Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes
axios.com
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Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible. Think about it, all these cities with vape bans haven't banned cigarettes yet, right? Make it extremely difficult to vape and people will resort to smoking.
On a more philosophical note, are we really OK with the government reaching this far into our personal lives?
The issue isn't really about the juices themselves though, is it? It's more about the advertising allegedly targeting young kids. I think regulating the advertisement of these products is probably the most sane course of action here.
Not true. Big Tobacco owns (partially or outright) most of the big players in the vaping industry. Vuse is owned by Reynolds, Vype is owned by BAT, and Altria has a massive stake in Juul.
It's in Big Tobacco's interest to ensure vaping is easy and viewed as an alternative to cigarettes. It's also in their interest to keep the product in snazzy packaging with candy flavors that appeal to younger consumers.
Because no adults enjoy candy, or flavors? That's exclusive to "younger consumers" only? The vast majority of people who vape are adults. They also enjoy flavored e-juice. Maybe we should put stuff in alcohol that makes it so disgusting no one wants to drink it as well by that logic. Ban flavored alcohol and mixers... too many kids getting drunk off peach schnapps because it tastes good. Ban Coke in bars so people can't add it to their rum. It doesn't matter if the overwhelming number of people consuming it are (legal) adults...because there are some kids abusing it (which is already illegal).
From this study:
> Current flavored (including menthol) tobacco product use was highest in youth (80%, aged 12-17 years); and young adult tobacco users (73%, aged 18-24 years); and lowest in older adult tobacco users aged ≥65 years (29%). Flavor was a primary reason for using a given tobacco product, particularly among youth. Eighty-one percent of youth and 86% of young adult ever tobacco users reported that their first product was flavored versus 54% of adults aged ≥25 years. In multivariable models, reporting that one's first tobacco product was flavored was associated with a 13% higher prevalence of current tobacco use among youth ever tobacco users and a 32% higher prevalence of current tobacco use among adult ever users.
While the argument does have some minor merits, I'm personally against removing flavors from smoking products.
It's also no coincidence that the same industry has been smacked down for the same behavior in the past. Eternal vigilance is required to make these companies behave themselves.
https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-toba...
The big tobacco owned products like Vype are almost always seen in petrol stations, off-licences and small shops that sell, or formerly sold tobacco and cigarettes in addition to their main business. Prices for liquids are 3-4x the price of the vape shops. You still sometimes see these places selling the silly, tiny e-cigarettes that look identical to a king size smoke, with LED where the tobacco used to burn. You won't ever see these anywhere else. I've seen exactly one person using one of these compared to hundreds using regular vape pens and box mods.
Juul was late to the UK party, and I've yet to notice anyone using one of those, though I have seen one or two garages with a few packs of cartridge refills, but they don't seem common.
Opinion: There are many ways we could regulate this better than an outright ban. Banning things will only lead to black market sales. We should go to all brown packaging, ban any outside advertising, actually fine shops who don't comply and by using education and transparency explain to the youth why it is detrimental to their health.
I cannot even remember how many flavored alcohol ads I saw during the NFL games over this past weekend....yet they get a free pass...
I agree we have to do something, but whenever a politician says, "It's for the kids" it tends to be for anything but and they are using that line to pull the heartstrings of parents.
Why isn't Juul being regulated? They are partnered with Altria.
There was recently a merger between Phillip Morris and Altria
https://www.vapor4life.com/blog/altria-pmi-merger/
FTA
>Altria supports a flavor ban, which would benefit a combined Phillip Morris- Altria. The one-note iQOS is a much more appealing option when pitted against tobacco ejuice flavors, which simply are not as popular with adult smokers as the sweeter varieties.
>With no fruit and dessert flavors to compete with, it would boil down to who has the best tobacco flavor. Altria clearly thinks the iQOS would win that contest. The edge is even greater when it comes to novices and smokers who have never tried vaping.
>Where Juul ends up, and if it will be pitted head to head against the iQOS is another market disruption that is nearly impossible to predict.
>We are fast approaching a scenario that resembles regulatory capture. The practiced hands of the tobacco industry are the largest and most influential stakeholders. They are pushing for regulations that destroy the competition and leave their own products untouched.
>How the public would react to this sleight of hand and a restructured vaping industry dominated by Big Tobacco and Juul could end up making this power move a pyrrhic victory.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20821248
This time, not so much....
Maybe it is because the other thread didn't get as much traction to allow enough people to vote? shrug
Maybe, but vaping has (had?) the reputation of being "safer" than cigarettes. I doubt there would be a 1:1 of potential vappers to smokers.
