Stossel: Let Them Vape
Reason cited CEI’s Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on e-cigarettes.
Our government says e-cigarettes and vaping are the latest “epidemic” among teens. So the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will restrict them. Cities across the country are banning e-cigarette use in public.
But e-cigarettes help smokers quit traditional cigarettes. Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute tells John Stossel that people have misconceptions about e-cigarettes. “It’s about 95 percent less harmful than a normal traditional cigarette,” she says.
That’s because e-cigarettes let people get a hit of nicotine without actually burning tobacco. The burning of paper and tobacco leaves is what makes cigarettes so dangerous.
Minton admits that the nicotine in e-cigarettes is addictive. But “on the spectrum of drugs that you can become addicted to, nicotine and caffeine are very similar to each other.”
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Minton says that is a bad idea: “Do we want children to become addicted to anything? No….But keeping a small percent of teenagers from trying e-cigarettes is not worth sacrificing adults whose lives could be saved.”