Responsible innovation and objective science-based regulation of e-cigarettes—not overreactive, outright prohibition—represents the best chance we have of eradicating the combustible cigarette-driven epidemic in this generation. Without question, we must protect our children from exposure to nicotine. Too often overlooked, at the same time, is that more than a billion adults smoke cigarettes around the world, including 12 million daily smokers in France itself. The World Health Organization and others predict that at current rates cigarette smoking will kill an unprecedented one billion people globally in this century.

Addicted smokers who find themselves unable or unwilling to stop smoking by other means, such as with nicotine medications, should be encouraged to switch to much safer, noncombustible nicotine-delivery products, which can literally save their lives. An unscientific blanket ban on disposable e-cigarettes, now being considered by France, would reduce these alternatives for millions of vulnerable adults whose health is at immediate risk and who wish to transition away from lethal combustible tobacco products.