I think this is the right approach for the UK. I'm not sure it'll work in the US.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4553893/
>Tobacco use is considered the single most important man-made cause of cancer that can be avoided. The evidence that nicotine is involved in cancer development is reviewed and discussed in this paper. Both tobacco smoke and tobacco products for oral use contain a number of carcinogenic substances, such as polycyclic hydrocarbons and tobacco-specific N-nitrosamines (TSNA), which undoubtedly contribute to tobacco related cancer. Recent studies have shown that nicotine can affect several important steps in the development of cancer, and suggest that it may cause aggravation and recurrence of the disease. TSNA may be formed from nicotine in the body. The role of nicotine as the major addictive component of tobacco products may have distracted our attention from toxicological effects on cell growth, angiogenesis, and tumor malignancy. Effects on cancer disease are important aspects in the evaluation of possible long-term effects from sources of nicotine, such as e-cigarettes and products for nicotine replacement therapy, which both have a potential for life-long use.
like the current bugaboo over vaping causing deaths the CDC crows about yet statistics show its not legal over the counter products.
sensationalism sells papers and gets votes. exploiting ignorance with something that sounds truthful if not plausible has always been the game. when all else fails, "for the children" is the go to.
It's not reaching into your personal life. It's reaching into businesses to stop them from selling damaging and highly addictive products. Banning tobacco would be optimal but not feasible since too many people are already addicted.
From another perspective I wouldn't be in favor of higher taxes on vaping products because it would be yet another tax affecting primarily lower income people.
So, while I don't think it's a bad idea, I think I would need to do some more research on the ramifications before supporting it.
But agreed, in light of the current evidence that vaping seems to be better than cigarettes the tax should be lower, ideally pushing people who smoke to switch to vapes as an alternative
For the reason you stated here. It's more a conflict in personal philosophy I guess.
A 60ml bottle of commercial juice easily costs $15-20.
I buy my nic, PG, and VG from Liquid Barn and my flavors from a variety of sources (though mostly through Nicotine River). My materials cost for 60ml of homemade juice is only around $1.53 per bottle (not including the bottle itself, which you can recycle from commercial juice, or you can buy some, which only costs like $1/bottle). That's one hell of a cost savings!
That's made up of approx $0.33 of nicotine base, $0.09 of PG, $0.33 of VG, and $0.78 of flavoring. I buy PG/VG in 1000ml bottles and flavors I use a lot of in 2oz bottles, so I'm saving a bit by buying in bulk, but it still should only cost around $35 for the ingredients to get started in DIY ejuice - the cost of around 2 bottles of commercial juice. Grab yourself 500ml each of PG/VG, 125ml of nic base, and a handful of flavors and you have enough materials for at least 10 60ml bottles of ejuice (and you'll probably have PG, nic, and flavor leftover, the VG is by far the most used ingredient).
Also since moving to Germany regulations force u to mix the flavour yourself, so the labour for flavour is greater.
If I had a nickle for every time someone with high income said "there ought to be a law" I'd have a very high income.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/indiana-reports-its-fi...
Something about THC carts is killing people, while nicotine carts are not. In most of the states where people are dying, THC carts are a black-market item while nicotine carts are available legally. If legal nicotine carts are killing people, the business can be shut down and people held responsible. If black-market THC carts are killing people, the responsible party is not a legal entity that can be easily shut down.
Government inspections or not, anything you buy on the black market is inherently more risky than something sold legally through a legal entity.
Marijuana was 100% illegal for nearly a century, it's more legal now, yet the deaths are recent. I am very certain that there is some level of consumer bias toward buying supposed "underground lab" vaping products, having a higher amount of trust in them because marijuana is "legal" now. See where this might get confusing?
That is incorrect; specifically the "many" part. Vitamin E Acetate was found is black market(illegal) THC cartridges in the midwest. Vitmain E acetate is used in THC oils to increase potency. Legitimate THC oil producers in legal states do not use Vitmain E Acetate in their oils.
Nicotine juices are a completely different industry.There would be no reason for Nicotine juice producers to use Vitamin E acetate.
I understand why you would be misinformed though, because the articles on the subject have been very reactionary and exaggerated in order to stir up media frenzy and drive views and clicks.
It would have been great if we could have had this conversation without going there. One could easily say the same about some of your claims regarding the Vitamin E only being found in black market samples, and only in the midwest. Also, what is defined as a "legitimate" producer? Do you think every company out there that has a product in a supermarket follows every single law and regulation on the books?
So when is Bloomberg going to divest from fossil fuels? Need to consider the harm that does to our future's children.
Many people didn't, which is why so many regulations exist now.
