Welcome to the tech policy podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Schwarzstrauber,

your host. On today's show, e-cigarettes, e-vapor, and how disruptive

technologies are disrupting the tobacco industry. Joining me in our DC studio to discuss this is Paul

Blair. He's the state affairs manager for Americans for tax reform. Paul, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me. So the swift rise of vaping has given a lot of smokers a relatively safer alternative

to tobacco products, but it's also created a lot of controversy.

So let's start. Is there a public health benefit to e-vapor?

Absolutely. You know, one of the most recent studies to suggest that electronic cigarettes and vapor products

and the transitioning away from the use of traditional tobacco or combustible cigarettes from public health,

England demonstrated that e-cigarettes are at least 95% less harmful and as much as 99% less harmful. That is healthier than

traditional combustible cigarettes. And so the potential to both save lives and potentially

significant sums of public funds is relatively significant. And are they helping people quit smoking cigarettes?

Absolutely. The Centers for Disease Control, government report every year,

looks at tobacco use among a wide range of demographics.

And recently, because of the increase in use of electronic cigarettes and vapor products.

They began asking consumers of tobacco products or former consumers of tobacco products,

how effective or if at all they began or started using the products.

What they recently found is that one in six current cigarette smokers and nearly one in four recent former cigarette smokers use electronic cigarettes.

In last year, what they also found is that there are at least nine million adult consumers of electronic cigarettes on a daily or frequent basis.

Nearly all of these are current or former smokers looking to make that switch.

Right.

...