A heated debate is redrawing alliances in the tobacco control movement as federal officials wrestle with how to regulate the growing e-cigarette market.

The players include researchers, smoking-cessation advocates and “vaping” connoisseurs.

“It’s become very divisive in a community that was largely united against Big Tobacco,” said Samir Soneji, an associate professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, who researches tobacco control policy.