It should be noted that the Oregon AG isn't limiting his campaign against Smoking Everywhere to their health claims. If he was, he'd be on solid ground and no argument could be made against him. It's clear that Smoking Everywhere made unsupportable claims about their product that and that the Oregon AG has every right to challenge them.
HOWEVER, and this is the most important part: the Oregon AG has been on television making statements that go WELL beyond the strictly legal issue. In particular he's been claiming that the devices are marketed to children due to the location of the kiosks at the mall and the fact that the carts for the
device come in various flavors. In doing so, the Oregon AG has expanded his campaign into the purely political realm. He has no authority to do so and his actions are clearly inappropriate and arguably unethical.
When contacting the AG's office here in Oregon I have been very careful to point out that he has every right to challenge Smoking Everywhere over the health claims they made. He's fully within his jurisdiction in doing so and I support his efforts to compel Smoking Everywhere to comply with the law and retract their health claims. But I've made very voiceferous objections to his statements regarding the supposed marketing of these devices to children. The fact of the matter is that Smoking Everywhere does NOT market these devices to children and it's of vital importance that the AG be made aware of this fact and is strongly urged to abandon his personal political campaign against them on this front.
The primary danger here is that the AG, as an authority and a person who has a public stage on which to make these statements is in a position to make a seriously negative and flatly inaccurate first impression on people who know nothing about personal vaporizers. He knows this and that's why he's doing it. He has a personal agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with his mandate to enforce the law.
Again, kudos to KGW for exposing this inaccuracy. They should be applauded for their investigative report and encouraged to continue providing the public with balanced reporting in this area. As we've seen before, the majority of reporting on personal vaporizers contains inaccuracies, lack of fact checking and the parroting of anti-smoking rhetoric that is completely inappropriate. It's refreshing to see a media outlet live up to their mission and provide sane, factual reporting on this subject.
