Yesterday the Boston Public Health Commission voted to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in workplaces, including outdoor areas such as restaurant patios. It says it is simply “clos[ing] a loophole” by “treat[ing] e-cigarettes like tobacco products.” But since e-cigarettes do not contain any tobacco and do not generate smoke (merely a propylene glycol vapor containing nicotine), that is a puzzling way to characterize the decision.
The harms of smoking are almost exclusively from inhaling smoke. Nicotine, in the levels ingested by smokers is essentially harmless, you are doing the same harm smoking a corn-cob pipe filled with corn silk like Huck Fin and Tom Sawyer used to do as you are puffing on a a fine cigarette.
The electronic cigarettes (as do the gums, lozenges and other nicotine replacement products) essentially eliminate any of the harmful side-effects of smoking besides becoming dependent on nicotine.
It also eliminates the somewhat dubious hazard of second-hand smoke. Still Boston has decided to treat electronic cigarets exactly the same way as they do traditional cigarettes because they have decided that smokers are one of those groups of people they CAN punish, so they will continue to punish them even when they make a responsible choice that effects nobody but themselves.
And note this is a city ordinance, so if you own your own business and think this is all bullshit, and you let your employees engage in individual liberty the city can send men with guns.
No coincidence these are the same people who restrict guns and knives. They are anti-freedom, and they will fight it however they can.
