The FDA's war against nicotine will cause more people to smoke tobacco cigarettes.

The war against nicotine vaping has reached a new level of absurdity. It was bad enough when public health officials, politicians and the press reacted to the recent epidemic of respiratory diseases among marijuana vapers by failing to warn the public clearly. Instead of explaining the specific danger of vaping some type of THC-infused oil, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and politicians such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the public to stop using any kind of electronic cigarette, which is tantamount to responding to an outbreak of food poisoning by telling people to stop eating.

But now, officials are using the panic they have sown to justify policies that could shorten the lives of millions of Americans. The governors of New York and Michigan immediately took action to ban the most popular nicotine electronic cigarette fragrances used by adult smokers, and the Trump government plans to ban them all over the country. "People are dying of vaping," Trump said, justifying the Food and Drug Administration's plan, but there is little evidence that nicotine vaporization has contributed to one of the recent deaths or illnesses. The evidence to date clearly indicates a problem with marijuana vaping, particularly an oil derived from vitamin E that has been added to THC in vape cartridges sold primarily on the black market.

So, why go after nicotine electronic cigarettes? It is true that a small minority of the afflicted vapors reported consuming nicotine, not THC, but researchers say they may have been reluctant to admit to illegal activities. Their symptoms do not seem plausibly related to ordinary nicotine vaporization. Nicotine, unlike THC, is soluble in water and can be sprayed without the additives used to vaporize THC, such as the oil accused by the recent outbreak. It is conceivable that dangerous ingredients added to nicotine in liquids made at home or purchased on the black market are harmful to some people, but this is not a reason to ban commercial electronic cigarettes like Juul, which have already been used by millions of people. without causing breathing problems. In an article published last month in Expert Review in Respiratory MedicineA team of Italian, Canadian and American scientists reviewed the clinical research on electronic cigarettes and said that no studies had reported serious adverse effects or significant changes in lung function.

Their findings are consistent with the findings of the UK medical authorities that nicotine itself is no more harmful than caffeine and that e-cigarettes are at least 95% safer than tobacco cigarettes. While US public health authorities are misleading the public (so that a majority of Americans now mistakenly believe that e-cigarettes are as harmful, or even more, than cigarettes), the company Royal Public Health has urged smokers to switch to vaping, and UK hospitals are promoting e-cigarettes by allowing vape stores to operate on their premises.

The FDA is doing the exact opposite with its new policies, which it tried to justify last week by releasing the latest findings from the National Youth Smoking Survey. The survey showed that 27.5% of high school students in 2019 had volatilized at least once in the previous month, up from 20.8% the year before. Nobody wants teens to develop a nicotine addiction, but vaping is far less dangerous than smoking and, in any case, much of the increase in vaping has nothing to do with nicotine. Many students drink nicotine-free fluids, including THC, which is gaining popularity among teen vapers, especially in states that have legalized marijuana.

At the same time, the FDA (and most media outlets) ignored the most important finding of the new survey: the largest one-year drop in teen smoking ever recorded. The proportion of high school students who had smoked in the previous month decreased by 28%, from 8.1% in 2018 to 5.8% in 2019, a historic record achieved through the availability of solutions. to replace the cigarette. Since the advent of the electronic cigarette in 2010, the smoking rate among teens, young adults, and the elderly has fallen much faster than in the years preceding the vaping.

But the FDA's proposal to ban Juul and other companies from selling anything other than tobacco-flavored electronic cigarettes is currently undermining this remarkable progress in tackling the leading cause of preventable death. Anti-smoking activists claim that flavors such as mango and mint are used to attract teenagers, but it's already illegal for teens to buy any type of electronic cigarette. These flavors other than tobacco are preferred by more than three quarters of adults. smokers who go to vaping. In fact, one of the benefits of electronic cigarettes is that once smokers get used to getting nicotine from something that tastes better than tobacco, they can be pushed back by the taste of ordinary cigarettes.

What happens if these other flavors are banned? One of the consequences would be a black market of flavored liquids – and an increased risk that dangerous ingredients are added. Another consequence would be an increase in smoking, as reported Laura Pacek of the Duke School of Medicine and her colleagues this summer in the newspaper Substance use and abuse, based on a study of 240 young adults using electronic cigarettes as well as tobacco cigarettes. When asked how they would react to the ban on flavored nicotine electronic cigarettes, young adults said they would smoke more cigarettes.

That's the same conclusion that Wall Street reached, reacting to the FDA's new plan by increasing tobacco stocks. Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, who studies tobacco control policies, said the Wall Street reaction "could be the best evidence so far that the ban of the FDA-flavored electronic cigarette will result in a substantial increase in the number of cigarettes smoked. " morbidity and mortality. He calls it a "public health disaster," and the numbers corroborate it. By exploiting the panic caused by more than a few hundred cases of respiratory disease unrelated to nicotine electronic cigarettes, the federal government is encouraging smokers to maintain a responsible habit of killing 1,300 Americans a day. The US public health facility remains more than ever a danger to public health.

John Tierney is a contributing editor of City newspaper and a scientific columnist contributing to the New York Times.