>> ray, i think we have to worry about your credibility and that's what we have to make. you ought to support, for example, making these cart rems anrem -- cartridges and fillers child proof. aspirins are much less danger and i can't see any reason why your industry would disagree that there has to be an appropriate warning to keep these things away from infants

and toddlers. >> at the end of the day, any product that's for adults and adults only need to stay out of the hands of children and non-adults. but let's be very clear. that the toxicity level of any product is determined by the dosage. we're trying to support an industry that

>> within 30 minutes, your risk of smoke, suppose i was sitting where you were, and the two of us were puffing away and you're inhaling the nicotine from both of us, far more than you get

from the restaurant, and there's no question that nicotine is a drug, and if you good ask the world health organization, the surgeon general, the center for disease control, and the heart association, anybody reputable will tell you. >> ray, aren't there a lot of elements in secondhand smoke that are quite dangerous, including a variety of unknown chemicals that are not in e cigarettes? wouldn't that make the secondhand vapor? >> we're talking about smoke and vapor, and as the professor keeps talking, nicotine is a second class stimulant and it's found in many products. but responsible regulation and face-to-face transactions, so we're 100% onboard with doing it

logically and responsibly. >> how about child proofing? >> child proofing, we're the first again, professor, as i read up on you and you didn't do any on me, we pushed for child safety packaging and pushed for all of these things, but at the end of the day, the regulatory structure has to assistous that. >> one of the things that you push out there, it says that e cigarettes are safer than actual cigarettes. and what does that mean? it's quite confusing. >> you have to look, lisa, that the nicotine obviously, as we know is still an addictive substance, just like caffeine is. but however, just like we're wired that way, and so if you look at the cigarette with the carcinogens, 65 carcinogens, 600 chemicals in a conventional

cigarette. and you compare it to the vapor of an e cigarette, you're going to find once you do the math, and many studies just came out in philadelphia, prove that at the end of the day, e cigarettes, the vapor of an e cigarette is harmless compared to a conventional cigarette. the toxicity levels are less than the levels current allowed for workplace. >> 1500 times more safe, can i smoke 1400e cigarettes to 1 regular cigarette. >> we're thinking about the potential carcinogens present in cigarette smoke or the vapor from an e cigarette. and the other is nicotine. these are designed to deliver nicotine at roughly the same dose as a cigarette. so we're talking about nicotine

totoxicity. these are just as toxic, and probably more toxic. because the form which they're present is a liquid, often flavored, which is going to be much more attractive to a child than trying to use a standard cigarette. >> the nca just found toxins -- >> that's okay, we're going to talk more about what the fda has and hasn't found. and there's a problem with e cigarettes, not only to small children, but with middle schoolers and high schoolers. some are asking if they're actually targeting teens. and we'll ask ray about that when we come back and some of the implications.

>> welcome back to the stream. we're talking about the health and safety impacts of e cigarettes and their growing popularity among middle school and high school students, so ray, these cigarettes come in bubblegum and captain crunch and they're working hard to keep the fda from regulating them. and some believe that you're deliberately targeting teens. is that true. >> it's absolutely not true. we were the first to have agejestioverification online, ae want to make sure when they sell to the cuts, but at the end of the day, this product is not targeted toward teens. if you find in the study out there, these individuals were already smoking conventional cigarettes. and we're trying to show in every aspect that this product

is less harmful, and at the end of the day we're trying to get those smokers who have already made the choice to switch to less harmful products to purchase that product. >> are you saying that these middle schoolers and high schoolers were already smokers are were they already adults? >> studies show that those who heard about the e cigarettes were already smoking conventional cigarettes. >> this sounds like exactly what the tobacco industry used to say. we don't target kids and don't go after them, so the bubblegum flavors are make believe. the food and drug administration says we don't believe it, and the fda has found carcinogens in it, and heavy metals in it, and i ask the people again, who do you trust, the trade industry, which is making money off of

these things, selling to kids and others, or do you trust all of these private organizes and governmental agencies. >> it raises an interesting point. how do you evaluate the risk when there are no federal regulations or standards? >> it's really hard to get data in any of this area because of a lack of regulations. i think as a pediatrician and toxicologist, my fear is that these are entry level products that will lead to nicotine addiction, and probably, as kids get older, become adults, some of them will stay with e cigarettes, and some of them were migrate back to traditional cigarettes. >> i want to get community in here:

and dr. rogers, i want to go to you. this has been a big debate in our community on whether or not he cigarettes are a gateway to marijuana or if they help them stop smoke being. >> the evidence suggests that if you put it in cigarettes, they're harmful. and these are undoubtedly a gateway product. the data very strongly suggests

