To The Editor:
The e-cigarette bill should be vetoed.
I find it truly insane that a bill (H.171) is apparently passing that treats e-cigs just like a regular smoke. Even though there is no secondhand smoke (or odor) and even though there is no demonstrated or implied health risk to secondhand water vapor and even though some e-cigs do not even contain nicotine (nicotine in and of itself is a mild stimulant akin to coffee) and even though the United Kingdom (which has a much better health care system than we do) prescribes e-cigs as a means to quit smoking, we appear poised to enact a law that treats e-cigs just as we do real cigarettes.
I have to imagine that it is just because they look like cigarettes: no use of them in the workplace, in taverns or even in a car with a child in the back is harmful. That is both insane and a great example of the major problems of contemporary liberalism (and I say this as a Progressive). Here law is being driven by an ideology of association: They look like a cigarette so therefore they will be abolished from the public space. It’s disappointing to see our legislators take swift action on something as benign and innocuous as e-cigs and still fail to take action to establish something positive and meaningful such as single-payer health care, $15 an hour livable wages or adequately funding our state college system. Shameful.
Laws are created because something has the appearance of something else which legislators have decided is socially undesirable. ... Too bad these legislators apparently do not think poverty is so bad looking as to demand real action, like substituting the statewide property tax for a progressive income tax or providing free community college to all Vermont youth or enacting a statewide system of rent control. But I guess from the State House it’s easy not to see the ugliness of poverty and, perhaps, it is easy to see something that looks like a cigarette (but isn't) when out for a $15 drink a J Morgan’s.
David Van Deusen
Moretown
