Free Republic

Sen. Mitt Romney with a New Mexico senator on Thursday presented a bill to keep electronic cigarettes and other vaping systems away from educational and child care facilities across the country, saying youth use has reached epidemic levels. "In my home state of Utah, the use of electronic cigarettes has nearly doubled in the last five years, with young Utahns most likely to be introduced to vaping while they are in school," Romney, R-Utah, said. "By banning the use of electronic cigarettes in schools, we are taking an important step to protect the health of young people in Utah and...

Sen. Mitt Romney is pushing legislation to raise the federal legal age to buy tobacco to 21, an effort backed by the tobacco industry and that health advocates hope will curtail younger Americans from smoking. Romney, a Utah Republican, said the bill was the first step in addressing an avoidable health crisis of young Americans taking up e-cigarettes as well as traditional tobacco products. The legislation would raise the age to buy any tobacco product to 21 as well as allow the Health and Human Services Department to conduct undercover compliance checks, retail inspections and enforce the law with fines.

ALBANY — Thanks to the new state budget, electronic cigarette users can puff away without the tax man taking a drag. Despite an alarming surge in e-cigarette use by high school students, state lawmakers — at the urging of the GOP-controlled Senate — rejected Gov. Cuomo’s plan to tax the liquid used in the devices and tighten restrictions on their use, advocates charged Monday. Cuomo’s proposals were mysteriously left out of the budget approved by the Senate and Assembly over the weekend. “The Senate Republicans picked big tobacco over public health,” said Bill Sherman, vice president for government relations at...

Every drug of addiction must have its day. Morphine remains one of the most potent painkillers ever discovered. Cocaine’s chemical cousin lidocaine is still used by physicians and dentists as an effective local anesthetic. Even demon alcohol, when taken in moderation, cuts the risk of heart attacks, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis and a hodgepodge of other ailments. Now comes nicotine, perhaps the most unlikely wonder drug ever to be reviled. If dozens of human and animal studies published over the past six years are borne out by large clinical trials, nicotine — freed at last of its noxious host, tobacco, and...

A Florida man got the shock of his life on Wednesday when an electronic cigarette he was using exploded in his mouth. Honestly, you try to do the right thing and it all blows up in your face. A Florida man who finally came around to the idea of giving up smoking decided to use an electronic cigarette to help him try to kick the habit. So far so good, you might think. The problem for 57-year-old Tom Holloway, however, was that while it was in his mouth the thing exploded. The explosion was so severe that it destroyed some...

In a 32-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the Food and Drug Administration’s authority doesn’t extend to e-cigarettes....He criticized what he called the FDA’s “tenacious drive to maximize its regulatory power,” saying he found its interpretation of the law “unreasonable and unacceptable.”

Tobacco Control Expert Dr. Michael Siegel Calls for a Scientific, Not Ideological or Political Response to the Electronic Cigarette Issue (EMAILWIRE.COM, September 08, 2009 ) BOSTON – An article in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now acknowledged receiving 98 reports of suicides and 188 reports of suicide attempts that appear to be linked to use of Chantix, a prescription medication for smoking cessation. In addition, the FDA has received reports of patients taking the drug being involved in motor vehicle crashes. At the same...