E-cigarettes: Selling poison by the barrel.

E-cigarettes have largely escaped coverage, especially coverage by science and health reporters.

And when they do get covered, the most important thing about them is rarely explored in depth–whether they help smokers quit, or whether they encourage non-smokers to start.

Last December, Joe Nocera, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, wrote a piece extolling e-cigarettes. He describes them as "an innovative device that can help people wean themselves" from smoking. "It has the same look and feel as the lethal product…but the ingredients that kill people are absent."

Nocera wonders why the public-health community isn't cheering the arrival of e-cigarettes, because he's convinced that they will help reduce smoking. He cites a "study" that is actually a link to a survey of smokers, asking them what they think of e-cigarettes. This falls far short of the backup he's evidently looking for. What people say is interesting; what they do in controlled studies is far more interesting.

We can get some sense of that from the blog posts of Stanton Glantz, the smoking researcher and anti-smoking activist at the University of California, San Francisco. E-cigs are being promoted with unsupported health claims, he writes. People who use e-cigs maybe be more likely to progress to smoking and less likely to quit. And more.

I don't know whether Glantz and the studies he cites have made the case that e-cigs are encouraging people to smoke. But I do know that Nocera was far too glib with his assurances that e-cigs help people quit.

This week, Matt Richtel at the Times wrote a frightening story about the new trade in liquid nicotine to fuel e-cigarettes. "A teaspoon of even highly diluted e-liquid can kill a small child," he wrote. And he noted that it is not regulated by federal authorities.

This story isn't about the relationship between e-cigs and smoking, but it is a good example of the kind of critical coverage that e-cigs should be receiving.

As for Nocera, if something sounds to good to be true, it probably is. Tobacco companies, who are buying up e-cig makers, don't want people to quit smoking. If they think e-cigs are a good thing, then we should be on guard. And reporters should be as skeptical as possible.

-Paul Raeburn