Massachusetts DPH Destroys Its Own Justification for the Emergency E-Cigarette Ban

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH), via a vote by the Public Health Council, has rescinded its emergency ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes which was issued on September 25. When the ban was implemented in September, the Department ' s rationale was that since we don ' t know what is causing the outbreak, there may be e-cigarettes that could be involved. Therefore, to protect the public ' s health, we need to ban the sale of e-cigarettes.In rescinding the emergency order, DPH stated that the cause of the outbreak remains unknown. So by its own rationale which it invoked on September 25, there could still be e-cigarettes causing the outbreak and therefore we need to continue to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to protect the public ' s health.By rescinding the ban, DPH is acknowledging that it wasn ' t actually necessary to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes back on September 25th because according to the Department, we still don ' t know what is causing the outbreak so we ' re in exactly the same position on December 11th as we were on September 25th. So how could banning electronic cigarettes be justified on September 25th but no longer appropriate on December 11th?What changed between September 25th and December 11th?What changed was that the Massachusetts legislature enacted a ban on flavored electronic cigarettes. However, this ban does not include tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the e-cigarettes that ma...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs