Tobacco consumption is in secular annual decline of 1-3% for all consumers.  The observed declines in teenagers is 3-4x that observed in adults.  If vaping were a 'gateway' to combustion tobacco consumption for teenagers, the data would present teenage increases in cigarette consumption.  But the opposite is true. The decreases in cigarette consumption in teenagers have been dramatic.

The reality:  Vaping Saves Lives. 

Cigarette use is the largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control.   Take a look here at the testimonials on the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA's) website of real people whose lives have been improved.   

The best-of-breed vape companies welcome fair FDA regulation.  Ultimately it will be great for business and establish a sound scientific basis for further industry development.  Any company that would knowingly harm the consuming public should rightly be disciplined.  Just like any other consumer-products company.  The point is that the FDA's issuance of flavor regulations remains an indeterminate time away, but those regulations will be beneficial to the industry inasmuch as the "cheaters" and "weak-hands" would be driven either out of business or into the hands of stronger principled acquirors.

Vaping is not legal for teenagers (18 is the legal age of consumption), and neither is smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, taking opioids, smoking marijuana, consuming large quantities of NyQuil or Robitussin (otherwise known as sizzurp), eating Tide pods, snorting condoms and so on.  Nevertheless, a teenager can purchase an assault rifle.  As parents and civic leaders, we can not absolutely prevent people from breaking the law.  But of all of these vices, vaping is by far the safest.

California, for example, are now attacking coffee consumption, demanding that coffee growers label that "Coffee Causes Cancer", that coffee is a carcinogen.  Caffeine is mildy habit-forming (about the same as nicotine). I wonder how many would support the prohibition of coffee?  I know the Taliban would favor it.  But as a carcinogen, coffee is significantly more 'harmful' than e-juice.

Should we shut down Starbucks?  Or wring our hands that coffee could cause cancer? 

I do understand that parents are alarmed by vape, but it comes from the negative anchoring from a previous generation, scarred by the 'revelation' in the 1960s that cigarettes are, indeed, fatally harmful.  Perhaps these baby-boomers who oppose vape even lost someone to tobacco-related cancer as I have (my father).  The vape flavors are a critical component to wean would-be tobacco smokers from smoking. Were it not for the flavors, tobacco smoking would remain high and lethal; vape participation would be lower; and tobacco-smoking recidivism would be higher.

Vaping is a public good because it saves lives.

I hasten to point out that the whistle-blower research institution that, in the 1960s, identified tobacco smoking as harmful and carcinogenic -- the Royal College of Physicians -- is the very same research institution that asserts today, through its rigorous research, that "the substitution of e-cigarettes[...] has the potential to prevent almost all the harm from smoking in society.  Promoting e-cigarettes[…] as widely as possible, as a substitute for smoking, is therefore likely to generate significant health gains." 

Vaping Saves Lives.