Electronic cigarettes stub out no-smoking signs

Thanks to electronic cigarettes, it may now be easier to get away with smoking on an airplane than with using a cellphone. The devices are beginning to reverse decades-long efforts to ban smoking in public places, experts say, and may also be contributing to a rise in underage smoking, marijuana use, and other illegal activities.

E-cigarettes, which use liquid nicotine solution and batteries in place of paper and flame, emit vapor instead of smoke, and don’t produce the telltale cigarette odor or ash. Proponents say that makes the devices a discreet (and less harmful) alternative to smoking, enabling people to smoke whatever they want, wherever they want, without attracting attention.

But lawmakers and public health officials fear that e-cigarettes are helping tobacco sneak back into non-smoking zones as well as the hands of children. And because it’s hard to determine what’s actually in the devices, they also worry that e-cigarettes may not contain nicotine at all, but illegal drugs.

"Do you want to see a 15-year-old with a vaporizer making like he has an e-cigarette but there's grass in it, the liquid version of marijuana?" says Massachusetts State Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, a Democrat, who authored a bill prohibiting youth from buying e-cigarettes and adding the devices to public and workplace smoking bans. "You could vaporize anything if you put it in liquid form," Sanchez says.

Now that 20 states, along with Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, Massachusetts and others are bracing for the arrival of dispensaries, which often sell cannabis solutions for vaporization. While marijuana vaporizers have been on the market much longer than e-cigarettes, there is debate over whether the products can (or should) be used interchangeably to inhale either pot or tobacco. The Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association, which represents that industry, says none of its members make marijuana paraphernalia: "It's a whole different animal altogether," says CFO Thomas Kiklas.

That may be beside the point, as marijuana vaporizers and electronic cigarettes are indistinguishable. Some companies are even marketing vaporizers for both purposes. Rapid Fire Marketing RFMK 0.00% , for one, makes the CannaCig vaporizer, but is rebranding the device to appeal more to tobacco users than cannabis users, says spokesperson Rick Lutz. "The reality is, whether it's cannabis or tobacco, it can be used in a vaporizer in order to convert what normally is smoke into a vapor," Lutz says. "You could conceivably walk out of a restaurant, have cannabis and the effects of cannabis, without the smoke."

Indeed, the ability of e-cigarette users to "vape" undetected everywhere from office buildings to bars to airplanes, where smoking is generally banned, has prompted efforts to regulate the new industry. Under current Massachusetts law, "in the hallway of the school, I can't light up a cigarette, but I can light up my e-cigarette," Sanchez says, adding that he wouldn't even be able to prevent members of the House public health committee, of which he is chairman, from smoking during meetings in his office.