"So why doesn’t the CDC include e-cigarettes among its cessation and quitting tips? “The real reason is that they don’t condone anything that looks like smoking, even if it delivers none of the smoke and even if it delivers no nicotine,” Siegel said. “It is the ideology of the smoking action that they oppose.”"
(See: Dutra LM, Glantz SA. Electronic cigarettes and conventional cigarette use: a cross-sectional study. Published online March 6, 2014. JAMA Pediatr. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.5488.)
Further, the FDA is asking smokers who suffer such extra-ordinary health effects to report them to the agency. But the FDA doesn't want to hear from you if you simply suffer a "normal" health effect, like crippling obstructive lung disease, inability to breathe, metastatic cancer, or brain infarctions. In order to engage the FDA's interest, the health problem must be one that is beyond these "normal" product side effects.
It is remarkable that despite all of the widespread marketing of electronic cigarettes and the claims that these products represent a safer alternative to smoking, the public is still split down the middle as to whether cigarette smoking is any more hazardous than vaping.