The marketing of e cigs needs to be regulated just as cigarettes are.

[DirkGently]

98. Yes. The fear seems to be that the "users" are "getting away with it."

Somewhere along the line, the point of the social stigma attached to tobacco use -- that it's both addictive AND devastating to health -- seems to have been lost. It has become, as you say, a moral issue, objectionable without any rational context, as though it were inherently "bad."

Isn't this the same thing for which we all deride conservatives? Conflating the problems of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy with the idea that sex is "bad" comes to mind. They actually try to justify the blind moral outrage by PRESERVING HARM, like opposing sex ed, birth control, and vaccinations. Because they don't want to send "the wrong message" that people might have sex safely and enjoyably, with no one being harmed.

The e-cig thing is not an exact parallel, because nicotine is not a benign substance. But the illogic of either insisting it's the same as "smoking," or trying to prevent people from doing something apparently much safer and less offensive than smoking because it is somehow removing the *moral stigma* of something which only serves the same purpose as smoking, but is fundamentally a different thing (i.e., no smoke is involved) is just ass-backward thinking.

Likewise, dragging in the spector of "children" is a go-to ploy for irrational moral outrage. Children shouldn't do a lot of things that adults should do whenever they like. And as far as that goes, I would think getting a hold of the various bits and pieces and liquids and batteries and charging devices that go into e-cigs would be more challenging for a "child" than locating a cigarette and a match. If everyone needed a $200 vaporizer to use marijuana, there'd be fewer kids trying that as well.