vaping.JPG

This photo shows vials of flavored liquid at Vapeology LA, which sells electronic cigarettes and related items in Los Angeles.

(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

By Jacob Grier

Selling e-cigarettes to minors remains legal in Oregon after

recently died in committee. One, sponsored by

, R-Albany, would have instituted a minimum age of 18 for buying them. A second, sponsored by

, D-Eugene, sought additionally to extend the state's ban on smoking in workplaces, bars and restaurants to e-cigarettes.

No responsible store owner sells e-cigarettes to teenagers, and no one opposed the sensible proposal restricting sales to minors. Yet the Legislature couldn't pass the first bill due to competition from the second. For that we can blame anti-smoking extremists, who are determined to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public for practically no reason except that they resemble the real thing.

Despite alarmist speculations about trace chemicals found in e-cigarette vapor, the blunt fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that it poses any real danger. It's not clear that it causes significant harm even to users, who habitually suck the vapor deep into their lungs, much less to people getting whiffs secondhand. The studies performed so far indicate that vapor contains far less particulate matter than smoke from cigarettes, and certainly nothing remotely close to the levels that supposedly justified banning smoking in bars.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually getting nostalgic for the original smoking ban debate. Advocates exaggerated the dangers of secondhand smoke, but at least they made an effort to ground their views in science and demonstrate that non-smokers were being harmed.

The same cannot be said for those seeking to extend current bans to cover vaping. They'll be the first to tell you that more study of e-cigarettes is needed. But why wait for results? They're ready to ban first and ask questions later.

(Can we also pause to note the hypocrisy of pursuing this policy in one of only two states in the nation that still mandate full service gas stations, forcing attendants to spend their entire workdays inhaling fuel fumes and car exhaust? If these legislators are genuinely concerned about workers being needlessly exposed to chemical vapors, perhaps addressing this law would be a better priority.)

Yet the science hardly matters because this isn't really about secondhand exposure. It's about appearances. Barnhart says we must ban vaping in public to reduce “modeling behavior in adults” to prevent renormalization of smoking. “Without that inclusion,” says a Multnomah County health official, “we're creating an environment where 'vaping' is considered an acceptable behavior.”

Absent a showing of harm to others, I don't see why defining acceptable behavior is any of their business. By such an illiberal standard, one can only imagine what comes next. Will adults be forced to sip Frappuccinos from paper bags, eat Big Macs behind privacy curtains or sip martinis in bars with blacked out windows? Why do we allow morning commuters to normalize the consumption of caffeinated milkshakes?

For that matter, once we've abandoned the pretense that smoking bans are about protecting bystanders, why not extend them outdoors too? Why allow people to smoke or vape outside, where an impressionable teenager might see them? I'd suggest we force smokers into private lounges, except oops, the Legislature has already made it illegal to open any more of them.

The obsession with appearances over actual harm highlights the extent to which the anti-smoking movement has become a nearly religious rather than scientific crusade. Activists perceive a grave moral threat in the ordinary behavior of consenting adults. E-cigarettes threaten their taboo against nicotine, not by being dangerous, but by being mostly safe.

The evidence is accumulating that e-cigarettes appeal mostly to smokers, helping them reduce or quit their consumption of tobacco. This should be cause for guarded optimism. Instead, the next proposal being contemplated in Salem is a tax on e-cigarettes of more than 80 percent of the wholesale price. If vaping ever reaches its full potential to reduce the death toll of cigarettes, it will be despite the best efforts of our lawmakers.



Jacob Grier is a writer in Portland.