E-cigarattes raise basic questions on freedom, regulation

Now that smoking has been banished from workplaces, public buildings and even some counties, a move is afoot to ban a legal, relatively safe activity that oh, by the way, kind of looks like smoking.

At the heart of it is a flawed philosophical tenet -- rather than allow an activity to take place until it is proven to be harmful, we should ban an activity until it is proven to be safe.

Perhaps it's a case of poor marketing -- some manufacturers of electronic cigarettes have made them look exactly like real cigarettes, complete with an LED light at the end to look like burning tobacco.

Patented in 2003 in China, the battery-powered device converts liquid nicotine into vapor, which the user then inhales. They hit the European and North American markets in 2006.

While they sell at the rate of only 1 percent that of real cigarettes, some expect the sale of e-cigarettes to pass $10 billion by 2017.

They contain only nicotine, a non-carcinogen, none of the nasty stuff real tobacco contains such as tar, carbon dioxide and other substances. But, since using one feels like smoking, they may help some people quit altogether.

One Italian study found that 13 percent of smokers who tried them gave up traditional cigarettes, and 70 percent of those ultimately quit smoking entirely. That's a success rate similar to other tobacco cessation methods.

That's not good enough for places like California, which has banned the use of e-cigarettes wherever cigarette smoking is banned, which is just about everywhere, including, in some counties, private apartments.

Seattle and Boston have similar laws.

It's hard to understand the rationale. Smoking bans are based on the harmful effects of second-hand tobacco smoke -- which doesn't exist with e-cigarettes. Perhaps anti-smoking laws are designed to protect smokers from themselves, but there's no proof of the long-term harm of inhaling nicotine.

As it is, however, the ban-it-first philosophy is likely to win out. The FDA is expected to announce regulations on e-cigarettes in October.

Whatever action it takes is unlikely to promote new choices that technology otherwise could provide to smokers already being made to feel like second-class citizens.