U.S. Prefers Mass Hysteria to Sound Policy on Vaping
Saving the lives of millions of smokers isn’t a priority. Protecting kids from nicotine seems to matter more.
What about the lives of existing smokers?
Photographer: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images
In 2006, I interviewed Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, about reduced-harm tobacco products. The idea that people might one day be able to get a nicotine fix without ingesting all the carcinogens derived from burning tobacco was still new. Tobacco companies were pouring millions into research labs trying to make such products a reality, but the only thing on the market was snus, the pouch tobacco product made by Swedish Match AB. Electronic cigarettes, first developed in China in 2003, hadn’t yet migrated to the U.S.
Myers co-founded his organization in 1996. (Disclosure: It has long been supported financially by Bloomberg Philanthropies.) Ever since, he’s been one of the two or three most important people in the tobacco-control community, someone whose opinion matters a great deal. That’s why I wanted to learn his view about the prospect that it might soon be possible to consume addictive nicotine without dying of cigarette smoke. He was wholeheartedly in favor.