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Don't ignore e-cigarettes among children


It's hard to imagine anyone encouraging kids to inhale anti-freeze and other toxins, but by infusing electronic cigarette vapors with candy and fruit flavors, e-cigarette manufacturers are potentially peddling nicotine addiction directly to American children. And while the Food and Drug Administration stands around in a bureaucratic haze debating how and when to regulate the questionable devices, a new generation of young people is at risk.

Electronic cigarette use among high school students has tripled in two years, surpassing tobacco smoking among teens, according to studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes for Health. University of Michigan professor Lloyd Johnston, who leads the annual Monitoring the Future survey of more than 41,000 high school students, told the Associated Press, "I worry that the tremendous progress that we've made over the last almost two decades in smoking could be reversed on us by the introduction of e-cigarettes."

The Dutchess County Board of Health also is rightly concerned. "What you may not know is that this hot topic of conversation is a potential health hazard," said Dr. Lobsang T. Lhungay, the board's president. "The facts don't lie."

The battery-operated smoking devices heat a cartridge filled with liquid nicotine, other chemicals and flavors, turning them into a vapor, which is then inhaled or "vaped" by the user. Because the tar and certain chemicals found in tobacco cigarettes are absent from e-cigarettes, the devices are being promoted as either a safer way to smoke, or as a smoking-cessation aid. Manufacturers also claim they do not market to children.

These claims seem deeply disingenuous.

Because the FDA does not regulate e-cigarettes, there is no ingredient listing on the packaging, and the potential risks of the devices are largely undetermined. The amount of nicotine also varies.

A recent CDC study found a dramatic increase in electronic cigarette-related calls to U.S. poison-control centers, Lhungay noted. Moreover, cartridges are not childproofed, making them easily accessible to young children — and liquid nicotine poisoning can happen by ingestion, inhalation or absorption through the nose and eyes.

Although it's illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors in New York state, there are still 16 million American children who can legally buy them elsewhere. The FDA is considering regulations and ought to ensure e-cigarettes are consistently subjected to the same age and other restrictions as conventional tobacco products.

Until the FDA clears the air about the contents, use and sale of e-cigarettes, the public ought to use great caution regarding their potential health risks. And as long as e-cigarettes remain unregulated and readily available in shopping mall kiosks in such kid-friendly flavors as "cotton candy," "cherry crush" and "peachy keen," it seems perfectly clear that the manufacturers are sugar-coating their health risks for young people. There is nothing sweet about that.