Director of CDC says e-cigs are a tobacco product (despite no tobacco)

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As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Frieden has a ready-made platform for spreading his views about the dangers of vaping. During a visit to the Los Angeles Times on Monday, we asked him why he is so passionate about e-cigarettes.

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“E-cigarettes are a tobacco product,” he said.

Actually, the battery-operated devices do not burn tobacco. Instead, as my colleague Monte Morin reported, they “heat nicotine, propylene glycol and glycerin into a vapor, which is inhaled by the user.”

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--“If they get another generation of kids more hooked on nicotine and more likely to smoke cigarettes, that’s more harm than good,” he said.

--“If they get smokers who would have quit to keep smoking instead of quitting, more harm than good.

--“If they get ex-smokers who have been off nicotine to go back on nicotine and then back to cigarettes, more harm than good.

--“If they get people who want to quit smoking and would have taken medicines to think e-cigarettes are going to help, but they don’t, more harm than good.

--“If they re-glamorize smoking, it’s more harm than good.”

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