John Tierney joins Aaron M. Renn to discuss the federal government's efforts to limit electronic cigarettes (vaping), and the corruption of the public health profession more generally.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public health officials combatted epidemics of cholera and dysentery through improvements in water and sewage systems. In its modern form, however, this once-noble profession acts largely as an advocate for progressive causes, with trivial priorities including taxes on soda, calorie counts for restaurants, and free condoms.

In recent years, public health officials in America have even turned against vaping—the most effective antismoking product ever created. "The public-health establishment has become a menace to public health," Tierney writes in City Journal.

John Tierney is a contributing editor to City Journal. He spent more than two decades as a reporter and columnist with the New York Times.