Panic stalks the land

A story in Reason magazine makes the point that a yearning for bad news on vaping has rendered some opponents incapable of accepting official figures that show that what they see as an epidemic among young people is nothing of the sort.
Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, said that, last week, voters in San Francisco had overwhelmingly approved a ban on the sale of “flavored tobacco products”, including electronic cigarettes, in part because of the rising popularity of e-cigarettes among teenagers.
Supporters of this and other, similar measures who said they wanted to protect teenagers from the temptations of vaping gave no weight to the interests of adult smokers who used e-cigarettes to quit, a process in which flavor variety played an important role.
In any case, three days after the San Francisco vote, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had published survey data showing that in 2017 vaping declined among middle school students and remained steady among high school students after falling in 2016.
‘E-cigarette alarmists were so flummoxed by reality’s failure to fit their narrative that they insisted the survey must be wrong,’ Sullum wrote.
Later in his piece, Sullum said that critics viewed sweet flavors as inherently suspect. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had argued that the FDA should not tolerate e-cigarettes that tasted good and that it should take faster action to rid the marketplace of kid-friendly e-cig flavors. The FDA had begun to move on this epidemic but its actions were slower-moving than was the wildfire spread of e-cigarette use among kids.
‘Never mind that “the wildfire spread of e-cig use among kids” perceived by Schumer coincides with what the CDC says is a decline in e-cig use among kids,’ said Sullum. ‘The more fundamental problem is that Schumer seems incapable of conceiving that “kid-friendly e-cig flavors” also appeal to adults, which makes vaping more attractive as a harm-reducing alternative to smoking. The implication is that banning those flavors could be deadly to smokers who would otherwise switch. Anyone who ignores that prospect is only pretending to care about public health.’