In his Nov. 2 column, "E-cigarettes promote nicotine to a new generation," Cuyahoga County Health Commissioner Terry Allan misses the point about the potential benefits of e-cigarettes.
The FDA's top tobacco regulator, Mitch Zeller recently addressed the issue thoughtfully. He told the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation if "people are smoking for the nicotine, but dying from the tar," then the FDA should develop a nicotine regulatory policy recognizing the "continuum of risk: that there are different nicotine...products that pose different levels of risk to the individual."
Everyone would benefit from considering Zeller's message, "Right now the overwhelming majority of people seeking nicotine are getting it from the deadliest and most toxic delivery system, and that's the conventional cigarette. Because of products like E-cigarettes, Zeller thinks "there's an extraordinary public health opportunity" to regulate them in a way to preserve the benefits.
Dr. David Abrams, of the leading anti-smoking group, Legacy, similarly cautioned against knee-jerk regulation, telling the Washingtonian, "I think we're missing the biggest public-health opportunity in a century if we get [the regulations] wrong.
While e-cigarettes should be carefully regulated, over-regulation will have serious public health consequences.
Jeff Stier,
Washington, D.C.
Stier is director of the Risk Analysis Division for the National Center for Public Policy Research