Air Force bans e-cigarettes

Another week, another series of articles and debates over whether e-cigarettes are drug delivery devices and should be regulated by the FDA. In a followup to last week's report, the Wall Street Journal asks readers: "Should the devices be regulated? Have you tried them?"

Whether the FDA regulates it or not, other branches of government are taking matters into their own hands. Stars and Stripes reports that the U.S. Air Force is banning e-cigarettes from the workplace. Sure, they want their personnel to stop smoking, but not like this, the paper says. "No studies have been done to demonstrate the safety or effectiveness of these products as tobacco cessation aids, and they are not approved by the FDA as a drug delivery device," Dr. (Lt. Gen.) Charles Green, the Air Force surgeon general, wrote in a memo last week.

Of course, this was bound to happen: Instead of nicotine, some are discovering that you can use e-cigarettes to delivery doses of psychoactive THC, the substance active in marijuana. Even those who peddle e-cigarettes filled with nicotine say this is going too far. The FDA, of course, is not hip to cannabis e-cigs.

Finally, it is 2010, so a discussion does not really occur until it takes place on social media. And, yes, there's a Twitter hashtag for that: #SaveECigs

- take the WSJ's poll
- read all about it in Stars and Stripes
- and groove to the cannabis question

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E-cigarette battle lines form in federal court