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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

While their influence is obvious the outcome is still fine by me. Many insurance policies do not distinguish between smoking and vaping. Let alone the fact that anything you ingest or inhale that is sold should be proven safe. Where is the proof that they are safe than supports your statement its against the public health to do this?

Considering the amount of money cigarette manufacturers pay out to the government and states it makes sense that anything that takes their place needs to be proven safe or not safe and then handled accordingly.

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They don't have to be "safe" - I'm sure they're not. They just have to be safer than cigarettes, which they almost certainly are. Given this it is essential to encourage people to switch. A million bucks to the government for every flavor? A transparent attempt by established players to kill a disruptive nascent industry.

Beware status quo bias.

Where "flavor" == "additive mixture that's being aerosolized and inhaled", I think some sort of FDA approval is reasonable.

"Proven safe" is a very high bar.

Is alcohol, high-fructose corn syrup, or grilled red meat "proven safe"?

Agreed, "proven safe" would fail even with water, which is toxic to humans above certain quantities.

What about "generally recognized as safe", which is a category I think most foods fall into unless evidence directly to the contrary surfaces?

Sugar is generally recognised as unsafe, addictive and unhealthy. Tens of millions of people suffer from it.

You're not speaking the same language as your parent commenter. "Generally Recognized As Safe" (GRAS) is an FDA designation, and not a literal phrase. High Fructose Corn Syrup, for example, is GRAS.

And yet, we need it to survive.

but I don't put any of those things inside my body if I'm simply walking behind you on the sidewalk while you consume them.

That's not a distinction the parent commenter made.

You put a whole lot of crap in your body walking down American streets, unless you think all those cars are crapping out rainbows and sunshine from the exhaust pipe.

Agreed, I also take issue with "Safer than cigarettes"; we know a lot more about cigarettes/tobacco than e-cigarettes. It's true that cigarettes have a large buffet of unsafe chemicals, but it's clear that e-cigarettes have widely varied chemicals from brand to brand with little transparency as to what they are. I feel it's more appropriate to say "Safer than cigarettes, we think". The Popcorn Lung situation comes to mind. Buyer/user beware.

Like say, scary skull-and-crossbones labeling on the package? There are tons of ways they could have addressed the state of safety research available for the product without handing a giant regulatory favor to the tobacco lobby. But we're talking about the tobacco lobby -- your safety was only ever a giant farce to them.

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