The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported
earlier this week that e-cigarette liquid is linked to an increase
in phone calls to U.S. poison control centers. Reason‘s
Jacob Sullum
reported on the findings:
The total number of calls to poison control centers related to
e-cigarettes during the 42-month period covered by the CDC
study was 2,405, or 57 per month. These cases were not
necessarily serious enough to require medical attention. The study
says “the most common adverse health effects in e-cigarette
exposure calls were vomiting, nausea, and eye irritation.”
According to the Times, about a quarter of such calls
lead to hospital visits.Poisoning reports involving e-cigarette fluid are still a tiny
fraction of
poisoning reports involving products the CDC is not
warning us about, such as analgesics, cosmetics, cleaning fluids,
anthistamines, pesticides, vitamins, and plants, all of which
generate thousands of calls to poison control centers each month.
In all these cases, the solution to preventing the poisoning of
little children is the same: keep little children away from
poison.When it comes to adults, caution in handling e-cigarette fluid,
which can be absorbed through the skin or eyes, seems appropriate,
although not always. According to the Times, the only
fatality caused by e-cigarette fluid so far was a suicide by a man
who injected it.
Last year, Reason TV interviewed NJOY CEO Craig Weiss to gain
insight into the e-cigarette industry. Original airdate was October
29, 2013, and the original writeup is below.
“Our product is as much a cigarette as a car is an electric
horse,” says Craig Weiss, CEO of e-cigarette maker NJOY. “But
it’s got the word ‘cigarette’ in it and it’s very hard to un-ring
that bell.”NJOY is a leading
manufacturer of electronic cigarettes, and is on the front lines of
the regulatory
fight over the new technology. (Full disclosure: NJOY
is also a donor to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes
Reason TV.) Weiss recently sat down with Tracy Oppenheimer to
discuss the burgeoning “vaping” industry, what’s fueling the
explosion of e-cigarette use, and calls to regulate the product
like traditional tobacco cigarettes.“Our policymakers in government should be making all of their
decisions based on science and data, not on conjecture, not on
‘Well, if it looks like a cigarette it must be a cigarette,'”
argues Weiss. “That’s not data. That’s not science, and that’s not
how we should be making decisions.”Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Zach Weissmueller.
Music by I, Cactus, “Chartreuse Cactus”
About 7 minutes.
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