Center for Public Integrity publishes well-done story on aggressive lobbying by big tobacco to protect e-cigarettes

Nicholaw Kusnetz at the Center for Public Integrity just published an excellent in-depth story, How Big Tobacco lobbies to safeguard e-cigarettes, about the massive lobbying effort that the big cigarette companies are mounting to protect e-cigarettes.  While national in scope, there is strong coverage in California, including how the industry uses large strategic campaign contributions to the Assembly Government Organization Committee to block tobacco control bills and also the raw threats being made to the governor and other unless he vetoes a lackage of bills, including one including e-cigarettes in the state's clean indoor air law.  (One wonders if they are overplaying their hand by so openly threatening politicians who like to pretend that they don't pay attention to campaign contributions.)  These bills passed in a special session where there was no Government Organization Committee.
 
Understanding how hard the cigarette companies are fighting to protect e-cigarettes (which attract youth to nicotine and inhibit most adult smokers from quitting) should give pause to the shrinking number of legidimate health advoactes who are still clinging to the fantasy that e-cigarettes are reducing harm.
 
The clear documentation that RJ Reynolds wrote the e-cigarette youth access laws in 19 states may also explain the results from two recent studies showing that such laws are associated with more smoking, which is further evidence that the cigarette companies know what they are doing.
 
The full story is well worth reading.  It is here.