Discriminating Against Smokers/Vapers is in fact Racism...

From this.

From my read of the linked article what's going on with smoking and electronic cigarettes is very simple.

Nicotine metabolizes into cotinine - available, by the way, from Santa Cruz Biotechnology.

The process is basically applying either UV light or hydrogen peroxide to nicotine.

Cotinine was once supposed to be marketed as an antidepressant called "Scotine." (See this link - image from link at the right.)

So Cotinine is

  - a cognitive enhancer;

  - something that reduces anxiety and fear in at least the mouse model of PTSD;

  - something that extinguishes fear; and

  - positively affects mental illness such as depression or schizophrenia.

More here.

Basically it does much of what cigarette smokers claim cigarettes in fact do.

Your reaction to cotinine is very likely genetic and can be influenced by ethnicity.

There are specific genes and variations of those genes that determine your reaction to cotinine (see the linked article at the top of the page).

Which makes smoking or vaping, at least in my book, a genetic disorder, i.e., people with certain genes are predisposed to become smokers.

Would you discriminate against a woman with the breast cancer gene BRCA?
Hence singling out smoker is an act of racism.

So the FDA singles out smokers as an ethnic group - a group with specific genes - an discriminates against them.

How is this different than any other form of racism?

I have posted more detail here on the ECF.