I think if people went at this with rational minds:
* Discover side effects (via actual science, not the "vaping is melting your brains" commercials on TV)
* List them on the box
* Let people decide
(I'm not aware of the current situation in the US btw, just know that it's perfectly possible to get a booster in the NL)
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...
But now that the data is in, though, when your option is two vaccines, one with very minor risk, and one with even less risk, and they are both equally effective, it's obvious that you should prefer the latter.
1: The Moderna vaccine is separate from Pfizer/Biontech even if they share technological base.
2: Moderna was discontinued for younger people (below 30yos) in at least some European countries due to slightly higher risk of myocarditis (even if the Pfizer vaccine had slightly lower efficiancy).
Seems like both vaccines are allowed for smaller children in the US now. Over here they put the cutoff for the vaccine at 12-13yos iirc (my older kid got it but not my younger one).
The FDA is allowed by law to regulate vapes. The Supreme Court ruled that the FDA wasn't allowed to regulate tobacco. Congress fixed the SC's complaint and since then the FDA has been moving slowly to prevent another (harder to overcome) legal issue from the SC or to lead to prohibition.
That's why the FDA is suddenly proposing rules limiting nicotine and menthol flavoring in cigarettes.
You don't see that you run the same damn studies but get a negative effect? You can even do it solely off p-value (but instead should do a more complex calculation based on the harms discovered, etc.)
If your "is it dangerous" study shows it is with p < 0.05 = dangerous, p > 0.10 = safe, 0.05 <= p <= 0.10 = more study needed.
What it really comes down to is not equal protection under the law, it's big tobacco wants Juul gone.
This is nonsensical. "Big tobacco" owns Juul. And couching the shutting down of a company addicting kids to nicotine in terms of equal protection is.. bleh.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19/business/altria-juul/index.ht...
Idealistically only. In reality, expect a lot of societal problems if that happens. Crime increases from black market good and increase assaults from smokers who have had their drug removed. Basically drug war 2.0. Unfortunately most people vote idealistically these days and tend to ignore or not even think about the reality of implementing laws/bans. Even after seeing the horrible effects of drug wars, people still love fighting them.
Seems like an example of tyranny of the majority.
> it seems like the current plan is to just try to prevent new users and let the current users smoke until they die (or help them quit if they choose to).
>The second part of the comment you replied to addresses this.
It attempts to address it, but in banning of Juul products, which many ex-smokers used and continue to use to get and stay off cigarettes, is very obviously counterproductive to this assumed objective. Banning Juul will create more cigarette smokers, both ex-smokers and kids who decide to pick up the habit. Full stop.
In the short term. In the long term cigarette adoption was falling to under 5% in high-school/college kids. Juul reversed the trend and the majority started using nicotine. If we lose 7 years of people getting addicted, we can save the next 21.
Plus, it's not eCigs that are being banned. It's Juul. They're the ones who cannot prove their additives are safe. They could change their juice to make it have less toxic additives.
You're conflating two things: cigarettes and nicotine. With a lot of propaganda, repressive sin taxes, and the development of substitutes; the US managed to lower the cigarette smoking rate since the 60s. Why do you think these techniques are even still relevant and will work the same on nicotine substitutes? That seems to be what you are using to support the ban.
Also, this is a "for the children," argument.
>Plus, it's not eCigs that are being banned. It's Juul.
Ya that's the weird thing. The shelves are filled with competitors, have they all "proven their products are safe?" I'm assuming not. Are they going to be subject to the same outright ban? Is Juul just a test balloon for further bans, or is it being made an example of? The FDA is known for regulatory capture, is it just an issue of money? Weird stuff.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/28/4956945...
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-regulat...
The development of alternatives had nothing to do with new smokers (kinda obviously). The advertising and taxes did, of course.
"For the children" doesn't make sense as a fallacy here. It's children that vape. Some adults switched to vaping, but that number is negligible.
> have they all "proven their products are safe?"
The FDA approved 23 eCig systems using the same methodology that they used to not approve Juul.
> is it just an issue of money
Juul is owned by Phillip Morris. Other eCig brands owned by other big-tobacco are among the 23 approved.
It's not weird. It's a first-mover who cut corners and their competitors didn't.
Again, you are conflating ECigs with tobacco. ECigs are a tobacco replacement and one of the things that greatly contributed to reduction in tobacco use (like Nicorette). According to this, tobacco use hasn't reversed anything, so you are definitely incorrect there:
https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...
>It's children that vape. Some adults switched to vaping, but that number is negligible.
Wrong here too.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db365.htm
The percentage of adults who had ever used an e-cigarette (57.3%) and the percentage of adults who were current e-cigarette users (25.2%) was highest among former cigarette smokers who quit within the past year
57.3% of adults who have ever vaped is not negligible. Seems like your conclusions are based on incorrect assumptions.
So based on that, if 25.2% of the adult population are ex-smokers, and a good chunk of those are vaping Juul, you're gonna have between 0 and 25.2% of the population who aren't smoking now to be smoking again by banning Juul. This action, if allowed to stand, will certainly reverse the current tobacco rate trend, potentially to the 1970s adult smoking rate of ~37%.
I think it would be a net win for society if the whole concept were killed, or regulated/marketed to help long-time smokers kick their habit. Nobody needs this stuff, even if you enjoy it.
Like alcohol? Sports cars? Cars that can go faster than the fastest speed limit? Large houses? International travel? Where precisely would you like to draw that arbitrary line? Are there any things you do that aren't required to "live" but you "enjoy?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
The point of Juul is to make money, sure you can use it to stop smoking cigarettes but there are also people starting vaping without ever having smoked cigarettes.
Yes if you only look at it from the company's earnings perspective, but the benefit to the market/society is undoubtedly to get people off cigarettes, and it has worked better as a substitute than anything before it. This is undeniable regardless of how demonized vaping has become in the US.
It's a very simple equation: allow Juul and get more people off cigarettes. Ban Juul and increase smoking rates. It's amazing how obtuse people (and the government) are on the subject.
I am actually not so sure about this. Cigarettes smoking rates have been falling consistently for many years, youth smoking rates were up in the 90's but fell before vaping / e-cigarettes hit the market.
Smokers also since 1980 have been smoking less cigarettes per day.
There is a significant amount of high school students that starts with e-cigarettes, and doesn't use them to quit anything else. Statistics don't seem to indicate that these children would have smoked cigarettes if they wouldn't have access to e-cigarettes. One also could argue that this potentially makes cigarette adoption higher for this population, because they are already used to nicotine and smoking/vaping.
All in all, it's not as simple as you make it out to be.
https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...