RICH LOWRY: The Ridiculous Campaign Against Vaping.

In announcing his flavored vaping ban, Cuomo said that “many of these other products have no control on them whatsoever,” which is by definition true because they are black-market products. We could make the risky products involved illegal, if they weren’t already illegal.

The problem with the flavor bans — and especially a San Francisco-style outright ban — is its effect on adult e-cigarette users.

About 11 million adults vape, and some percentage of them are former smokers or would be smoking in the absence of e-cigarettes. A robust study in the United Kingdom found that vaping is twice as effective as other common nicotine replacements in getting smokers to quit. The flavors, according to surveys of users, are a big draw for smokers quitting traditional cigarettes.

Anything that pushes e-cigarette users back into conventional smoking (now at a new low of 14 percent of adults) is bad for public health. It’s manifestly absurd to ban vaping products and leave cigarettes, including flavored cigarettes, on the market.

Read the whole thing.