How might e-cigarette product standards be appropriate for the protection of public health?

Product standards are basic quality requirements that may apply to all products within a product class. This could include, for example, a maximum nicotine concentration, that the product be sold in a child-resistant container, or that the product not contain specified ingredients (e.g. diacetyl or vitamin E acetate). Certain basic assumptions are required to have an evidence-based discussion of product standards that might benefit public health. The standard should be enforceable. All e-cig product standards should recognize that e-cigs are just one type of nicotine product, and that all nicotine products exist along a continuum of risk, with cigarettes at the high end and nicotine patches at the low end with e-cigarettes somewhere in the middle. It will not improve public health to pass rigid new standards for lower-risk products (e.g., e-cigarettes) while failing to pass equally or more stringent standards for higher-risk products (e.g., cigarettes). A framework for considering nicotine product standards should also recognize that nicotine products compete with and can substitute for other nicotine products. It should also acknowledge the limited success that governments around the world have had in simply banning popular classes of drug-delivery products, or of persuading everyone to abstain from substances that people find reinforcing or addictive voluntarily. Product standards that are appropriate for public health are those that help consumers to transition away from the most harmful products and towards much less harmful alternative products, and ideally quit harmful products before their harms are realized. A key component of the success of this type of regulation is that governments and public health and scientific organizations provide accurate information to the public about the relative risks of products they have access to, along with evidence-based guidance on how to switch or quit.