by Carl V Phillips
Well, a lot has happened during my blog hiatus. I trust I do not need to tell anyone interested in THR that things in the US e-cigarette world “got real”, with the US FDA finally moving ahead with “deeming” e-cigarettes. Why, exactly, it was suddenly more real that it was for the last year or two — during which it was clear that this was coming soon — I will leave to the behavioral economists. But it does seem to have changed the mood. The last time I posted here, CASAA membership was about 70,000 and today is north of 110,000 and climbing fast. So this is probably a good time to give people new to this world a primer, and remind everyone else, that the US government has a long history of being hostile toward THR.
Few who actively oppose FDA’s plans need any additional reasons to object to them. It is sufficient to know that this is not actually regulation, but a de facto ban of the entire category that might — or might not — be followed by granting exceptions to the ban for a handful of closed-system e-cigarettes. (I will detail why this is the right way to think about it in my next post.) But there are people on the fence. Perhaps more important, there are many opponents of banning e-cigarettes who are naively optimistic, expecting reasonable behavior from our government once they implement this rule. Continue reading
Tobacco harm reduction, anti-THR lies, and related topics 