Ms. Benisatto, do you really believe that tasty flavors will attract children to use these products?? A can of caffeinated soda is a lot cheaper, offers the same flavors and has the same stimulant effects. How many e-cigarettes do you see being used on campus instead of traditional cigarettes? It's a known fact that teens tend to emulate young adults - high school kids emulating what the college kids are doing. These products are used by smokers between 30-60 years old. Are teens really going to want to emulate them or the college students spending only $6 on a pack of real cigarettes? Additionally, the "higher risk" of smokeless nicotine use is no greater than that of caffeine, so points about insecticides are pure sensationalism.
If using a "smaller grenade" isn't beneficial, then why bother with fat-free products for the obese, sugar-free products for diabetes patients or seatbelts for cars? It's called "reduced harm." The harm from smoking is 99% in the SMOKE. If people are concerned that it "looks like smoking," then rather than making them harder to get or banning them, EDUCATE people that these are safer alternatives - the same way we educate about safe sex and eating healthier. But don't take away an option that is working for hundreds of thousands of smokers based on how it "looks." Would you remove sugar-free cookies from those fighting diabetes because it looks like real cookies that could make them sick?
Dr. Brewer's last point - that these should be marketed to smokers - is spot on and that is how they ARE currently marketed. The majority of kids have no interest in these products (because of "flavors") anymore than they would want chocolate-flavored Ex-Lax. It's an erroneous assumption by non-smokers that smokers don't enjoy the sweet, non-tobacco flavors. I'm 43 and I use mocha and peach - not tobacco flavors. And why would kids choose to spend hundreds of dollars on these when they would normally buy designer shoes and video games? The argument that teens or non-smokers would even buy these is laughable and baseless - a poorly thought out theory without regarding the evidence to the contrary.
Good question why the FDA disagrees - there have been several independent studies and even the limited testing by the FDA failed to find toxic levels of chemicals or dangerous levels of nitrosamines. So all testing to date has shown no reason to suspect danger to the user and every reason to believe these are 98-99% safer than smoking. Additionally, after being on the market since 2003, there have been no reports of serious illness or injury attributed to e-cigarette use, while FDA-approved Chantix has actually been linked to dozens of deaths and thousands of adverse reactions. So, why is the FDA so against e-cigarettes? Follow the money.
