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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.
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* You cannot even get your teeth cleaned without being offered multiple flavors of fluoride treatment.
Published in Domestic Policy
No, the olde Puritans.
Cause it’s cool and another source of revenue.
And five years after it’s legalized they’ll be shouting about how Big Cannabis is trying to kill us.
They have a vested interest in our dying before we use up a bunch of expensive procedures.
Obviously written by a Democrat. It should say “Fundamentalist” Protestant, not “Evangelical.”
That’s my favorite as well. Mother’s milk…
Of course they are liars. The same people who have a massive problem with vaping because…. the children, have no problem with the selling of THC infused edibles. I mean, kids like brownies, gummie bears, and lollipops. Why aren’t they banned?
Also, if kids are so wise as to choose their gender at tender ages, then why aren’t they allowed to smoke, drink, drive, etc…… The incoherence is amazing.
We are all dealt a genetic hand, and other players get to force some cards in and out of that hand…
AND we each are responsible for playing that hand as best we can. There are safer and riskier plays.
This was my point on the European response to vape/ e-cigarettes. They see it as reducing the expected costs to the government budget from tobacco cigarette smoking.
Yes, and yet the distillers are seeing that the straight stuff has a limit on market growth. Indeed, consider how many people have, at least since the latter part of the 1800s, covered up the booze flavor with fruit, starting with things like the Manhattan, Tom Collins, Old Fashioned. Indeed, the Scots are alleged to have created the hot toddy in the 1700s, so they started the whole sweetened whiskey thing.
As my father is wont to say: “the whole purpose of other ingredients is to sneak the alcohol past your nose.”
Truth is, Hawaiian Punch makes a pretty solid mixer for vodka. The flavor is strong enough that you can mix heavy and still barely taste the alcohol.
The great thing about vodka is that everything is a good mixer.
Sometimes I cut my Lagavulin with more Lagavulin.
Diacetyl is bad, but it’s still a step up from inhaling smoke. Smoke contains a mix of well-documented carcinogens, carbon monoxide, and acrolein.
Plus, there are lots of flavors of vape juice that contain no diacetyl
When I was working in the shipyard, Belfast, one of the older Irishmen I worked with, really serious about Scotch, recommended Laphroaig – seemed to think it was a reasonable starting place.
I’d recommend against that or any other Islay Scotch as they are very smoky. I’d say start with something more subtle – one of the seaside ones, for example.
Don’t get me wrong; I only drink Islay.
Don’t add crap to my whiskey. If I want sweet, I’ll mix with coca cola
I did that once. Everybody should do it once so they know why never to do it again.
People add coke to crap whiskey to make it drinkable.
Yes, but you were saying, I think, that there’s no difference between unflavored and flavored, right? Clearly vaping is less aweful for you than smoking an actual cigarette. But, using a vape machine that has oil without diacetyl is, it seems to me, better than using one that does have it. Right?
It’s kind of like asking if it’s better to be tossed in a cess pool or a slit trench.
I like a Jack and Coke. I also like Jack on the rocks. I dont think JD is crap.
I don’t judge the tastes of others. I personally don’t want flavored whiskey.
Scotch and Root Beer, for people who don’t like the taste of Scotch
Root Beer and Scotch, for people who don’t like the taste of Root Beer
Gin and rubbing alcohol for that true Prohibition taste.
I’m with the prohibitionists. We don’t want children vaping, so nobody should vape. I also think it is dangerous for children to drive cement trucks and locomotives so I demand that we outlaw them, as well. Submarines and hot air balloons, too.
Great post, Clifford. You are right to call these lies. Nobody honestly believes that only children like fruit flavors and other sweet things.
I tried looking up the most popular of vape juices but the polls were informal internet garbage. My impression is that the popular winner is usually a tobacco flavor, nearly all runners-up are some kind of candy/fruit/dessert flavor.
And speaking of informal polls; my wife vapes a coconut flavor. And now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually smelled a tobacco-oriented fog in all my wanderings.
Both diacetyl and vitamin E acetate oil are dangerous in vape oil. Vitamin E oil is a cheap substance that looks like concentrated THC oil. My honest suggestion is to smoke tobacco, chew tobacco, use the patch , or abstain. Same with Marijuana — smoke it or eat it. Too many ways to cheaply adulterate Vape oil. If you are going to Vape, stick with major reputable brands from regular stores.
I have several work acquaintances who vape, and my one employee does also. No tobacco scents among them. Mostly citrus variants.
To abstain is obviously the ideal, but is not achievable for many. The patch doesn’t have a great success rate, either. Vape is so superior health-wise to actual tobacco use that I vociferously disagree with your other suggestions. Current health warnings about vaping are totally ignoring the primary reason adults vape — to avoid cigarettes.
I think it’s none of my business what they vape or if they vape.