Today at Slate, I wrote about how the panic over e-cigarettes works to the advantage of big tobacco companies. There’s the obvious way that’s true: Many vapers would, if e-cigarettes were banned, go back to actual tobacco. But there’s also a lesser-known reason:

Tobacco products are regulated by the FDA, but they are not regulated as a food or a medicine. The separate framework for regulating tobacco was established by legislation that was quietly negotiated and supported by Philip Morris, maker of the bestselling Marlboro cigarettes, more than a decade ago. “The name of the game was getting the bill, not getting the credit,” an executive explained at the time. One can speculate about the company’s motives, but a likely one is that it knew the law it was pushing for would create barriers to entry for potential competitors. This would position the tobacco giant as one of the few companies capable of navigating the FDA’s costly and opaque approval process. (The high barrier to entry is part of why there are currently no FDA-approved e-cigarettes on the market.)

The FDA itself has predicted that the eventual costs of compliance for e-cigarettes will be “high enough to expect additional product exit, consolidation, and reduction in variety.” The agency didn’t even release final guidance on what to include in applications until this past June. In fact, there is only one e-cigarette–like product that has ever made it through the regulatory pathway set forth for these devices, and that is IQOS, a product owned and developed by Philip Morris International that will make its United States debut in Atlanta as early as this month. Which means that if the FDA immediately bans unapproved e-cigarettes, it will be handing Philip Morris a monopoly on the American market.

Read the rest here.