Tobacco haters, kick your filthy habit

by Nathalie Rothschild 
Seven years have passed since Massachusetts became the sixth US state to introduce a state-wide indoor smoking ban. But officials there still haven’t kicked the habit of lifestyle engineering. Now they are going after electronic cigarettes, devices that smokers have so far been able to use in places where real cigarettes are prohibited, or even as an aide to quitting tobacco.

No more. As of last week, e-cigarettes are harder to come by for residents of Boston, the Massachusetts state capital, and there are fewer places where they can legally use them. That’s because the Boston Public Health Commission voted to start treating e-cigarettes as a tobacco product. Tough new restrictions were introduced with immediate effect and so Bostonians can no longer use e-cigarettes in workplaces, including on patios, decks and loading docks. The sale of e-cigs is now also restricted to adults only and retailers have to obtain a special permit to sell them and then keep them behind the counter.
At least 10 other Massachusetts communities have imposed restrictions on e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices that often resemble real cigarettes but come in hundreds of different flavours and produce nicotine-infused vapour instead of smoke. The Boston Board of Health justified the new rules by explaining that e-cigarette solution contains nicotine and a number of toxic chemicals and carcinogens, and that their safety has not yet been established by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Proponents of e-cigarettes disagree. Many users claim it has helped wean them off tobacco and point out that the electronic devices do not smell of nicotine and are less of a bother to other people than regular cigarettes. Some health advocates, too, say there are studies that show e-devices contain no more hazardous chemicals than other nicotine-replacement products, such as patches and chewing gums, and that they can be used as a successful smoking cessation tool. Furthermore, as there are no butts, e-cigarettes also produce much less litter than regular ones.
In any case, the clampdown on the battery-powered, scented inhalers has little to do with scientific proof. After all, the Boston Board of Health did not say that e-cigs are demonstrably dangerous - just that they haven’t yet been proven to be safe. It’s a kind of Rumsfeldian unknown unknown, used to justify a precautionary intervention.
Instead, the clampdown is a logical continuation of the narrowing of individual choice that the initial smoking ban in Boston and elsewhere embodied. It’s about rendering certain lifestyle choices unacceptable, regardless of objective measures of their relative harm or harmlessness. In this respect, a statement by Dr Nancy Rigotti, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, was telling. She told the Boston Globe that her concern with e-cigarettes is that they mimic smoking. She said cigarettes are a powerful force in American culture and allowing e-cigarettes to be used in the workplace ‘reintroduces the idea of cigarettes into what are currently smoke-free environments and begins to renormalise tobacco use in these products’.
Rigotti’s concern, echoed by others, is that sucking on an inhaler looks unsavoury and after putting so much effort into banning smoking, the authorities apparently don’t want to let citizens engage in something that resembles it. After all these years of lobbying and legislation to render smoking unacceptable, they seem to be thinking, they’ll be damned if Americans are seduced into believing that even simulating smoking is the done thing. So perhaps the very act of putting any narrow object in-between your fingers, bringing it to your mouth, breathing in and exhaling should be banned, too?