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chapter two Landmark Events This chapter explores important milestones and events in vaping and tobacco use in the United States. It covers the key investigations, lawsuits, legislation, and antismoking campaigns that revealed the deceptive practices of the tobacco industry and raised public awareness of the health risks of cigarette smoking. It also traces the development of electronic cigarettes and charts the phenomenal growth of vaping. Finally, it examines the polarized national debate between vaping supporters, who embrace e-cigarettes as a potentially lifesaving alterna- tive for adult smokers, and tobacco-control advocates, who view vaping as a major health threat for American teenagers. Invention of the Electronic Cigarette (1963) Cigarette smoking reached its peak in the United States in 1963, when Americans consumed a record 523 billion cigarettes (White 2018). That same year, inventor Herbert A. Gilbert applied for a patent on a device he called the “smokeless non-tobacco cigarette.” Although he never managed to sell the device commercially, Gilbert views his invention as a direct ancestor of the modern e-cigarette. “There is no electric cigarette today, that I have seen, that does not follow the basic road map set forth in my original patent. If you remove any part shown in my original patent from their electric cigarette it will not function,” he stated. “Timing can be everything, and I was ahead of my time” (Dunworth 2013). Gilbert’s invention predated efforts by the big tobacco companies to create reduced- harm cigarettes and influenced the design of vaping products developed four decades later.