> ~ Original and Menthol
I'll never understand why adults partaking in a particular vice can't enjoy different flavours (unless the vice is alcohol).
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 switched to vaping, IDK, 10 or so years ago from an off and (mostly) on cigarette habit and haven't looked back. There was a point where I was spending more on 'cheap' Chinese vape gear than I was on cigarettes but, other than that, no regrets.
And, yes, I'm a middle-aged adult who likes to vape flavors a well.
Perhaps the only downside, if you can even call it that, is I never tried to quit vaping as I enjoy it and it (probably) won't kill me before the lingering effects of a couple decades of smoking, environmental hazards of invading Iraq twice, the skin cancer and whatever else comes up due to my general lack of concern over living a healthy lifestyle.
That said, I do think that vapes as a replacement for an existing tobacco habit is a nice idea and it makes sense that it would be much safer. The issue is just that I have not known people to stick with them.
This is from a Dutch newspaper article interviewing one of the researchers from the Trimbos Institute:
> De overstap naar sigaretten met tabak is vervolgens snel gemaakt, zegt Croes. „We horen ook dat de jonkies op het schoolplein vapen, maar dat in de bovenbouw niet meer stoer vinden. Dan gaan ze roken, wat in hun ogen nu weer een positief imago heeft gekregen.” Zo vormen e-sigaretten volgens haar een „enorme tegenkracht” voor campagnes die jongeren van roken moeten weerhouden.¹
(Tobacco) smoking is cool again. The young kids vape, so to be really cool and adult…
1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/10/01/beginnen-met-een-sigare...
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.