Anti-Tobacco Fanatics Lie like a Cheap Rug

 

Yes. They lie. Their lies, coming from allegedly left and right (social conservative) positions, are swathed in “good intentions” and focus on “the children.” Yet, any citizen, any member of Congress, any judge, Article II or Article III, and any president who has merely been alert to their environment as they walked past, at least, a hotel bar, knows the basic claim is a flat-out lie. Why? See for yourself:

Every single bottle is an infused, flavored vodka. This is no upscale bar. It is a dive bar, visually so and described as such in Yelp and Google. There are whipped cream, cotton candy, fruity, and even herbal/ botanical vodkas in this scruffy working-class bar. This is the current normal.

The big lie is that vape/ e-cigarette nicotine systems and all “flavored” tobacco products are “targeting children.” Lie. Lie. Lie. The truth, which everyone knows at some level, is that American adults’ palette has shifted to sweet and flavored drinks. That holds true from coffee to booze in every form. You know this. You see it every day.

My local veteran’s organization canteen (bar) made this perfectly clear to me today. The largest local “craft” brewery had bottled a seasonal run of coffee porter. It wasn’t selling so well, so it went on special… Meanwhile, the bar manager added a second peanut butter flavored whiskey to the liquor line-up. Yes, peanut butter. The first, Skrewball, is aggressively peanut-y. You would hardly know there was whiskey underneath the nut flavor. The new addition, Rams Point, strikes a more moderate position, letting whiskey drinkers venture into a specialty entry that can go into cocktails without being overpowering.

Naturally, I saw the possibility of a “shot and a chaser” here: coffee porter (beer) with peanut butter flavored whiskey. Yes, it works for this dude who is on the north side of double nickels. Indeed, I immediately informed the bar manager that he needed to bring in a chocolate porter. Because everyone knows that peanut butter and chocolate go together. Notice that this is not “kids” focused booze. The legal age is 21, as it has been for most of my adult life.

No booze merchant, no brewer or distiller, is being hassled or restricted on the wild variety of customer-driven flavors they offer. Vodka, rum, even whiskey are all frantically competing for the American adult sweet-tooth. Yes, there are traditional vodkas, gins, rums, and whiskeys. They sell, but do not offer market and sales growth in this era. Give the customer what they want, or someone else will.

So, pipe, cigar, vape, and even cigarette (at the margin) customers, who are full-grown adults, demand flavors beyond the subtleties of the leaves, just as grains’ and grapes’ variations are not enough, just as coffee beans are nowhere near enough for most suburban moms. We all know this.* You know this. So, why comply with the lie?

Since all booze and all nicotine is now restricted to 21 and over, each and every attack on nicotine products, if it has any “age” component,” necessarily is an attack on alcohol, and indirectly on caffeine. You did realize that caffeine changes neurochemistry, right?

Sadly, President Trump made no promises in 2016 on this issue area. Sadly, Congress critters on both sides of the aisle love the next shake-down and the next incremental assault on the Constitution and the underlying Declaration of Independence they faithlessly “uphold.” The only real chance for halting the next administrative state assault is for a bloc of voters, in states critical to electoral college math, becoming loud in the next two or three months, driving President Trump to re-calibrate the executive branch’s position and to press legislators to defy Coffin Mitch McConnell and Big Cigarettes.

___

* You cannot even get your teeth cleaned without being offered multiple flavors of fluoride treatment.

Published in Domestic Policy
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 68 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. dnewlander Inactive
    dnewlander
    @dnewlander

    When was the mudslide invented? The 70s? Girls drink sweet drinks. Why is this now a problem?

    • #1
  2. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    When the Public Health people advocate injection sites and condom distribution for harm reduction, but refuse e-cigs?  That’s some serious cognitive dissonance.

    From a toxicological standpoint, there is absolutely no way water / propylene glycol based vape juice is as harmful as cigarettes.  Almost all of the injuries and illness are from people inhaling hash oil and other oils.

