CA: Bill introduced to legally equate e-cigs to cigarettes.

[Cal Carpenter]

120. Bad analogy. Heroin addicts can use methadone for harm reduction.

That would be more equivalent to this, only with way fewer negative side effects.

It is NOT SMOKING, and no one is suggesting teachers do it openly in their classrooms

I'm sorry you find it a 'nasty' addiction and 'socially unacceptable'. I feel the same way about Cheetos but I don't want to see them banned.

People recognize how difficult heroin is to kick. For some individuals it is basically impossible. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. Otherwise they wouldn't be addicts.

So doctors prescribe methadone, and clinics are available for people to have it administered. Because despite being it is a significant harm reduction, an arguably major improvement over shooting up street heroin, it is still quite dangerous, can be abused, etc.

In addition, methadone helps on a more macro level, in terms of overall public health, health care costs, rehab costs... It benefits the public overall. We condone methadone use. In some places, we really encourage it.

Nicotine is also incredibly difficult to kick.

It also bears very high costs to public health, both in terms of individual health and massive financial costs too. Second-hand smoke can be extremely dangerous to nonsmokers. We all know these things are true.

The difference is that nicotine, unlike the drug methadone, has very few side effects. It isn't some heavy weight you carry with you at all times like opiates. The vast majority of the damage from *smoking* comes from *the smoking*, not the nicotine itself.

We now have a new way to deliver nicotine. A way that completely removes the smoking, but still provides a similar enough experience for those who have smoked for a gazillion years to 'get their fix' in terms of not just the nicotine but the process - the feeling, the puffing, or the fiddling, or the oral fixation, or whatever. A way with no known harm for other people.

And best of all, IT WORKS. For people who have tried and succeeded and relapsed, and tried and failed and tried and failed to quit, and struggle with this for years, in depression and sickness, and this may be the ONE THING that works for them. And even if they never manage to kick the nicotine, they can vape forever. It may not be perfect but it is remarkably safer for everyone around. MASSIVE HARM REDUCTION. It has the potential to do more than the gums and the patches and the Chantix combined have accomplished. More than what methadone does for heroin addicts.

We need to encourage this and study it and make it MORE available to MORE people for the benefit of EVERYONE.

The evidence that is already available about the substances involved point to it being incredibly safe. These aren't mysterious chemicals. They are well-known substances that are used in a variety of food and other products for human use, fog machines, freaking *asthma inhalers*.

There is no doubt that additional study would be great, necessary even. Standardization of nicotine amounts would be good. There seems to be a lot of integrity among those making the juices and selling the equipment, but there is a huge amount of scam out there too.

Banning this is so incredibly fucked up.