No time to 'take a breath' on e-cigarettes when lives are at stake

To the Editor:

The reprinted opinion piece (October 18-24 Chronicle) from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise — strangely included in your “Letters to the Editor” section — suggests to me that the thin air up there in the Adirondacks is disrupting normal thought processes of the editors.

Their argument: do nothing about interrupting the availability of flavored vaping pods because jobs, at the companies that manufacture these devices, are at stake. Further, they argue, pods don’t hurt people, people hurt themselves by overuse and by use of black market additives (e.g., THC). So let’s “take a breath," as they so seriously suggest, and wait for another hundred, or thousand, of lung injuries or deaths related to these devices before we act to remove vaping pods from the market.

The principal manufacturer of these pods — Juul — created an unprincipled marketing campaign which deliberately targeted younger people, and they should be held legally responsible for the deaths and injuries that their devices have caused. The argument that this device, which can cause death and injury in the short term, is preferable to the cigarette that it replaces, is fallacious. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise, and its adherents, should be ashamed.

William Troy

Goshen