Across the country politicians are continuing their attempts to make life difficult for the e-cigarette industry. They come out with ill-informed facts and misguided allegations scaring the general public as they push forward unwanted and unneeded legislation.Democrats in the Senate are really in a bad mood when it comes to e-cigarettes. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) this week reintroduced legislation that would target flavored e-cigarettes and cartoon packaging.





In her best scare-mongering voice, Senator Boxer didn’t pull any punches when declaring: “Every day, more and more kids are trying e-cigarettes and developing a dangerous addiction to nicotine. This bill will immediately ban the outrageous marketing of e-cigarettes to children, including the use of candy flavors and cartoon advertisements that are shamelessly designed to lure and addict them.” It’s an argument that we have all heard many times before and every time it raises its ugly head, we always have the satisfaction that we can counter such claims. E-cigarettes are safer than tobacco cigarettes and don’t contain a fraction of the chemicals, tar and toxins. Would the Senator rather see these “kids” using them instead and shortening their lives with every drag?





As for the addiction to nicotine , has the Senator actually bothered to do some research on the subject? If she had, then Boxer would have read the comments of Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. professor of public health sciences and psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine. He said: “'We found that e-cigarettes appear to be less addictive than tobacco cigarettes in a large sample of long-term users.”





Then we come to the advertising of e-cigarettes . Advertising costs a fortune so why would e-cigarette companies spend so much money on advertising their product to kids? Name a vaping lounge that actually lets kids in let alone go ahead and sell them some of their products. Take Colin Olson, for example, who owns ‘Vape Station’ in Lethbridge who says: “You probably will never find a vape shop that will sell to minors because we don’t believe in it.”



