Few health stories garner so much hyperbolic or uncritical coverage as the claim that e-cigarettes are a "gateway" to smoking.
Any study or assertion supporting this claim is catnip to journalists. Credulous stories of e-cigarette flavors such as "cool cucumber" and "creme brulee" targeting children and ushering in an "epidemic" of teen vaping are rarely out of the headlines.
E-cigarettes, we're told, are little more than a tobacco industry ploy to recruit the next generation of smokers. But even the most powerful of moral panics must, in the end, yield to data and evidence.
