Big Tobacco’s shameless shilling of e-cigarettes

The tobacco industry is sharply raising spending on advertisements and other marketing for electronic cigarettes to try to make smoking glamorous again and hook a new generation of Americans on nicotine.

We shouldn’t let them get away with it.

If adults choose to “vape”— inhale nicotine-laced vapor from batterypowered e-cigarettes— then they should be free to do so.

But that doesn’t mean the public should allow Big Tobacco to use its billions to build a new mass market for a consumer product scientifically proved to be very addictive.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it intends to extend its regulatory authority to include e-cigarettes and might recommend banning television and radio advertising. It should do so quickly, before a halfcentury of progress in combating smoking is undone.

I was only vaguely aware of the debate over vaping when I recently saw a TV ad for blu brand e-cigarettes that made me gasp.

It showed a slim, jeans-wearing “tough guy” puffing while appearing shirtless before an urban skyline, attending a concert and strolling through Inca ruins in Peru.

“For us smokers, times have changed,” the actor, B-list celebrity Stephen Dorff, says. “But a fewthings remain the same. Our desire to explore. To adventure. To roam without boundaries. With blu, we can still be ourselves. After all, this countrywas founded on free will. Embrace it. Chase it.”

How’s that for combining manliness, style and individualism? I was dumbfounded to see again the psychological pitch of cigarette ads that I grew up watching before a 1970 law forced them off the airwaves.

The similarity is no coincidence. Lorillard Tobacco, which makes blu, also manufactures Newport and Kent.

Another blu ad wields equally familiar sex appeal. Actress and former Playboy centerfold JennyMcCarthy, wearing a low-cut dress, vapes blus while flirting with a man in a bar.

Public health authorities are especially worried about such ads’ effect on teens. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that from 2011 to 2012, the percentage of high school students who have tried e-cigarettes more than doubled to 10 percent.

Six of the largest e-cigarette manufacturers spent $59 million on advertising and other promotion in 2013, with five of them increasing their ad spending by 164 percent during the year, according to a congressional report released lastMonday.

“The second coming of tobacco marketing is pouring millions into adland,” Advertising Age reported.

E-cigarette defenders argue that vaping is a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes, or “combustibles.” With the electronic version, users don’t inhale tar and smoke.

But too little research has been conducted to say for sure that vaping is entirely safe.

Furthermore, the CDC was unhappy to find that many former smokers are now using e-cigarettes.

“We are very concerned that under the guise of reducing harm, [e-cigarettes] will actually increase smoking,” Frieden said.

Still, the biggest concern about ecigarettes is the young. Research suggests that nicotine damages adolescent brain development, and that teens are more vulnerable than adults to getting addicted.

The FDA should impose a nationwide ban on selling e-cigarettes to people younger than 18. More than half the states, including Maryland and Virginia, have some form of age limit already. But other states and the District of Columbia do not.

The FDA also should prevent advertising that will lure the young to vape. E-cigarette manufacturers insist they’re not targeting teens, but some of their marketing techniques suggest otherwise.

Vape if you want. That’s your business. But don’t give tobacco companies free rein to profit by manipulating the public’s mind and jeopardizing its health.