Dr. Matthew Davis, a Ford School faculty member and chief medical executive for the state of Michigan, calls on legislators to regulate e-cigarettes just as they regulate tobacco products.
Currently, electronic cigarettes can be sold to children, who are buying them in increasing numbers and developing an addiction to nicotine in the process. National research, says Davis, shows that addiction to nicotine through e-cigarettes can lead to traditional cigarette use in later years.
The legislature is now considering two Senate bills, sponsored by State Senator Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), which would make it illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors. Davis thinks it would be better to regulate them in the same way the state regulates other tobacco products—particularly since the liquid used in them is extracted from tobacco.
Not only would that make it illegal to sell them to minors, but it would generate tax revenue, and ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places.