—The St. Cloud Times

From “candy cigarettes” nearing a century of sales to new e-cigarette flavors that include bubble gum, apple juice and chocolate milk, it’s clear the front line of America’s nicotine battle always involves youth and young adults.

That’s why it was good to see the American Heart Association on Sunday officially take the position that electronic cigarettes need strict federal regulations very similar to those now in place for traditional tobacco.

Better yet, the association calls for those Food and Drug Administration rules to be in place by the start of 2015.

While Minnesota adopted new laws July 1 that treat e-cigs and “vaping” of liquid nicotine much like tobacco, the association’s official position makes a powerful statement to federal regulators as they consider what to do about the devices, which have been on the U.S. market for only a decade.

However, in that time, they have clearly become a new tool used to target youth and young adults for nicotine use. Use among teens nearly doubled from 2011 to 2012, and nearly 7 percent of teens have tried them, USA TODAY reported.

Overall, the e-cig retail market is estimated at $2 billion annually, involves 24 million people, 466 brands of e-cigarettes and more than 7,700 flavors of “juice,” which users can inhale after using their devices to vaporize it.

This “vaping” delivers nicotine and other unknown chemicals and compounds to users — and, much like secondhand smoke, possibly even to those standing nearby.

In fact, the unknown materials in e-cigarette products (which don’t require labels to list ingredients or warnings) represent one of the best reasons for the FDA to listen to the association and take a hard line on restricting the entire industry.

Citing the lack of clear research about toxic elements in vapor, the association supports the inclusion of e-cigarettes in smoke-free air laws. Similarly, the AHA policy calls for prohibiting the sales of e-cigs to minors, not allowing marketing to minors, putting warning labels on bottles and taxing all the products at a high enough rate to discourage youth from using them.

All of those are necessary steps to blunt another attempt by nicotine-based products to attract young consumers. America has spent the past half century working to undo the misleading appeal of smoking and nicotine use put forth by traditional tobacco. The nation needs to learn from that history and not let e-cigarettes taint the health of today’s younger generations.