R Street warns NYC e-cigarette ban would be harmful to public health
NEW YORK (Dec. 4, 2013) – The New York City Council should consider the potential adverse effects on public health should it move forward with a proposal to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places, according to R Street Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Joel Nitzkin.
Under an ordinance proposed by Council Members James F. Gennaro, Christine C. Quinn, Maria Del Carmen Arroyo, e-cigarette use would be banned in New York’s public parks and other places where cigarette smoking already is prohibited. The ordinance is set to be the subject of a 10 a.m. Dec. 4 hearing of the council’s Health Committee.
A public health physician, board certified in preventive medicine and the former co-chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, Nitzkin recently authored an R Street policy study on the promise e-cigarettes hold for tobacco harm reduction. He noted the emergence of e-cigarettes is changing the face of tobacco control, as they provide smokers a way to satisfy their cravings for nicotine without the high risk of potentially fatal cancer, heart or lung disease.
“Exhaled e-cigarette vapor presents no threat to non-users that would justify a ban,” Nitzkin said. “Misrepresenting e-cigarettes to be as harmful as cigarettes is both factually incorrect and damaging to public health.”
While environmental tobacco smoke, commonly referred to as “second hand smoke,” has been demonstrated to increase the risk of lung and other cancers, heart and lung disease, low birth weight and birth defects, no such findings have been made of exhaled e-cigarette vapor, Nitzkin said. He added that tobacco smoke is a “witches brew of carbon monoxide, other gasses and tarry particulate residue loaded with carcinogens and other toxins” and that 85 percent of environmental tobacco smoke is the smoke that curls off the end of a cigarette when no one is puffing on it.
“Exhaled e-cigarette vapor has no carbon monoxide, harmful gasses or particulate matter,” Nitzkin said. “Nothing curls off the end of an e-cigarette when no one is puffing on it. The vapor exhaled by users includes only the tiniest traces of chemical contaminants.”
Public health policy that serves to discourage e-cigarette usage would have the effect of encouraging smokers to continue with their fatal habits, rather than switch to a less harmful product that is 98 percent safer, Nitzkin concluded.