    Let me be blunt – smoking anything, including incense, cloves, weed, mesquite wood, or even spinach is bad because of the products of combustion.  People in fires die from smoke inhalation way more than burning to death. 

    Furthermore, inhaling oil mist is really, really bad for your lungs – even olive oil or medical-grade mineral oil.  Oil screws with the surfactant coating that keeps your lungs spread open in the little alveoli pockets that let oxygen into your blood.  It’s why poison control will never tell you to induce vomiting if a kid drinks something oily – too much risk of getting oil aspiration pneumonia.

    You will note that I did not mention vaping, which works like a fog machine.

    • #2
  3. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    When the Public Health people advocate injection sites and condom distribution for harm reduction, but refuse e-cigs? That’s some serious cognitive dissonance.

    From a toxicological standpoint, there is absolutely no way water / propylene glycol based vape juice is as harmful as cigarettes. Almost all of the injuries and illness are from people inhaling hash oil and other oils.

    Let me be blunt – smoking anything, including incense, cloves, weed, mesquite wood, or even spinach is bad because of the products of combustion. People in fires die from smoke inhalation way more than burning to death.

    Furthermore, inhaling oil mist is really, really bad for your lungs – even olive oil or medical-grade mineral oil. Oil screws with the surfactant coating that keeps your lungs spread open in the little alveoli pockets that let oxygen into your blood. It’s why poison control will never tell you to induce vomiting if a kid drinks something oily – too much risk of getting oil aspiration pneumonia.

    You will note that I did not mention vaping, which works like a fog machine.

    Yes to all. And we may note that European public health authorities, faced with the direct costs of health outcomes are all in for vape/ e-cigarettes to reduce the strain on the publicly funded healthcare systems from inhaling smoke. Contrast that to the perversely incentivized American “public health” crew.

    • #3
  4. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    The problem is that liberals are terrified that someone somewhere might be having fun.

    • #4
  5. dnewlander Inactive
    dnewlander
    @dnewlander

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    The problem is that liberals are terrified that someone somewhere might be having fun.

    So they’re the new Baptists?

    • #5
  6. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    dnewlander (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    The problem is that liberals are terrified that someone somewhere might be having fun.

    So they’re the new Baptists?

    Let’s not let the McConnells off the hook here. It is one of those terrible confluences of establishment politicians, “public interest” groups and bureaucrats.

    • #6
  7. Addiction Is A Choice Member
    Addiction Is A Choice
    @AddictionIsAChoice

    “The Plant Based Alternative to Vaping”

    • #7
  8. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    Addiction Is A Choice (View Comment):

    “The Plant Based Alternative to Vaping”

    Precisely the true intent of the anti-vape government activism.

    • #8
  9. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Can’t tell what’s on the left part of the top shelf on the left, but on the right, it’s Ketel One, with their Botanical Infused line. It’s pretty good. Below that, Stoli on the left (the Oranj is nice, the Blueberry . . . not entirely chemical-tasting) then Absolut in the middle and Smirnoff on the right. It’s interesting that the Smirnoff has no flavors, since they pioneered the marketing of flavored vodka in Mother Russia.

    On the right, Tito’s, which some people love, but I hate the bottle. Then Effen, which has a rubberized sleeve for easy gripping. Western Son is a bit too sweet and flavor forward, and you can say the same about its neighbor, Deep Eddy’s.

    Botom shelf: Pinnacle, which is French crapula-inducing windshield-wiper fluid. 

    Absolut Citron for me, rocks, wedge of lemon. If we’re on a ship. 

    • #9
  10. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Teenagers are not kids and far from innocent.

    I have a friend who used to smoke cigarettes, vaped for a few years to help him quit cigarettes and now he is tobacco free.

    He occasionally has a cigarette or Juul but he is 99% nicotine free.

