The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products has two goals that seem to go hand-in-hand: Reduce tobacco use, and reduce the number of smoking-related diseases and deaths. If there was a product that was achieving both goals, why would the FDA take the nonsensical step of classifying it as a tobacco product?

It shouldn’t. Yet, that is exactly what the FDA is proposing to do.

The FDA is pushing a new set of rules that would classify e-cigarettes, which are non-combustible products that use no tobacco, as tobacco products. If approved, the rules would stifle a fast-growing, U.S.-based industry that makes one of the most effective methods of helping people to stop smoking. The rules would also snuff out thousands of independent, family-owned businesses and, in effect, turn over the e-cigarette business to big tobacco companies.

Recent research shows that e-cigarettes – battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution and create an inhalable vapor – work exceptionally well to help people kick the smoking habit, better than patches, gum or any other smoking-cessation methods.

A 2014 study in England published in the medical journal Addiction surveyed 6,000 smokers who tried to quit. Among the respondents that had used e-cigarettes in their most recent quit attempt, 20 percent had successfully broken their tobacco habit. In contrast, less success was had by those who quit without help (15 percent) and those who used nicotine-replacement therapy such as gum or a patch (10 percent).

Similar reports are beginning to emerge from U.S. research institutions. Just last month, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine released a study of 2,136 current and former smokers. The study found that former smokers were nearly three times as likely to be regular users of e-cigarettes than current every day smokers, a finding that suggests that smokers often use e-cigarettes to stop smoking. Moreover, these results rebut the oft-used argument of e-cigarette critics that the devices, rather than helping smokers quit, simply lead smokers to use both cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are a disruptive technology that have enjoyed incredibly fast consumer uptake, much like Uber and Lyft in the transportation realm. As with other such technologies, e-cigarettes don’t neatly fit into regulatory niches. The federal government is struggling to understand how to regulate e-cigarettes and, sadly, is on the verge of making a harmful first step with the FDA’s proposed rules.

If FDA’s rules are approved, e-cigarettes would face the same regulations as cigarettes, which are the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By dramatically reducing the number of e-cigarette products on the market and stifling innovation, the FDA’s proposals would serve as a barrier to keep adult smokers from using e-cigarettes, taking away one of the best tools they have for quitting smoking.

Big Tobacco can afford to comply with the regulations FDA is considering, but not the many smaller e-cigarette companies that have emerged and grown over the past five years. The members of the American Vaping Association, which represents U.S.-based, family-owned-and-operated e-cigarette manufacturers, would be hard pressed to meet FDA’s requirements. The rules, in short, would needlessly drive these companies out of business and reduce the e-cigarette options for smokers who want to quit.

The e-cigarette industry supports smart, reasonable regulation, such as a ban on sales to minors. We also back legislation by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, that would require childproof packaging for liquids used in e-cigarettes. And surely e-cigarettes must pass regulatory scrutiny of some kind, but not the extra-rigorous demands imposed on products like cigarettes that actually kill people.