I'm sure loosening restrictions is all part of the Make America Healthy Again plan, right?
By the same token the degree to which vapes help people quit is up in the air, some studies show strong effects in favor of quitting, others show strong effects that it's inferior to other quitting aids. (i.e. studies like https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7867832/)
"These are a way for people to reduce harm" is primarily an industry narrative at this point, divorced from reality.
Kids were using nicotine before vaping, they were smoking cigarettes. And these companies absolutely are investing in a growing market for adults who either want to quit smoking entirely or want a healthier option to cigarettes. As cigarettes prices have continued to soar and laws have become more and strict on where someone can and cannot smoke, vaping offers an alternative to get nicotine and an oral fixation. So it's not surprising that more and more adults have switched to it.
That's not a study that's a meta-analysis. You seem to have seen the one ad Juul put out to minors and assumed that is the entire industry and its purpose. This is objectively divorced from reality.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741819/
Here's the statistical breakdown from that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741819/table/t1/
Between 1991 and 2021 tobacco use among young people dropped precipitously. Again, this shows up again and again in the data comparing ALL products containing nicotine.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
So with all due respect this isn't really up for debate, it isn't a subtle signal in the data. Nicotine use (especially smoking) has been on the decline across ALL age groups, especially children, for decades, and vaping starkly reversed that trend.
We are far past the apex of teen vaping in 2019.
It's almost like saying we should stop vaccinating because the rate of disease has dropped after decades of vaccination
Are you seriously making the argument that any flavor outside of tobacco and menthol is targeted at kids? That no adult likes the flavor of funnel cake and fruit? Because I can show you the massive amount of vape shops across the country that sell through flavors quickly and it's not to kids. The mentality of making something taste worse to prevent people from consuming it because you think it's bad is based in prohibition era puritanical thinking. Not to mention it's directly benefitting tobacco companies by keeping people smoking cigarettes.
You are the one who proposed that this product is to be used as a medical device, so why wouldn't we treat it like one?
How many children, enticed by the fruit flavors, pick up a life time habit of tobacco use?
E-cigarettes are much easier to obtain and so any product features particularly attractive to kids are much more likely to have a significant affect.
UK is seeing a wave of people who never smoked cigarettes but went straight to vapes. It's less bad for sure but not harmless. IIRC a bump in lung cancer cases in young people was ascribed to this.
Why do you think we have tariffs?
I am not of the opinion that govt should not be placing restrictions. That is literally the definition of laws. I am of the opinion that govt should not regulate how someone can do something.
Loosening a ban on menthol, not because it was harmful, but because it was causing addictions, was an overreach. It should have banned the Tobacco and nicotine instead.
"Let me control my own health" up until abortion is mentioned.
"We need better surveillance measures" up until that surveillance is used against them.
"Law enforcement needs more privileges" until they harass your daughter with the bodycam turned off.
"Don't regulate Apple/Google" up until they become politicized and collude with the government for warrantless surveillance.
"Foreign policy is too globalist!" up until Israel insists Iran has a nuke. And so on. There isn't a single neocon value that can't be forsaken by ideologues, I challenge you to name just one.
The whole issue around abortion for conservatives is that it's not considered felony manslaughter by the Supreme Court. Hasn't been for close to 50 years now.
Because it's hard. There's implications of autonomy here. If an unborn baby is a life and has rights, which rights does it have? Is it an American Citizen? It must, at least, have personhood - what are the guardrails around that? Can I, for example, say that the unborn fetus is a person and is inside me, and is therefore bound by "stand your ground" laws, meaning I am free to kill it for self-defense, much like I would a grown person?
See, the Supreme Court never actually asked that question. As it stands, unborn babies are not people, they are not citizens. We, instead, said "fuck it this is hard to argue" and made exactly 1 exception for unborn fetuses - abortion.
If you want to argue an unborn fetus is alive, there are implications and consequences of that. Evidently, conservatives are too cowardly to address any of them. Ever. So, here we are, with our broken laws that make no sense.