predicament about controlling e-cigarettes. Should the agency assume that millions of Americans choose to be nicotine addicts, together with the national function merely to make the use of electronic cigarettes as secure as possible? Or should the FDA see this powerful dependence as inherently wrong, both for persons and society, with the government helping folks avoid or defeat it?
Several countries already prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes, a wise course for the FDA. They see the electronics as delivering a drug with no use, even if it does not have all of the results of regular smoking. Indeed, the tobacco industry will not claim e-cigarettes are a temporary tool for ending tobacco habit. Most likely, e-cigarettes are being heavily promoted to entice people to take up smoking. Yearly sales of e-cigarettes are currently approaching $1 billion.
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Any benefit of e-cigarettes remains unproven while a number of toxins are discovered in the unit's vapors. At least three American cities ban their use indoors. And, according to a study, quitting e-cigarettes may be as hard as for tobacco smoking.
In taking any action, the FDA should presume people do not want to eventually become addicts to nicotine. Government currently takes that tactic naturally with increasing limitations on the sale and use of tobacco products. The effect has been a drop in public smoking and smoking in general.
The opposite approach of tolerance toward e-cigarettes would be similar to the way states, once faced with unlawful activities associated with illegal betting, decided that people everywhere want to gamble and authorities might as well interact by offering lotteries. Now numerous mainly poor folks can't get enough of the daily gaming fix. And states are dependent on the revenues.
Simply curbing the selling of e-cigarettes to minors should not be the FDA's final decision. The company, and indeed much of government, can help get folks that nicotine addiction is not "cool" and can be easily avoidable. The company must do more than prevent damage. It can also maintain that each person has the right to be free from habit.
Gallery Monitor Political Cartoons
Addiction itself does lie at the center of the Food And Drug Administration's predicament about controlling e-cigarettes. Should the agency assume that millions of Americans choose to be nicotine addicts, together with the national function merely to make the use of electronic cigarettes as secure as possible? Or should the FDA see this powerful dependence as inherently wrong, both for persons and society, with the government helping folks avoid or defeat it?
Several countries already prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes, a wise course for the FDA. They see the electronics as delivering a drug with no use, even if it does not have all of the results of regular smoking. Indeed, the tobacco industry will not claim e-cigarettes are a temporary tool for ending tobacco habit. Most likely, e-cigarettes are being heavily promoted to entice people to take up smoking. Yearly sales of e-cigarettes are currently approaching $1 billion.
CONNECTED: Help kids prevent legal marijuana
Any benefit of e-cigarettes remains unproven while a number of toxins are discovered in the unit's vapors. At least three American cities ban their use indoors. And, according to a study, quitting e-cigarettes may be as hard as for tobacco smoking.
In taking any action, the FDA should presume people do not want to eventually become addicts to nicotine. Government currently takes that tactic naturally with increasing limitations on the sale and use of tobacco products. The effect has been a drop in public smoking and smoking in general.
The opposite approach of tolerance toward e-cigarettes would be similar to the way states, once faced with unlawful activities associated with illegal betting, decided that people everywhere want to gamble and authorities might as well interact by offering lotteries. Now numerous mainly poor folks can't get enough of the daily gaming fix. And states are dependent on the revenues.
Simply curbing the selling of e-cigarettes to minors should not be the FDA's final decision. The company, and indeed much of government, can help get folks that nicotine addiction is not "cool" and can be easily avoidable. The company must do more than prevent damage. It can also maintain that each person has the right to be free from habit.