Senate right not to ban vaping

The R.I. Senate made the right decision when it chose not to pass a ban on the use of e-cigarettes, or “vaping,” early in the morning on the last day of the legislative session.

The Senate’s decision made sense, since vaping is the most effective method of helping people to stop smoking. Not surprisingly, vaping is also a rapidly growing industry – not just nationally, but here in Rhode Island as well.

As with anything new, vaping raises a lot of questions. Many of those questions come from the fact that vaping looks like smoking and that vaping devices are even called “e-cigarettes.”

But vaping is not smoking. In fact, there is no tobacco involved in vaping at all. Instead, as the name suggests, what people see is vapor, or simply steam, created by the combination of a battery-charged heating element and the “juice” contained in an e-cigarette. It is wrong to classify vaping as tobacco use, or e-cigarettes as a tobacco product.

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This complete absence of tobacco makes e-cigarettes the best way to help people to cut back, and ultimately eliminate, tobacco from their lives. At the same time, vaping can also help reduce or – even completely eliminate – the use of nicotine as well.

Studies confirm that vaping is 95 percent less harmful than tobacco cigarettes because the steam lacks the cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco. E-cigarettes are also far less addictive than cigarettes, according to a recent Penn State study, and 50 percent more effective than nicotine patches in helping people to quit smoking.

Given the success people have had in quitting smoking, it’s not surprising that vaping sales have doubled each year since e-cigs were introduced in 2006. E-cigarettes accounted for $2.8 billion in sales during 2014. By 2017 vaping is projected to be a $10 billion industry.

The realization that we can help smokers quit has driven significant growth for my company, White Horse Vapor, since we started three years ago. Today our products are in more than 250 stores, and we have franchises in eight states.

The science that supports vaping as a benefit to public health and the response in the marketplace speaks for itself. That’s why I applaud the R.I. Senate for not fearing something new (and for many, unknown) and rejecting the proposed ban on vaping in Rhode Island.

All Rhode Islanders, particularly those who smoke and the people who care about them, are better off. n 

Dino Baccari is founder and president of Rhode Island-based White Horse Vapor, a nationally franchised vaping company.

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