     

    • #10
  11. thelonious Member
    thelonious
    @thelonious

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Can’t tell what’s on the left part of the top shelf on the left, but on the right, it’s Ketel One, with their Botanical Infused line. It’s pretty good. Below that, Stoli on the left (the Oranj is nice, the Blueberry . . . not entirely chemical-tasting) then Absolut in the middle and Smirnoff on the right. It’s interesting that the Smirnoff has no flavors, since they pioneered the marketing of flavored vodka in Mother Russia.

    On the right, Tito’s, which some people love, but I hate the bottle. Then Effen, which has a rubberized sleeve for easy gripping. Western Son is a bit too sweet and flavor forward, and you can say the same about its neighbor, Deep Eddy’s.

    Botom shelf: Pinnacle, which is French crapula-inducing windshield-wiper fluid.

    Absolut Citron for me, rocks, wedge of lemon. If we’re on a ship.

    On the podcasts you sound sober. Now I’m starting to wonder.

    • #11
  12. dnewlander Inactive
    dnewlander
    @dnewlander

    Weird.

    • #12
  13. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Tobacco kills.    We are all going to die anyway,  eventually.  Even non smoking celibate  tee teetotalers  who don’t use CBD and drive Prius’ss”s.

    • #13
  14. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    E. Kent Golding (View Comment):

    Tobacco kills. We are all going to die anyway, eventually. Even non smoking celibate tee teetotalers who don’t use CBD and drive Prius’ss”s.

    Yeah. I think my father smoked every day of his life since he was sixteen (maybe earlier?), and he died. Sure, he was nearly 85, but he could have lived to be as old as his parents, who died at 53 and 60.

    • #14
  15. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    If the government pays for health care it has a fundamental interest in everything we do, eat, breath.  That’s why we have to find ways to end government supplied health care.  All of it everywhere.

    • #15
  16. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    I Walton (View Comment):

    If the government pays for health care it has a fundamental interest in everything we do, eat, breath. That’s why we have to find ways to end government supplied health care. All of it everywhere.

    Exactly.

    • #16
  17. Michael Brehm Lincoln
    Michael Brehm
    @MichaelBrehm

    Spare me the Hawaiian punch, you can give me a Laphroaig any day. I prefer my alcohol to be peat-flavored.

    • #17
  18. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Clifford A. Brown: You did realize that caffeine changes neurochemistry, right? 

    Only on humans.

    • #18
  19. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Clifford A. Brown: So, pipe, cigar…customers, who are full grown adults, demand flavors beyond the subtleties of the leafs,

    No serious pipe or cigar smokers demand flavors beyond the subtleties of the leaf.  If they do, they are posers, nine-toeds, or just plain stoopid.  

     

    • #19
  20. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Spin (View Comment):
    No serious pipe or cigar smokers demand flavors beyond the subtleties of the leaf. If they do, they are posers, nine-toeds, or just plain stoopid.

    Quit lookin’ in the mirror and tellin’ us what you see.

    • #20
  21. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):
    From a toxicological standpoint, there is absolutely no way water / propylene glycol based vape juice is as harmful as cigarettes. Almost all of the injuries and illness are from people inhaling hash oil and other oils.

    This isn’t 100% true.  Unfortunately, I do not have the article handy, but I read a piece that described the early (and still to some degree current) variations of flavored vape sauce.  There was a chemical in those that caused “popcorn lung”.  It was the same chemical that had been used in microwave popcorn. 

    This just in:  I DID find the article I was reading.  Why don’t I go back up and edit the text I already wrote?  Because I’m lazy!  Not too lazy to write that last sentence…anway…

    Apparently, yes. According to that 2016 report published in Environmental Health Perspectives mentioned earlier, diacetyl is quite common in vaping juices. The authors of the report tested 51 flavored e-cigarette liquids for the chemical and found it in 39. (The report also notes that 47 of the 51 tested products contained at the least one flavoring chemical.)

    This is worrying given the documented evidence supporting the fact that diacetyl is extremely dangerous—fatal, even. “Because of the associations between diacetyl and bronchitis obliterans [popcorn lung] and other severe respiratory diseases observed in workers, urgent action is recommended to further evaluate this potentially widespread exposure via flavored e-cigarettes,” the report warns.