Some time between my childhood and today, society collectively lost its mind and decided that the only acceptable way to manage risk is to relentlessly drive it towards zero through the force of law. We are going to end up with a boring, sterile and ultra-safe world.
It should go without saying that children dying from preventable causes is not a very good thing to have happen.
But beyond child mortality, here's another example that regulation does impact: traffic deaths [1]. Government regulations surrounding car safety, seatbelt use, airbags, etc have had a massive impact. Looking at the data from 1970 (a time when older HNers would say "when I was young") to today, there were 4.74 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, compared to 1.16 today. And even as the US has added 120 million new Americans to the population since then and vehicle miles traveled has basically tripled, not only have we reduced deaths per mile traveled, we've reduced deaths period, without worrying about normalizing the data to population or VMT.
I hear quite a bit "when I was young we didn't have seatbelts or airbags and we rode on the back dashboard and didn't have child seats and we survived just fine" except a lot of people didn't. A lot of people died, and that's why regulations were created and that's why fewer people are dying now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
Somehow I bet he still has armed guards, though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/nra-gun-contr...
Do you have a source? I know it sounds intuitively correct, but I remember reading the opposite. Basically it goes like this: end of life/senior care is a very large percentage of medical spending. Unhealthy people don't live as long and die faster once their health deteriorates. So they actually cost less to the healthcare system than healthy people.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5316444/
But I get your point. I pay a heavy tax on cigs though. I just hope the government puts that into a fund for cigarette relate health care issues instead of financing some wars in the middle east. Ah no, they don’t. They just exploit the addiction.
State level taxes of course depend on the state.
Why should I pay taxes for schools and roads and services I don't use?
A million forces tell you what to do, very very few of them are telling you to do good things.
Just say no?
As I recall, the research found it was highly effective at improving subjects (vs. non-subjects) images of law enforcement, but had no discernable effect on subjects (compared to non-subjects) when looking at drug use, drug abuse, or drug-related crime.
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/22/us/fingerprinting-of-chil...
So your answer is having Nanny Government ban it?
Can't worry about free will if you don't have it, I suppose.
Vapes are an easy target right now. Heart disease and auto accidents are some of the greatest threats to the average American, but you'll never hear a politician going after those.
E-cigs are a relatively new vice. Hardly comparable.
In the free market those rules wouldn’t exist and people would be upset about taking their rights away when you regulate them.
There'll be a lot of pushback, but I really do think this is the right direction.
Obviously we can't change the past, but we came very very close to doing the next best thing: make it culturally unacceptable to smoke.
We lose out on all that all over again, except replace tobacco with candy vape juice. I guess again the genie's out of the bottle and it's too late for another few generations, but it's such a shame to me.
Addressing the point of parent's responsibility: there's no chance parenting beat an subculture of cool, let's not pretend that's possible.
The tobacco trade was hugely influential to the development of the early US colonies. If there was no demand for tobacco, the early colonist would've most likely starved as the soil was not particularly suited for food crops, but they could at least trade tobacco for food.
And like you said there's plenty of adults that are incapable of resting something which literally kills then, makes them impotent, makes them sick, etc... They even proudly proclaim that it's their right to smoke, what a sad spectacle.
Incidentally, one of the deaths that precipitated the ban wasn't even a case of alcohol poisoning; it was suicide. The guy shot himself in his head and the family blamed the beverage. He was 20 years old; below the legal limit.. but not a child. As far as I know most of the fatalities were college students, not children.
The ban still seems silly and reactionary. I think part of the reason various states' AGs got up in arms about Four Loko was the brand image of it being a "low-class, college drink". If there was an upscale-looking Irish Coffee alcoholic drink in a glass bottle like a Starbucks coffee hit the shelves in stores, would that also get banned if college students happen to like coffee and alcohol?
“Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
It seems that Puritanism is still alive and well in America.
There is a strong argument for vaping as a harm reduction tool, I wonder if that holds up (or is made stronger) if there are no flavors
true, but misleading. the devices designed for very high nicotine concentrations are also producing much less vapor. very few people are using nic salts in their 200W mods.
These devices should have required doctor consultation but instead we have manufacturers selling bubblegum and candy flavored vape cartridges to totally legal adults of age (wink-wink nudge-nudge).
It isn't difficult, a guide to making vape liquid is basically a lesson in measuring liquid volume and a handful of links to flavoring merchants. I don't see how that could be dubious...
“The New York Times reports that even as the mayor implements one city-wide dietary restriction after another, he continues to indulge. He loves burnt bacon and peanut butter sandwiches, hot dogs, fried chicken, and Cheez-its. He puts so much salt on his bagels “that it’s like a pretzel,” and so much salt on popcorn “that it burns others’ lips.”
Why am I not surprised?