Article from Reason by Jacob Sullum.

Scott Gottlieb, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, says he still believes in the harm-reducing potential of e-cigarettes, which are far less hazardous than their combustible competitors. But by threatening to restrict e-cigarettes in the name of preventing underage vaping, he is knowingly setting a course that leads to more smoking-related deaths than would occur if the government let the market thrive.

“In closing the on-ramp to kids,” Gottlieb said in a speech last week, “we’re going to have to narrow the off-ramp for adults who want to migrate off combustible tobacco and onto e-cigs.” That “unfortunate tradeoff,” as he calls it, is not necessary, scientifically sensible, or morally justifiable.

Gottlieb is responding to “an epidemic of e-cigarette use among teenagers,” which he erroneously equates with an “epidemic of addiction” and even “a whole generation of young people becoming addicted to nicotine.” According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), the share of high school students who reported vaping during the previous month peaked at 16 percent in 2015, fell to about 11 percent in 2016 and remained roughly the same last year.

The percentage of teenagers who vape often enough to become addicted to nicotine is much smaller. In the 2015 NYTS, for example, just 2.5 percent of high school students (16 percent of “current” users) reported vaping on 20 or more days in the previous month, and almost all of them were current or former smokers.

Read the entire article at Reason.

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