I'll never understand why adults partaking in a particular vice can't enjoy different flavours (unless the vice is alcohol).
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/e-cigarettes/why-youth-vape.html
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/ctp-newsroom/misleading...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6663555/
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/05/...
https://www.drugs.com/news/study-finds-powerful-sweetener-va...
In other words: Our government utterly decimated an American company just to make room in the market for Chinese competitors to dominate.
In most US states the sale of alcohol is already much more restricted than the sale of tobacco.
You can walk into any 7-11, convenience store, or gas station and buy tobacco. In most states, this is not true for alcohol.
Also, tobacco vape use is much more addictive and somewhat more concealable than alcohol. People can generally tell or at least suspect you've been drinking; people generally cannot tell if you just vaped 10 seconds ago in the bathroom.
It's far from ideal and you and I would certainly not design a country from scratch this way, but legislation (at least, ideally) deals with things as they are and not with an imagined tabula rasa state of affairs.
Because what happened there was that 'strawberry kiwi', 'banana ice', and 'miami mint', and whatever fruity flavour in a colourful package you can come up with, turned vaping from something adults did to quit smoking tobacco into the biggest hype amongst teenagers since fidget spinners. Only they get addicted to nicotine as a bonus, and switch to 'proper' tobacco in their senior years.
Even with a complete ban on those the damage is done, and all across the globe society is now dealing with a huge profitable underground Snapchat-enabled market geared solely at selling the equivalent of a pack-a-day habit in nicotine to kids. (The ban helps to gradually denormalise vaping again, so it is good to have in place.)
I don't think vape kids are ever switching to tobacco - that doesn't fit the model that they want at all: its an electronic device that delivers a stimulant.
Why is alcohol something that's okay to market to kids? (The new supergirl is a drunk party girl). Isn't alcohol much more harmful?
It's not in many places. Where is it OK? There is a reason abstinence from alcohol is getting normalised for under 18s.
> I don't think vape kids are ever switching to tobacco […]
Demographic research polling suggests otherwise. Besides, it is gradually becoming more apparent that vaping is very much not a healthy thing to do¹.
1: Just one example of reporting on this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/08/vapi...
About 85% of African Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes, compared to a rate of less than 30% menthol use among white Americans. [1] They're disproportionately advertised and were (in the past) literally given away in poor Black communities to get people addicted.
Basically, policy makers can target their regulations to a specific group by specifying flavor. Sure, an individual white adult might like fruity flavors or menthols, a black adult might like originals, and some kids might prefer original or menthols, but there's a strong statistical bias.
When health departments are trying to address a particular health concern - say, young children smoking - they can do so by targeting fruity flavors. Conversely, when tobacco company marketing departments are trying to advertise their products to Black users without drawing unwanted attention from disproportionately white regulators, they can achieve their goals by promoting menthols. An individual from any population might have any flavor preference, but the dice are shockingly heavily weighted when you're looking at large groups.
[1]: https://datatools.samhsa.gov/das/nsduh/2019/nsduh-2019-ds000...
there is no exception to alcohol for this. Anybody who was a teenager or older in the aughts remembers "alcopops" (might have had a different name depending on where you're from). Lots of countries regulated or raised taxes on mixed drinks because they were seen (probably justifiably so) as targeting teenagers. In Germany it resulted in Smirnoff Ice and some Bacardi mix drink largely going off the shelves.
Also the cultural aspect is just different. It is generally harder for kids to get alcohol in my experience and also you (usually) don’t carry a bottle of 99 bananas and swig it every few minutes out in public.
Perhaps most importantly is that alcohol doesn’t contain nicotine. People get addicted to alcohol but not in the same way people get addicted to nicotine.
It's a new phenomenon that they might (might) be able to tell TikTok or Youtube to estimate the age of individual viewers and limit which topics can appear in advertisements to different age groups.
The existence of the candy flavors and any public marketing of those flavors (even on the label in the store aisle) is implicitly marketing to children.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-preventi...
On the rare occasions of exposure by a user exhaling in public next to me I found it worse than passively inhaling cigarette smoke.
I'll stop you right there, because I know what you're thinking, and nope: Zyn containers already have a child safety lock on them. Its the bane of existence for the adults who buy them, you can ask any of them, but they already have that.
Nicotine is highly addictive and bad for you health. You pretty much have a customer for life ... which is the point. So next to having something which is bad for you, inhaling glycerol, combined with a substance which is addictive and bad for your health, you also are at a financial loss for life.
And it's targeted at teens ...
(I think vaping should be legal, fwiw.)
One kid has asthma and uses an albuterol inhaler. The inhaler requires a doctor's prescription and is expensive.
The other kid vapes e-cigarettes. Vaping solution is cheaper and readily available.
Perhaps albuterol is a dangerous, addictive substance?????
By the same token the degree to which vapes help people quit is up in the air, some studies show strong effects in favor of quitting, others show strong effects that it's inferior to other quitting aids. (i.e. studies like https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7867832/)
"These are a way for people to reduce harm" is primarily an industry narrative at this point, divorced from reality.
Kids were using nicotine before vaping, they were smoking cigarettes. And these companies absolutely are investing in a growing market for adults who either want to quit smoking entirely or want a healthier option to cigarettes. As cigarettes prices have continued to soar and laws have become more and strict on where someone can and cannot smoke, vaping offers an alternative to get nicotine and an oral fixation. So it's not surprising that more and more adults have switched to it.
That's not a study that's a meta-analysis. You seem to have seen the one ad Juul put out to minors and assumed that is the entire industry and its purpose. This is objectively divorced from reality.
UK is seeing a wave of people who never smoked cigarettes but went straight to vapes. It's less bad for sure but not harmless. IIRC a bump in lung cancer cases in young people was ascribed to this.
How many children, enticed by the fruit flavors, pick up a life time habit of tobacco use?
Why do you think we have tariffs?
I am not of the opinion that govt should not be placing restrictions. That is literally the definition of laws. I am of the opinion that govt should not regulate how someone can do something.
Loosening a ban on menthol, not because it was harmful, but because it was causing addictions, was an overreach. It should have banned the Tobacco and nicotine instead.
That said, tons of other vapes are allowed on the market, so why should Juul specifically be banned?
Tobacco products are insanely harmful.
Alcohol kills hundreds of thousands a year in the US.
But heaven forbid you flavor your nicotine.
What is the actual criteria for FDA approval?
