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The War on Vaping
Hey, let’s regulate something people do that harms no one.
The new policy announced by Trump will toughen marketing rules the FDA has been developing for e-cigs for months. Manufacturers would have to show their e-cigarettes don’t pose a public health threat. They would also need to demonstrate why e-cigs without the added flavors should stay on the market. Until then, the administration can order all flavored vapors off the market.
The respiratory illnesses connected to vaping are due to black-market THC vape inserts, and have nothing to do with the legit vaping capsules, so let’s ban all the legal stuff and create a new black market! The prohibition argument says teens are using the flavored vapes, so adults can’t have them – an argument you could apply to every flavored vodka on the market, if you wished.
Published in Domestic Policy
I wonder what other gifts election season will bring.
The permission society: Everything is prohibited unless expressly mandated.
So they make something illegal for teens and the teens go to the black market to obtain them? Who’d have been able to predict that?
It doesn’t just not harm anyone. It also helps at least a few people – those who want to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes, thus reducing tobacco related illnesses. What an idiotic policy!
It certainly appears that the problems with vaping are coming from THC inserts that are being produced by your typical street drug pushers. I have to wonder if some of the reluctance to grapple with this problem is to protect the growing market for legalized pot. States see legalized pot has a cash cow, which may not produce the revenue states think it will. Illegal grow operations are still a problem for Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington. Cartels from Mexico, and China have discovered that growing pot in the states that have legalized pot provide a great opportunity to ship pot throughout the US without the inconvenient problems of trying to get their pot past a port of entry on the border.
A friend of mine who is a nurse tells me, “Vaping is NOT harmless. The flavors are meant for the stomach, not the lungs. The polymers stay in the lungs for long periods of time. I’ve seen the CT scans. …. some does clear when vaping stops, but there are still many polymers still in the lungs. Long term effects may be worse than smoking, but we don’t have the data since vaping is new.”
I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds like it’s based on specific knowledge and observation.
Yeah, my one employee, a vape user and former vape-shop technician, explained this aspect of the “crisis”. Of course, this is completely omitted from any media coverage. Even my local Fox station is pushing the government line uncritically.
There are already laws making sales to minors illegal. The clerk cards the customer at the point-of-sale. I hadn’t been carded since the first Reagan administration. So clearly what we need are more laws, to make the sales illegaler. Oh, and ban all the stuff too.
Nuts. I’m going back to Marlboros.
In a libertarian world an accreditation body would emerge to place a stamp of approval on devices and consumables. Then consumers could opt for a certified product or a choose by brand or roll the dice with a street vendor.
In our current world of regulatory capture large companies would prod/bribe the government into creating regulatory compliance hurdles that only large companies have the skill and resources to overcome. The justification is “for the children”.
We must order the society to the highest good, or something….?
For the children!
Never mind that the alternative is smoking, which kills thousands. Six kids have died! We must act!
I suspect that this has something to do with the massive deal that allowed the tobacco companies to stay in business.
Yeah, but are the flavors more harmful than other common inhalants? A typical person inhales all sorts of things which might linger in the lungs, from dirt and dust to gasoline fumes. Life kills.
Many are content to address such problems from a view of protection, limiting the freedom of individuals to harm themselves. But now it is also a taxpayer funding issue. As Steyn says, when government manages healthcare, then everything becomes the concern of government because anything that risks harm increases medical costs absorbed by hospitals and public programs.
I have no idea what the long term health effects of vaping are, and I am pretty sure Dick Durbin and Melania Trump don’t know either. You want to warn kids to stay away from it? Go ahead, but regulating something you don’t fully understand in order to score some PR points. That’s never good.
Ding ding ding!
This is the information and research we are seeing as well – it is not just vapor that is inhaled directly into the lungs – there are oils, flavorings, and other chemicals that don’t belong in your lungs. Vaping is very addictive. Even if just nicotine, teens don’t stop at one pod, and one pod can contain as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes. I had one kid tell me he went through three or four pods regularly while playing video games. If you look at the THC pods, which are legal in certain states, some contain as high as 96% THC. Again, the THC is oil based, and this is inhaled directly into the lungs. As far as it being illegal – there is already a parent based black market. Parents are purchasing the vapes (which can be cost as high as $300) and buying the supplies. When a student here is caught vaping we confiscate the vape and supplies. Parents want the vape returned to them because they purchased it, gave it to their kids so they wouldn’t start smoking, and it is expensive. But we have the right to confiscate materials as evidence of illegal behavior and they are not returned.
