Planned regs on e-cigs overdue

Could someone please send the Food and Drug Administration a copy of the latest study on teenagers and e-cigarettes?

Could someone please send the Food and Drug Administration a copy of the latest study on teenagers and e-cigarettes?

The agency obviously needs a push to come out with its overdue regulations.

Drawn from two surveys of tens of thousands of American middle school and high school students, the research found adolescents who tried battery-powered nicotine vaporizers were more likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes.

And if the kids were already regular smokers at the time they experimented with “vaping,” they became less likely to quit.

It’s evidence, as the authors said, that e-cigarettes are “aggravating rather than ameliorating the tobacco epidemic among youths.”

This comes as no surprise because while hardened adult smokers might find e-cigarettes help them quit the unprefixed kind, teenagers are more likely to try vaping before they try smoking.

Yet, the FDA still has not begun to regulate e-cigarettes, despite pledging to do so by last fall.

Some states and cities — including, just this week, Los Angeles — already started to impose regulations.

Meanwhile, the number of vapers keeps rising; U.S. consumers will spend $3 billion on e-cigarettes this year, twice last year’s total.

Last month, the European Parliament passed a list of e-cigarette restrictions, including a ban on advertisements, a requirement for childproof packaging with pictorial safety warnings and a limit on nicotine content.

Those are all smart rules, as is a ban on sales to minors and restrictions on candy flavors meant to appeal to kids.

More research is still needed to discern the specific health hazards of electronic cigarettes, as well as their relative safety compared with burning tobacco.

Yet, it’s not too soon to conclude regulation is needed to keep them out of the hands of children.

— Bloomberg View