that children who start with cigarettes, in this case, either e cigarettes or traditional cigarettes, have a higher risk of moving on to marijuana and some percentage of those kids then move onto other drugs. >> by the way, that's what all of experts are saying, and that's why they called them candy cigarettes. remember those, you pretend to puff and now you can be a teen and you pretend to puff and you give out a vapor and also you get a hit on an addictive drug. and what could be better? yes, these kids will remain addicted to nicotine using cigarettes, or more likely, stronger varieties of regular cigarettes, contribute being to the $300 billion smoking problem in the u.s. >> professor, are you blaming the regulatory structure or the actual e cigarette trade

association or manufacturers for producing a product that you know is far less harmful in the data that you're discussing at the end of the day. we haven't seen that negative data because you can't have it both ways. you can't talk about it, and not have it, and there's really no data available. >> let me answer your question. i'm not against such products, and in fact, we supported nicotine gum, nicotine inhalers because they give people nicotine, and they have proven the satisfaction of impartial government experts that they're safe. your product refuses to go to the fda and present its evidence, and so all you're doing is spewing various statistics from somewhere, but nobody in any organization of consequence agrees. same with the tobacco industry, they always have their studies,

and for ten years, they managed to confuse us. cigarettes don't cause cancer. >> are there studies done? >> there are plenty of medical studies done. there was one-by-o med published a couple of days ago. >> have you submitted them to the fda? >> absolutely. and understand, i'm the one that actually went after the fda to make sure that this product became a legal product to actually compete against conventional cigarettes. so thiso there's not of that yon tell me. >> that's funny, i was involved in a lawsuit and you weren't. >> that's interesting that you said that professor. it was smoking everywhere versus the fda. and i didn't see you in that room. >> speaking of the fda. before we go to break, tweets from our community:

>> welcome back. we're talking about e cigarettes with the potential poisoning risk with the nature of the product and where they're going, and before the break, we asked our community about the future of e cigarettes.

>> your opinion on e sigs is quite bright: >> so corporate action, you only have to look to the activities of the big tobacco companies now to predict the future of the e cigarettes. >> nobody knows the future. we worry because big tobacco is buying them up. >> they're buying them up, and what's going to happen with the regulation? when the big boys start playing the way they are, is regulation

likely or not likely. >> you worry an awful lot about what's going to happen. and the irony now is that the tobacco century is in the position to sell them to kids and get them hooked and now maybe it saves them, maybe it's not, and until those questions are answered to the satisfaction of not the e industry but to the scientific body, we do not know. >> so dr. rogers, what happens in the meantime? you're seeing more calls to poison control centers, and more kids come to the er and what are folks to do? >> if you're going to have e cigarettes in the home, you need to recognize it the fact that these things are a potentially lethal toxin for small children, and you need to keep them protected and out of the reach of small children.

both the cigarettes and the refill bottles. >> speaking of regulation real quick, i want to get this video comment from robin. robin, give her a listen. >> rob immanuel, and wilburn are banning e cigarettes in the public places because of the children. well, the children are far more likely to see me outside of a bar smoking a real cigarette than inside smoking a safe one. if you ask me, this has a lot more to do with the fact that they get a lot of money for the city on real cigarette taxes that they're not getting for fake cigarette taxes. >> you just heard robin, and what do you think of regulation? >> i think that regulation is going to come down hard on certain aspects of it, as we probably back some of those regulations.

age verification is a major part of it. and as the professor keeps saying, if the kids have cigarettes, if you have age verification and you do the right thing at home, as the doctor said, you're obviously not going to have those issues. >> you keep talking about age verification, but what difference does that make when there's no restriction on what the child can buy for the product. >> compared to gun laws? >> no, compared to nothing. we keep talking about age verification, but the reality is that kids are permitted to buy these. >> understand that 40 different attorney generals went to washington to implement age verification. and i was the first one that pushed for age verification back in the day where jerry brown was governor of california. we want to lower the mortality rate because of the cdc in

atlanta, some that don't know, in atlanta, the cdc stated that the product was 14 times less harmful. and that right there will reduce conventional tobacco. >> the cdc never made that statement, sir, and you know it. there's nothing preventing any of these hundreds of thousands of dealers from selling to a kid that's under aged. yes, he has that program and there's no legal consequence. >> professor, that's about as true as you being part of the actual issue with the fda when the fda was sued. >> i was in the courtroom, sir. >> that's very interesting because obviously i must have missed you because that was the case that clearly put the e cigarette on the market where it could be against traditional tobacco. and children, obviously with any ingredient and product that's

for adults, it's supposed to be for adults. >> on that rate, thank you for a great time. thank you for all of our guests. see you online. >> hello, and welcome to aljazeera america. i'm tony harris in new york city, studying the agenda from income equality to same-sex marriage, to the tomorrow's state of the union speech. leaky phone apps reports that spy agencies are accessing spy data. popular smart phone apps like angry birds. this the northeast, bracing