This is not a product that harms no one. Vapes are sold based on lies. I expect the death toll to go up quickly.
Douglas Pratt
For the children!
Never mind that the alternative is smoking, which kills thousands. Six kids have died! We must act!
It’s all fun and games until it’s your kid.
It’s all about regulation. Juul (72% market share) is 35% owned by Altria group (formerly Phillip Morris). It’s Big Tobacco getting into the vaping market and using its well connected lobbyists to get Big Government to crush the competition.
The anti-smoking crusade is religious in nature. Vaping is caught up in that.
That’s what I suspected when I first heard of it.
You know what this debate reminds me of? A certain presidential election. You could say all sorts of bad and provable things about Trump, but when your opponent said, “And four years of Herself would be better how, exactly?” you were done. Vaping may very well have serious effects, but compared to paving your lungs with freaking asphalt, which do you prefer?
It reminds me of NewsRadio‘s episode about smoking. One guy uses his doctor to get nicotine patches for another guy trying to quit. Phil Hartman’s character, the smoker, has a heart attack after he wears many patches simultaneously. “I sort of wrapped them around my waist like a belt.”
Nicotine’s not a terrible drug in small doses. Vaping devices apparently produce different levels of nicotine absorption. As with cigarettes, some are harsher than others.
And it is possible to vape without nicotine, addressing the oral fixation apart from drug satisfaction. People form all sorts of motor habits and associations. Some chew on toothpicks. Some vape.
Nothing we do is risk free. Cigarettes may be bad for you, but I want to be free to enjoy them if I so desire. Taxing the bejeezus out of them so people can’t afford them is an encroachment on freedom. If they are truly evil, ban them! Oh wait, that didn’t work with alcohol, did it?
I smoke cigars, and I’ve heard people tell me, “You’re only fooling yourself if you think there’s no cancer risk. I politely respond with, “I don’t like cigarettes. Never smoked them, never will. Second, I smoke cigars because I enjoy them. While there is a risk of throat or mouth cancer, not inhaling significantly reduces the risk of lung cancer. That, and I only smoke maybe one a month – maybe. And third, people are at risk for cancer whether they smoke or not. Non-smokers who get lung cancer are almost as dumbstruck as men who get breast cancer – it can and does happen.
I’d rather have teens vaping legally available, flavored inserts than pot any day . . .
Did I miss where they outlawed Tide pods?
Can I like that a hundred times?
I am afraid my husband will take up smoking again. From living with a smoker verses a vapor, I’ll take the vapor user. I am guessing the problem with vape products, like guns, is that many people do not know much about either, but form opinions. Of course there is a risk, but I don’t hear my husband cough, and don’t smell the stench, and he doesn’t have to go stand outside in the cold, while I pause the tv waiting for him to return.
It seems the problems with vaping are due to vitamin e acetate and THC, and there is also the phenom of multiple vap pens used together to produce a big fog. The use of a vape that most, especially those adults who use it for smoke cessation, is a single pen with a legal product.
I think in England doctors actually promote it.
I’m disappointed that Melania stepped into this. She was doing well up to this point. It is an emotional/psychological response as much as anything.
Teens engage in high risk behavior, outlaw them.
I agree. If teenagers are outlawed, only outlaws will have teenagers . . .
At least these outlaws will be easy to find. Teenagers are hard to hide.
It would be nice to give teens something meaningful to do, like fight fires, or get jobs. Left to their own devices, a lot of them seem to drift to hanging around one upping each other on stupid stuff.
It seems the law has pushed childhood into adulthood, where most “children” get their first job, or have to do something for someone other than themselves in their 20’s. Up until then, everything is done for them, for their benefit. The next door neighbor’s 12 year old just got a race car; a real one. His dad is out pushing the lawnmower, because the racer is in doing his homework. Unreal to me. Kid has a race car (a junker, but still), and can’t mow grass. Parents need a good slap or something.
If we make gov’t illegal, will people want it more?
Good news! It’s now legal to vape them.
They’re in their rooms, vaping.
I get it. But teenagers die in car accidents, mostly from doing something stupid. We are banning neither. Meaning teenagers or cars.
Hard to ban stupid. If we did, we’d have no Congress, which is why it hasn’t been enacted yet.