According to the CDC, there are 480,000 deaths each year in America due to cigarette smoking.  To date, there have been 9 deaths linked to e-cigs.  Guess which product Walmart has decided is just too dangerous to keep on its shelves?  The e-cigs, of course, you silly!  Joseph Stalin understood things roughly the same way Walmart does.  He reportedly said, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy.  If millions die, that’s only statistics.”

I get it… Walmart is doing the safe thing for its brand.  E-cigs are relatively new compared to tobacco cigarettes.  We all came to terms with the dangers of cigarettes long ago, but e-cigs possess the spookiness of a new, unquantifiable danger.  When your customer (or voter) base is scared, you “do something” to signal you care.

While responding with fear to the unknown is standard operating procedure for humans and Walmart’s move is just smart brand protection, they both come at a very real cost to our relationship with reality.  So far, e-cigs mathematically pose a much smaller risk than cigarettes.  Will that relationship hold true long-term?  We can’t know yet.  We do know even if e-cig deaths grew by 1,000 times, they’d still kill less than 2% of the people cigarettes do in American each year.

Responding with, or to emotions – especially fear – without running our response through a rational reality check isn’t noble, it’s foolish… and in this case potentially dangerous.  By moving some portion of their customers from e-cigs to cigarettes with this decision, Walmart might actually contribute to a higher death rate.

Welcome to the world of ignoring reality and unintended consequences.  It’s not all harmless fun!