The New York City Council voted recently to include smokeless electronic cigarettes in its city-wide public smoking ban. According to a report by USA Today, New Jersey, Utah and North Dakota already regulate the use of such devices where smoking is prohibited.
Electronic Cigarettes. By Dany Thinnes (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
However, the move has ignited controversy—even and perhaps most notably among supporters of “traditional” public smoking bans who criticize the aim to influence social messaging as overreaching; in their view, the appropriate basis for restricting smoking in public ought to be limited to preventing physical harm caused by second-hand smoke.
Furthermore, manufacturers of the electronic cigarettes contend that they are a healthier alternative to (and for many smoking addicts, a transitional vehicle from) their “real” counterparts because they do not emit tar or tobacco smoke, only nicotine-infused vapor.
(Editor’s Note: It seems there could be a reasonable if not compelling public health interest in regulating the use of e-cigarettes given that they still emit vaporous nicotine, itself a known addictive and harmful substance—though arguably less so than tobacco—but for whatever reason, supporters for the measure don’t seems to be championing that argument.)
In an editorial on the subject, Reason magazine’s Jacob Sullum writes that “the cigarette form has become such a powerful symbol of evil that [the law’s supporters] have lost sight of the health-based rationale for their opposition to smoking.” Rather than attack electronic cigarettes, Sullum writes that “anyone concerned about the health effects of smoking should welcome this product,” as a “promising harm-reduction tool,” delivering nicotine to addicts without additional carcinogenic toxins and no second-hand smoke.
The justification for bans on smoking traditional cigarettes in public places is generally that second-hand smoke is a widely proven public health nuisance. But sans tobacco emissions, electronic cigarettes arguably do not pose the same physical threat to bystanders. Their harm, proponents claim, is social in nature: exposing children to the mere concept of an unhealthy activity—and a derivative concept, at that.
In his editorial, Sullum points to a Reason-Rupe poll claiming that 62% of Americans think that the smoking of e-cigarettes (or “vaping”) should be allowed in public. Considering a widely cited Gallup poll from July 2013 showed that a majority of Americans—55%—now favor public smoking bans generally, it seems most Americans still recognize a meaningful difference between the health dangers of real cigarettes versus the electronic kind—and a narrow rather than broad interpretation of what constitutes a real threat to public health and safety.
