What's the logic behind that? I get regular cigarettes and the dangers of exposing others to your smoke but ecigs are water vapors?
Do you want the real answer, or the fake one they cite?
The real answer is that e-cigs are cutting into tobacco tax revenue. Tobacco is traditionally an "inelastic good" because it is an addiction... you can raise the price, and people keep buying it. Same with many drugs... which is why the "war on drugs" never does much good.
When "inelastic goods" start having alternatives, they start becoming "elastic goods" which pretty much means that they are less price sensitive... because people will turn to alternatives.
Examples...
inelastic - crude oil / gas - people can't easily or cheaply convert to a different cost effective fuel for their vehicles, input for their plastics, etc...
elastic - Ham... you'll just buy turkey, and if that gets expensive, you'll just buy chicken. If everything gets really expensive, you'll start eating cardboard like me.
It's actually more complicated than that, as there are
elasticities of both demand and supply.
My main point here is that cigs are regulated and taxed. Now that people are moving to cheaper and safer alternatives, governments want to regulate and tax them so they don't lose tax revenue as people shift from a less healthy good to more healthy other. (making something illegal in public is regulating it...) They used to justify such taxes as "sin taxes." Moves like this unveil that it's really all about tax revenue, and they could give a shit about what you consume, as long as you pay them. This is why a lot of people around here see an e-cig brick and mortar business as having a limited life span.
