Romney's efforts to kill the competitors of the cigarette companies

In the blog of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Michelle Minton writes a very thorough article about Mitt Romney's proposed legislation

that would functionally eliminate the vapor industry, killing thousands of small businesses and robbing adults of a life-saving tobacco alternative. Romney is promoting his bill as a way to protect children from nicotine addiction. But, what it really protects is something in which Romney has a personal, political, and financial interest: cigarette sales.

...Romney’s bill, Ending New Nicotine Dependencies Act (ENND Act), would ban:

All e-cigarette flavors except tobacco (though it is also a flavor)

All refillable components or parts

Any e-cigarettes that look like cigarettes, pens, USBs, or other “common nonmedical devices”

Additionally, it would apply the federal cigarette excise tax to e-cigarettes, give the Department of Health and Human Services $115 million extra for an anti-vaping awareness campaign, and—even though the bill bans e-liquids used in refillable or “open” vapor systems—the bill would institute a new e-liquid tax.

If enacted, Romney’s bill wouldn’t reduce adolescents’ attraction to e-cigarettes, however. As I’ve documented before, the type of device, its shape, nicotine content, and flavors having little to do with youth vaping rates. Curiosity is the main driving factor. Without a doubt, it was the well-funded anti-vaping campaigns already underway at FDA and CDC and the constant message telling teens that “everyone is doing it” that reignited youth curiosity in vaping over the last two years. It explains why youth vaping of both nicotine and THC (the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) have increased over the last year, but marijuana use did not increase. Giving these agencies more money to unintentionally advertise vaping to teens will only make it more attractive.

Furthermore, banning non-tobacco flavors won’t stop kids from using tobacco as we saw back in the mid-1990s when nearly 40 percent of teenagers smoked. They weren’t smoking fruit, candy, or dessert-flavored cigarettes because those weren’t introduced onto the U.S. market until 1999, when youth smoking began declining.

...Without these shops, devices, and the flavors that make e-cigarettes twice as effective as other smoking cessation products, many ex-smokers who switched to vaping will return to smoking. Others will turn to the black market to find their preferred products. Teens will also turn to the black market since no drug dealers check for ID. And in all of these groups, many people will suffer and die as a result, whether from smoking-related illness or from using products laced with illicit drugs or tainted with dangerous ingredients. The only beneficiaries of all this death and misery are cigarette companies that have experienced plummeting sales thanks to e-cigarettes, and those who rely on the tax revenue from cigarette sales.

...Prior to entering “public service,” Romney made a name for himself in the business world with the management consulting firm Bain & Co. It was there that Romney established ties with Big Tobacco, saving Bain from bankruptcy and helping tobacco giants like Philip Morris and British American Tobacco increase sales in the U.S. and take over the cigarette market in Russia.

...Even today, Romney is among the top recipients of donations from Altria (the parent company of Philip Morris).

It is possible that Romney’s relationship with Big Tobacco isn’t behind his attempt to ban their biggest competitor. Perhaps he genuinely believes that making e-cigarettes illegal will stop adolescents from using nicotine. In other words, Romney’s bill may not be intentionally self-interested, but it is appallingly misguided.

Teenagers will not whole-sale stop trying drugs, drinking alcohol, or having pre-marital sex. They won’t stop experimenting with nicotine either, because that’s what teenagers do: they experiment, rebel, and take risks. If enacted, all Romney’s bill will guarantee is that when teenagers use nicotine, the risk to their health will be far greater than the risks posed by legally available e-cigarettes. Furthermore, by depriving adults of access to these life-saving products, it condemns the millions who have already quit smoking using e-cigarettes and the billions who might have done so in the future to either the perils of the black market or an almost certain death from cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are the first real opportunity we’ve been given to bring America close to a smoke-free society. We’re almost there now, thanks in no small part to their ability to help smokers quit and divert new smokers to a safer alternative. But, as the result of greed, vanity, or hubris, Romney would kill that opportunity, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. His proposal—and all like it—should be rejected, not for the motivation behind them, but for the unmitigated disaster they would end up causing.

Read more here.