Butter Crunch e-cigs? Who are you really targeting?

Just when it looks like the battle against teen smoking might be headed for victory, along comes a potent and popular new threat — electronic cigarettes — to raise doubts.

First, the good news. Smoking among high school students hit a historic low last year: 9.2% of high school students used cigarettes, down from a peak of 36% in 1997. This is a big deal because if you get out of high school without getting hooked, odds overwhelmingly are that you never will.

Mission accomplished? Not quite. Last year, 13.4% of high school students used e-cigarettes — three times the number in 2013 — making the device more popular than traditional smoking among teens, the federal government found in a national survey.

Promoters of e-cigarettes — battery-operated inhalers that contain nicotine, the powerfully addictive substance in cigarettes — push the notion that teenagers are switching to a safer product. But no data exist to back that up, or to show whether these young e-cig users had smoked before.

What is known about e-cigarettes is both troubling and familiar. The industry, which includes the three major tobacco companies as well as newcomers, is using its old tricks to market the devices and rewrite laws to their liking.

While industry players repeat the mantra that e-cigarettes are only for adults, their marketing says the opposite. It includes the same sexy and rebellious images, celebrity users and pitches at sports and music events that helped addict generations of young smokers. E-cigarettes come in flavors such as Cherry Crush and Butter Crunch — not exactly the approach you’d expect to attract adults trying to quit.

Of the 42 states that have passed laws banning sales to minors, about half adopted approaches that would make the industry happy. Those laws allow the industry to crow about opposing underage use while ensuring that e-cigarette use isn’t subject- ed to the tough enforcement, stiff penalties, high taxes and smoking bans that apply to tobacco products. In 2013, then-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee vetoed one such law, writing, “Electronic cigarette laws should mirror tobacco laws, not circumvent them.” Too bad other governors haven’t followed.

And with e-cigarettes all over the Internet, underage users find they are only a click away.

Because the devices are so new, scientists don’t fully understand how addictive they are. But as the industry “figures out the engineering, the products are going to get better at delivering a reliable amount of nicotine that will be optimally reinforcing to the user,” says Eric Donny, director of the Center for the Evaluation of Nicotine in Cigarettes at the University of Pittsburgh. In cigarettes, that dose was enough to hook millions of users even after smokers knew the habit was deadly.

The worst response would be to let the e-cigarette industry set the agenda, which increasingly appears to be the case.

The best? More research to determine whether e-cigarettes can help smokers quit, whether they carry long-term risks, and how addictive they are. And strict laws to protect children before the nation finds a new generation duped into craving a potentially dangerous product.