Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pinckney | Hacker News Reader

Then call your representative and tell them to pass a law that makes e-cigarettes illegal.

I'm not sure that's the solution - it removes a useful tool for curbing cigarette use. They're simultaneously cheaper, have no lingering smell, and (anecdata) are healthier.

Regulators were too slow to ban advertisements of these devices; especially those aimed at kids. Furthermore, decades of anti-smoking media has removed any traces of 'cool' from cigarettes. e-cigarettes are too new to have this cultural benefit.

But, you're right. There's a hooker in the closet. Remove the 'cool' from e-cigarettes. We could ban attractive flavours, and keep dull, boring ones.

Besides, there's logistical issues with making them illegal. What to do with the addicted population? Push them into cigarettes (cheapest option)? Use public funds for replacement programs (expensive; low political will)?

And finally, motivated teens will obtain whatever they want. Any such demand is supplied in an urban environment. This stuff is easy to make, easy to hide, and easy to import from other provinces/states.

I don't see the point of banning particular flavors. People use them for the nicotine. I haven't heard anyone clamoring to ban flavored alcohol, which is another life-destroying poison product that's illegal for children.

While not a ban, alco-pop taxes are indeed a thing.

They apply to flavoured alcoholic beverages which usually appeal more to young people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcopop

There used to be campaigns to ban flavored (fruity) alcoholic drinks in the UK, but first, we have a different idea of maturity (an 18 year old can purchase alcohol), and second, by now people in their 40s grew up with them. There was a significant increase in the tax on them in 1997, which led to products like flavored cider.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23502892

I think that comparison is fair to a point.

My suggestion to ban particular flavourings is related more to the fact that cigarettes taste nasty. It would be helpful to be able to make comparisons here from a marketing standpoint. Not to mention the crazy flavourings some shops create, with little regard to health. I'm sure there's more fruitful avenues than this one.

As for nicotine, you'd be surprised. My local shop has a healthy stock of no-nic juices available. I presume the intended market is people dropping from 3mg -> 0mg, but I imagine the real audience is wider.

As for flavoured alcohol, I think we just have a different relationship with alcohol. It's a more widely used drug which we've consumed before the dawn of civilization. A lot of people are perfectly fine with young adults drinking it (see: not NA). And of course, flavoured alcohol exists to make spirits palatable.

On a side note, I'm curious about your wording. Did you intend to evocative with the usage of 'life-destroying poison' immediately followed by 'children'? That's certainly an extreme way to position an argument. I'm sure you're acting in good faith, but it's just not in my cultural sensibilities.

I've only ever heard arguments for the banning of flavored e-juice in the context of them appealing to children, which is why I mentioned them that way. For me personally, I find both alcohol and tobacco disgusting but I don't see any constitutional basis for government regulation of what informed adults put into their body, so long as it doesn't pose a danger to others.

It's crazy to say that adults don't also enjoy candy or sweets.

But i think there's a big difference between government regulation of what informed adults can put in their body, and what corporations can do in the pursuit of profit. Regulating the latter is reasonable, and has a heading in the US Constitution in something like tobacco, since its not local.

> ... a useful tool for curbing cigarette use ... and (anecdata) are healthier.

Healthier than cigarettes? Impossible! Cigarettes must be one of the healthiest things in the world.

Haha, that's right. But I'm too cautious to make claims that I haven't researched, or hasn't been researched.

I'd like to see some more concrete studies and maybe even safer product designs. Juul itself is a predatory but brilliant product. It's simple and therefore hard to fuck up. Meanwhile my early misadventures into e-cigarettes wasn't very healthy (burning coils, etc). Thankfully I learned over time.

Just about the last thing the US needs is another drug related black market problem. The US should generally be liberalizing on drug access and use, not making more recreational drugs illegal.

There is a reasonable action between making it illegal and having e-cigarettes without any restrictions at all.

its mind boggling that the same jurisdictions that want to make e-cigarettes illegal want to make shrooms and marijuana legal. absolutely mind boggling.

Marijuana and mushrooms are not that harmful compared to e-cigarettes. It's a rational approach.

You're arguing smoking marijuana (burning it and inhaling the byproducts) is less harmful than e-cigarettes.

I highly doubt that.

Didn't that story about a mysterious rise in lung disease tied to vaping a couple of weeks ago implicate marijuana as the cause?

No, it implicated tobacco/nicotine based products. And it sounds like something significantly more dangerous than the usual vape products are involved. People have been vaping for years without being hospitalized their first few months of usage. This sticks out as highly unusual, regardless of your views on vape safety overall.

This is a case of particularly bad reporting. These cases are all related not to nicotine but to THC and other drugs being tainted.

https://www.leafly.com/news/health/tainted-vape-carts-sicken...

I heard THC technically it could indicate a lack of quality control in their products or delivery mechanism. Like bathtub gin for blindness - while alcohol isn't healthy the methanol was the actual cause. Expired vaccines have killed people for instance.

Presumably they believe the problem is things that are addictive rather than things that are drugs.

Nobody is proposing a ban on nicotine gum and patches. Any actual addicts will be able to get their fix. So a ban on another nicotine delivery system doesn't seem to me like a big risk for, say, Colombian cartels smuggling in black-lab vape cartridges.

