http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_White_Suit

“I would rather live in a society which treated children as adults than one which treated adults as children.” — Lizard

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial … the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.” — Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

“Virtually all reasonable laws are obeyed, not because they are the law, but because reasonable people would do that anyway. If you obey a law simply because it is the law, that’s a pretty likely sign that it shouldn’t be a law.” —?

Seeing that coughing and sneezing are at least in part involuntary, how the pluperfect hell do they get away with that?

Or hasn’t it been challenged yet?

The EPA meta-study on “Environmental Tobacco Smoke” admits (PP33-36, somewhere in there, it’s a while since I read the dratted thing) that the highest level of exposure that they expected to encounter in the real world would amount to smoking two fifths of a cigarette a day. The ‘danger’ of being exposed to ‘secondhand smoke’ has been wildly exaggerated, by people who feel about tobacco they way that the Anti-Saloon League felt about alcohol; damn that facts, they KNOW it’s bad.. To then say that danger exists from being in the vicinity of someone ‘smoking’ an e-cigarette is a huge leap of (bad) faith.

If secondhand smoke, and by extension secondhand e-cigarette steam, annoying? Sure. So are creepy christmas songs, Che shirts, and a lot of other things that people seem to feel compelled to share. Deal. With. It.

Or keep pushing, and watch what happens when we replay Prohibition with Tobacco. Hint; the archetype of the Benevolent or Wise Drunk in popular culture seems to have originated with the Roaring 20′s, and we didn’t start getting over it until the 1970′s.

As for why not the Gum or the Patches; why would somebody who enjoys nicotine want to put money in the coffers of the very people who constantly badger him?

The hedonic nature of puffing on an e-cigarette is likely what is making the nanny-staters uncomfortable, not the actual contents of the vapor. They don’t like that you’re enjoying something they’ve deemed unhealthy.

And the EPA says CO2 is a lethal pollutant that’s going to cause the planet to go up in flames (sadly, only a very mild exaggeration of its position). So if I catch you breathing in sorta-vaguely near proximity to me, I’m going to sue you, and maybe even file a criminal assault complaint.

“The dose makes the poison.” – Paracelsus

Bob, when I fled NJ in 1988, whatever sanity present at the time in that dismal fucking hellhole came along with me. I can assure you that Neanderthals have been in charge there forever and will remain so.

Damn, I hate the Northeast. Philadelphia is the worst. There’s only about three city blocks in Manhattan that I can tolerate.

/rant

If it’s all about getting a nicotine fix, why not a stick of nicotine gum, a patch, or some other less obtrusive method. Why a miniature smoke generator?

Because it’s not just about getting a nicotine fix. It’s about an addiction, which is a complex set of behaviors and patterns set into the mind. It’s REALLY difficult for smokers to quit because of the myriad overlaps of all these habits and patterns.

Treating cigarette addiction as if it’s simply a physical addiction to nicotine is as foolish and useless as telling obese people to “Just eat less food.”

Why not? Also, it doesn’t generate smoke, just vapor.

I’d also imagine mimicking a cigarette helps people who are trying to quit better than a patch or gum.

That said, I expect that part of the motivation for banning e-cigs is the idea that they may tempt people into smoking real cigarettes. Whether that is right or wrong, I can’t say, but I see the argument.

If it’s all about getting a nicotine fix, why not a stick of nicotine gum, a patch, or some other less obtrusive method. Why a miniature smoke generator?

And with that, I’ll back off and read. I’m sounding pretty obtuse to myself at this point.

There was a TV show on the History Channel about a tribe of Neanderthals in Jersey called “Scrappers”. It detailed their attempts to comprehend modern civilization as they blundered through their day. Very educational! It’s good that these atavisms from the past are being studied by the Scientific Community.

E-cigarette vapor has been tested, and none of the 50 main carcinogens found in secondhand smoke are present. Additionally, unlike smoke, e-cigarette vapor doesn’t make it hard for bystanders to breathe. I have been in a room with 500 e-cigarette users, and another 100 spouses and friends who didn’t use e-cigs, and there was no sign that any person had any comfort problems.

E-cigarettes are essentially mini-fog machines with some nicotine (which isn’t a carcinogen, and 98-99% is absorbed into the mouth/lungs), with the difference being that fog machines use more propylene glycol in a night than I probably use in six months to a year.