You might think that people of ordinary intelligence would pretty quickly learn to distinguish a burning stick of dried vegetable matter from an e-cigarette, which contains no tobacco and produces no smoke. And once they learned the difference, they could explain it to the New York City Council. “These are being touted as safer than cigarettes,” says Councilman James Gennaro, “but we don’t really know that.”

Yes, we do. While some questions remain about the long-term effects of inhaling propylene glycol, the government-approved food ingredient that carries nicotine to vapers’ lungs, there is no doubt that the hazards of consuming the drug this way pale beside the hazards of consuming it along with the myriad toxins and carcinogens created by tobacco combustion. People who tell you otherwise are blowing smoke—or possibly e-cigarette vapor, since they can’t seem to tell the difference.

Smokers can, and those who have switched to e-cigarettes, thereby dramatically reducing the health risks they face, resent being pushed out into the cold again by power-mad politicians wielding frivolous rationales. Gennaro, who co-sponsored the vaping ban, worries that “just seeing people smoking things that look identical to cigarettes in subway cars, colleges and public libraries will tend to re-normalize the act of smoking and send the wrong message to kids.”