Cracking down on lighting up

The City Council is set to pass a ban on sales of flavored e-cigarettes, a sensible measure that follows the leads of San Francisco and Massachusetts. With aid of alluring fruit and candy flavors, alarming numbers of teens are being drawn to the products, saddling them with addictive, harmful nicotine habits that will prove devilishly difficult to shake for the rest of their lives. More than a quarter of high school kids now take drags off the devices.

Worse, recent research shows some flavored e-cigarettes contain a carcinogen recently banned in food. Other studies show increased rates of cardiac disease among e-cigarette users. More research should be done on e-cigs’ value as a smoking cessation tool for adults.

Just two small problems with the Council’s

new prohibition: Local legislatures are simultaneously dawdling over a bill to ban traditional menthol cigarettes, amid a major lobbying campaign against it from Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which is taking money from the tobacco industry.

Research shows banning menthol e-cigs while allowing the flavor in regular smokes drives more people to stick with cigarettes, whose health dangers are indisputably clear. Why would we want to do that?

Also: New York’s emergency state ban on flavored e-cig sales never took effect, because the vape industry sued to stop it. So the Legislature should vote to ban flavored e-cigs, and soon. Failing that, flavors will be illegal on one side of the city’s limits and legal in the counties surrounding.

Black markets can prove as tough to kick as cigarettes.