We see symbols and their power at work in the recent controversy surrounding the effort to extend bans on smoking to the electronic cigarette. An e-cigarette is no more a cigarette than a chocolate cigarette is.
But — as with the case of toy guns — this doesn’t mean they are any less dangerous.
Josh Moskowitz, who is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, where I work, and who is a member the committee that recently banned the use of e-cigarettes on campus, indoors and out, was quoted in the local paper:
We don’t know what the long term health affects are. It’s not even clear what ingredients are going into these products, and it’s not clear if there is consistent, high quality manufacturing from some of these products. Usually, the ingredients are not publicly available. Rather than adopting a potentially risky product, it’s safer to ban these products on the campuses as a precautionary approach.
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