If you've ever tried to quit smoking, you'd know that the gums and patches don't work, which is why vape pens have been so successful at getting smokers to quit after decades of patches and gums failing. It's not the amount of nicotine in your blood that matters, it's the delivery mechanism. Inhaling nicotine gets it to your brain faster, which creates the pleasurable experience. Patches just make you feel shitty and burn your skin, while vape pens recreate the sensation of smoking with an order of magnitude less nasty shit in it. Nicotine salts based vapes like juul are even less damaging since the quantity of vapor is massively reduced compared to traditional vaping liquids. Juul may be a bunch of scumbags, but these conversations really irk me because there is a clear benefit to vaping as an alternative to smoking. If you can figure out how to curb teen vaping without telling me I can't use a juul because it's maybe kinda bad for me, I'm all for it. If the proponents of banning vapes want to ban alcohol first, I'll be less skeptical of their intentions.

i think you haven't research the problem at all.

banning never works. no circumstance makes banning stuff acceptable. you can however limit access. otherwise you're just exploiting your own fears to drive people into doing your bidding.

You seem to be mixing up a factual claim with what is almost a religious one.

Banning stuff does in fact work. The Consumer Products Safety Commission has banned all sorts of stuff: https://www.cpsc.gov/Regulations-Laws--Standards/Regulations...

Despite that, Mexican cartels aren't selling shoddy cribs and high chairs on the streetcorner.

Automotive regulators have banned a wide variety of unsafe things as well, but people aren't sneakily removing their dashboard padding and the like.

It's true that banning some things doesn't work, and I'm generally against drug prohibitions. But I think banning Juul will probably work just fine, because we aren't banning the substance entirely, just a delivery mechanism.

yes, the worst thing about the hitman trade is that it's unregulated so you can't get your money back if they kill you instead since the other guy offered a better rate. better to legalize it so these disputes can be resolved in court. and to keep regulations to a minimum so the industry can continue to innovate exciting new options.

i completely agree that the ban on murder for hire has been a total failure and should be rescinded immediately.

how's the war on drugs going?

Then ban advertising of ANY kind for tabacco-related products. No cool kids or influencers, no flashy magazines, no outdoor ads and so on.

I'm 100% on board with this.

i have no problem with this.

>Colombian cartels smuggling in black-lab vape cartridges

Source?

So kids go back to smoking non-e cigarettes like in the good ole days?

In recent years, teen vaping rates have increased far more than teen smoking rates have dropped. https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2019/jun/12/t...

That still doesn’t excuse making e-cigarettes illegal and not normal cigarettes as well. Also, you have to compare against marijuana and other drugs as well if we are accounting for what teens are doing to act out.

Sure it does, we (should) decide policy based on what is possible, not what adheres to some God-given set of moral consistency conditions. A ban on e-cigarettes is probably politically feasible, a ban on cigarettes is not.

Anyway, I still disagree with banning e-cigarettes because it seems they're so much less harmful than regular cigarettes that even if the marketing was so effective that everyone started vaping, I'm not sure the harms would outweigh the gains from smokers quitting.

Maybe, but the point is that banning e-cigarettes won't result in all the e-cigarette users going back to normal cigarettes. E-cigarettes have grown the market, not simply captured a subset of existing smokers.

I'd also point out that the problem isn't "acting out". It's the act of smoking cigarettes itself, which is objectively harmful. Marijuana is much safer. E-cigarettes seem to be as well, but the jury is still out.

There are many who have quit cigarettes that rely on e cigarettes to keep from relapsing. Banning e-cigarettes would just screw them like crazy. As someone who had to quit cold turkey, I can appreciate how hard this is, and how easy relapsing is.

Even if the market is apart is partially grown, peer pressure and acting out was going to get many of those teens on something. If it is just vaping, that is much better than cigarettes, marijuana, heroin, meth, ... really, perfect is still the enemy of good.

I'm not sure that situation was worse, considering how much more accessible e-cigarettes are in comparison. The experience of smoking was a big deterrent to nicotine addiction.

The primary health problems of smoking aren't caused by nicotine, but everything else that's in a cigarette.

Alcohol equivalent of switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes would be switching from drinking shoe polish to drinking regular, bottled liquor.

It’s more like comparing a wine cooler to vodka.

No. The point of my comparison was highlighting that nicotine itself only gives you addiction, primarily when mixed with other stuff. It's that other stuff - present in regular cigarettes, absent in e-cigarettes - that damages your lungs and gives you cancer.

I don’t think we disagree, vodka is hard liquor and will kill you, a wine cooler just has a touch of alcohol and probably the sugar is more harmful overall.

I misunderstood the meaning of "wine cooler", and mistakenly thought you just meant 1/3 of power for the same volume. Sorry.

Still, the shoe polish analogy was meant to convey that the harmful substances are incidental, and e-cigs give you smoking experience and nicotine without them.

That's a false dichotomy, to say the least. There's a much different public view of e-cigarettes and non-e. Moreover, smoking bans are currently more widespread than vaping bans [1] - in many places, vaping is legal in situations where smoking is not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vaping_bans_in_the_Uni...

One step ahead of you buddy. :)

Or maybe call your representative and pass a law that makes parents more responsible.

I'm sorry, how does that help? This case is about targeting minors and what you are suggesting infringes upon the basic human rights of an informed adult to make their own decisions about what they put in their body. Any legislation should only have the goal of ensuring citizens are informed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com