Is this as harmful as, say, Pringles? Or trampolines? I think the reason this stirs up outrage is because it's 'smoking' which is seen as an adult activity that children must be shielded from, whereas many other harmful behaviors are associated with children and thus 'okay'.
It's important to switch those children to vaping or not smoking.
But all those other children who aren't smoking? There's almost no benefit to them from vaping, and there are disadvantages and risks. Vaping costs money, it's potentially addictive, some of the flavours can be harmful, the devices can be low quality and catch fire etc. These might be small quantities of risk, but across a population of 350m people it adds up to a bunch of people harmed for no benefit.
The benefit is the most influential of all: catching a buzz. We do all kinds of things in search of that. It's the start and end to why people smoke.
We're seeing studies showing that with nicotine there is arterial hardening.
Because we aren't doing anybody any favors when we permit the industry to give teenagers a chemical addiction to their commercial product, even if their product were harmful in no ways other than financial.
(Yes, I also object in strong terms to other addictive substances in consumer products, don't even bother replying with whataboutism.)
Please don't say "aargh, drugs!" and lose your cool. We need a rational not emotional response or things will be made worse.
Again, if they are advertising to children, that is a very, very serious problem and should be dealt with immediately. Selling apple or caramel or chocolate or mint flavor is not sufficient, in my opinion.
Arguably, advertising flavor at all is sufficient, but don’t we already have laws for advertising, period?