Lack of Research Is Not an Excuse to Ban E-Cigarettes

E-cigarettes have been hailed by ex-smokers as a miracle product that has helped them quit and vilified by health organizations that say their rising popularity threatens to "renormalize" smoking and could hook kids on nicotine. Guess who regulators care about?

So far, it seems that most countries, and possibly even the US Food and Drug Administration, are ready to err on the side of prohibition. Health groups and regulators have hid behind the flimsy argument that there's not enough science suggesting vaping is totally safe, so it's better to ban or severely restrict e-cigarettes now, before we have a health crisis on our hands.

The thing is, we already do have a health crisis on our hands. And vaping is, perhaps, the most significant technological innovation that could help curb that crisis that's ever come along.

The answer to the conundrum of "not enough e-cigarette research" is a no-brainer: Get more of it, quickly. You do that by not killing a technology that some have already credited with saving their lives.

Already this week, two of the world's largest health groups, the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association, have put out huge policy papers about vaping, both of them suggesting we don't know enough about vaping to risk not putting strict regulations on e-cigarettes.

That doesn't really make a lick of sense, as Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University wrote in a recent opinion piece for Nature.

We're talking about a nicotine delivery system, not a health food or a new medicine, here. People know that there will, potentially, be side effects.

With e-cigs, you're removing the dozens of carcinogens from combustible cigarettes, and keeping parts that—while certainly aren't good for you—are widely believed by health professionals to be less dangerous. Early studies suggest vaping is safer than smoking, a claim that the Food and Drug Administration and the American Heart Association both buy as legitimate.

And these groups want to ban them or villainize them as if they were just as dangerous as inhaling real smoke? Because there might be side effects?

"Given the millions who will die from smoking in the near future, does it make sense to spend years discovering, characterizing and debating ancillary risks of vaping that are almost certainly less serious than the known risks of smoking as a precondition for responsible policy-making? This is precaution?" Sarewitz writes.

"The more important question is whether regulation should be driven by the risks of e-cigarette use, or by the risks of not using them. The former promises endless research, uncertainty, and debate; the latter may offer a technological shortcut to solving one of the world's most serious public-health problems," Sarewitz continues.

He doubles down on that later in the piece:

No one knows to what extent vaping will displace smoking, but the sure way never to find out is to make policies hostage to endless studies on population-wide risks. Instead we should test the effectiveness of policies, perhaps in limited jurisdictions, that encourage vaping among smokers and potential smokers. Keep the tax burden, and thus cost, low relative to cigarettes. Allow advertisements. With George Clooney. Continue to allow vaping in bars, restaurants and workplaces. Make smoking uncool, expensive and stupid, and vaping cool and smart. If people must get addicted to something, let them get addicted to a thing that does not give them or their families cancer. And carefully monitor the outcomes.

Sarewitz isn't a vaper, but he is a regulatory expert. Banning the unknown, especially when it shows this much promise, makes no sense.