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With the debate raging across the pond over E Cigarettes and their usage, the Electronic Cigarettes Association (ECA) in America has come out and requested, via its president Matt Salmon, that all those individuals and entities involved in the situation that they should discuss and research the devices in an honest way, something which has not been the case up until now. He also urges all involved to take a look at the bigger picture, and that is that over one million Americans adult smokers who are using E Cigarettes are looking at an alternative to “real” tobacco products and their multitude of harmful, toxic chemicals.
The focus in recent months on E Cigarettes has intensified greatly, so much so that there was not only a front page news story covered on USA Today (which we mentioned last week) but also a follow-up editorial during this week in the same publication. Other newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have also recently covered aspects of the debate. A debate that has been scrutinised even more since the Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have denied the citizens of California the right to purchase these products.
Matt Salmon continued: “Unfortunately, many of the arguments we’ve seen recently against electronic cigarettes have been driven by fear of the unknown, insufficient evidence, political agendas, and ignorance about our members` products.
As in the case of California Governor Schwarzenegger, we’ve found that reasonable people, when willing to honestly and intellectually evaluate the information about electronic cigarettes, find that these products provide smokers a viable alternative to combustible tobacco cigarettes.”
Salmon also complains that the stance taken by some legislators based on a very narrow FDA study that didn’t take any established scientific protocols into account was extreme. The ECA has therefore called upon the FDA to work together on the issue and to take an altogether more scientific approach to the issue at hand, and not take any hasty decisions into trying to ban the devices.
He went on to say that such a ban would be a detriment to smokers attempts at finding an alternative to tobacco products, and maybe even in their attempts to quit smoking tobacco.
He concluded: “We understand that to protect the public, some form of regulation may be necessary, and we welcome that. Our goal, nevertheless, is to ensure committed adult smokers the freedom of a clear, better alternative and to prohibit sales to minors.”