The new prohibitionists

Advocacy groups and their political allies want to ban flavored e-cigarettes. There are better options.

In the epilogue to Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent’s lively and deeply-researched history of prohibition, he writes:

In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure. It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and imposed profound limitations on individual rights. It fostered a culture of bribery, blackmail and official corruption.

Much the same could be said about the 50-year-old war on drugs, which has been prosecuted with enthusiasm by every president since Nixon.

No matter that the drug war was rooted in racism and xenophobia, and sustained by lies. It took a heavy toll on African Americans and poor people, and helped make the US the world leader in incarceration. It fostered violent drug cartels, while keeping psychedelic chemicals with the potential to heal away from those who might have benefited from their use.

Why, then, do people want to ban e-cigarettes? Or flavored e-cigarettes? Have anti-tobacco warriors like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the Truth Initiative and their political allies forgotten history?

This is not to suggest that bans on e-cigarettes or menthol cigarettes would have the impact of Prohibition or the drug war. But it is a near certainty that bans on substances that people desire — especially addictive substances — will generate negative and unintended consequences.

In the case of vaping, the most important negative consequence will likely be an increase in smoking, which remains the world’s leading preventable cause of death. The vast majority of tobacco researchers agree that vaping, while not safe, is safer than smoking combustible tobacco.

This is why partial or total vaping bans — which have been enacted by five states and numerous cities — make little sense, especially as evidence accumulates that e-cigarettes help adults quit smoking. Meantime, recent developments suggest that a combination of regulation and persuasion can limit youth access to vapes. This…