    This seems to indicate to me that there is some difference between flavored and unflavored vape oils.  

    That said, I reject all calls to outlaw the stuff.  If you are worried about your kids…be a parent.  We’ve fought this vaping in our own home, as I’ve mentioned before.  My two grown kids vape, and they hide it from us.  I just make fun of them.  The two younger kids have both dabbled in it.  We found a “vape pen” (I call them “vape machines”, because it drives my kids bonkers) in my son’s room.  “It’s not mine, I was holding it for someone.”  Literally what he said.  We found out he got it from so and so (a child of some friends).  The more we dug, the more evidence of an underground vape machine ring among middle- and high-schoolers.  That’s right:  a black market among da yoots!  That’s what lead me to do the research in to the effects of vaping, which I communicated to all the kids involved.  And y’all know…dammit I hate it when northerners say “y’all”!  You all know that I was hurt a while ago, and my surgeon asked me:  “You you use nicotine?”  Well, I smoke cigars from time to time.  “Your healing time will be doubled.”  He then explained how nicotine effects blood flow, which is critical for healing.  I explained that.  Then I said “And, if find this crap in the house again, your a** is grass!”  

    • #21
  22. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Spin (View Comment):
    No serious pipe or cigar smokers demand flavors beyond the subtleties of the leaf. If they do, they are posers, nine-toeds, or just plain stoopid.

    Quit lookin’ in the mirror and tellin’ us what you see.

    Let me guess:  you are a swisher sweet man?  You get your kintucky cheroots down at walmart?

    • #22
  23. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    dnewlander (View Comment):

    By this time tomorrow, the dnewlander date for the TRN-Balzer shindig will either be settled or still up in the air. Yay!

    So you’re bringing the vapes? What?

    • #23
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Spin (View Comment):
    Let me guess: you are a swisher sweet man? You get your kintucky cheroots down at walmart?

    With my lungs? I can’t smoke anything other than a sausage.

    • #24
  25. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    When lies about “second hand smoke” have been so profitable, why should they stop lying?

    • #25
  26. RyanFalcone Member
    RyanFalcone
    @RyanFalcone

    dnewlander (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    The problem is that liberals are terrified that someone somewhere might be having fun.

    So they’re the new Baptists?

    Aren’t something like 75% of southerners Baptists? I’m up here in Pennsylvania so maybe I’m speaking out of ignorance but those folks seem like the most fun folks on earth. I would think that the more liberal main-line folks like Methodists, and PC USA (Presbyterians) are the real kill joys.

    I live around the Amish up here. You might think that they don’t know how to be party but you would be wrong……………so very, very wrong.

    • #26
  27. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    RyanFalcone (View Comment):

    dnewlander (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    The problem is that liberals are terrified that someone somewhere might be having fun.

    So they’re the new Baptists?

    Aren’t something like 75% of southerners Baptists? I’m up here in Pennsylvania so maybe I’m speaking out of ignorance but those folks seem like the most fun folks on earth. I would think that the more liberal main-line folks like Methodists, and PC USA (Presbyterians) are the real kill joys.

    I live around the Amish up here. You might think that they don’t know how to be party but you would be wrong……………so very, very wrong.

    “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1899.”

    • #27
  28. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    RyanFalcone (View Comment):
    Aren’t something like 75% of southerners Baptists?

    About that high with all Protestant denominations. Not sure of the breakdown beyond that. Wikipedia breaks it down into: Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, and Black church., but that’s not much information as far as Baptists.

    • #28
  29. Bob W Member
    Bob W
    @WBob

    And all this is in the context of widespread marijuana legalization. Many politicians who demonized the tobacco executives now favor marijuana legalization. 

    • #29
  30. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    E. Kent Golding (View Comment):

    Tobacco kills. We are all going to die anyway, eventually. Even non smoking celibate tee teetotalers who don’t use CBD and drive Prius’ss”s.

    Something I heard about death and taxes…

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.