E-cigarettes have risks but they also offer public health benefits
From: The Washington Post Editorial Board
IF ELECTRONIC cigarettes, known as e-cigarettes, live up to their potential, millions of nicotine addicts in the United States will use them. To some public health advocates, that sounds terrible. People should kick nicotine rather than cultivate their dependence with a barely regulated product that seems designed to addict children. The concentrated, nicotine-laced liquid that these devices vaporize is also toxic when inappropriately consumed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just reported that, with the rise in the use of e-cigarettes over the past several years, the number of calls to poison control centers stemming from misuse of e-cigarette liquid also has increased, from about one a month in 2010 to 215 a month now. “These poisonings will continue,” CDC Director Tom Frieden ominously warned.
But, in the fight against the profound misery and death that conventional cigarette smoking causes, even an imperfect tool is worth welcoming if it can reduce smoking. The CDC news does not disqualify e-cigarettes from helping — as long as the government regulates them.
