So we ban e-cigarettes while actual smokes are still legal and widely sold to teens, and this is a good thing? Obviously, it's a bad thing for kids (or adults) to either smoke or vape. As the parent of a teen, of course I'm concerned about vaping. But driving a tool for harm reduction off the market because of its potential for abuse without considering the harm that could come from that prohibition is the same mistake we keep making.
Do not drive nicotine or any other drugs into the black market. Do not turn them into forbidden fruit. This breeds risky behavior and abuse. Instead, give teens honest, non-hyperbole information. Most will make healthy choices, but we need harm reduction options for the ones who don't, not bans that drive them to even more unhealthy choices.
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25% of teenagers are now addicted to nicotine because America can't even police or curtail Retailers selling a product to which is already supposed to not be for sale to minors/children.
I guess profit always has to come before protection from harm, common sense, laws and /or protections...even if every kid became addicted to nicotine...because...WHY?
I guess many would say Choice and /or Freedom.
I say Greed or lack of Concern for the wellbeing of others.
Whatever happened to :
"In Common Cause ...For the Greater Good" ???
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You suck poison into your lungs, what do you think will happen?
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The shaming is not very helpful. Far more farmers develop hypersensitivity pneumonitis from exposure to mold, than vapers who get the same illness from vaping. And yet, we knew that mold was “poisonous” didn’t we?
Do you employ this shame stuff when people die in car accidents? Auto deaths comprise a much higher percentage of total drivers than the sickened vapers do of total vapers.
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Yesterday at my trusted doctor's office, I (a grownup) asked, "I've told you I vape, right?" He laughed and eye-rolled; clearly he's been getting this question a lot. His response: "Do you use illegal THC?" I said nope; I use non-flavored, branded products from a well-reviewed American company. He said, "You're fine."
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I recommend finding a new doctor.
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I am a retired teacher. Kids told me vaping was popular because it was easy to do in school without getting caught.....the pens can look like thumb drives (a direct effort on the part of companies to appeal to teenagers, in my opinion), and the vapor dissipates much quicker than cigarette smoke. Students vape in bathroom stalls daily without getting caught. The odor doesn't hang on a person. And then there's the pleasant nicotine rush.
Even if the current deaths are due to bootleg products, and even if flavored e cigarettes are banned, the issue of nicotine addiction and nicotine overdose remains unaddressed.
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Prohibition always works. Not to actually stop people consuming their contraband of choice, of course, but simply to stop them buying it through legal sources. So, we should brace ourselves for the inevitable skyrocketing of vape-related illnesses due to the consumption of completely unregulated black market "vape-juice". "You want E-acetate with that banana split juice?" (or whatever crud the backyarders come up with adulterate their products to increase their profits.)
The principle of "first do no harm" comes into play here.
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Based on what I am hearing from my teenagers, these numbers are way too low. Because Juuls look so much like a flash drive, kids vape in class then pretend to plug it into their computers.everybody knows except the teacher. The commenters who say it isn’t a problem are flat out wrong. Moreover kids who vape are going through way more nicotine than smoking teens ever could have. It is a big deal and I’m glad it’s finally getting some attention.
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@Cathy There is a definite odor (not to mention VAPOR cloud) associated with vaping. I think your kids might be shining you on.
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Does anyone really believe that smoking anything is safe?
Wise up. The tobacco industry is playing you. Vaping is a gateway drug.
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This is ginned-up hysteria. Literally thousands of small business are going to go bankrupt as a result of these flavor bans and it will make no difference to youth nicotine consumption. Did you know that youth cigarette use is at an all-time low? Please stop this craziness- the 'vaping sickness' is because people have been buying bootleg/illegal THC adulterated with Vitamin E Acetate- a thickening agent that stretches the dealer's profit. This has nothing to do with nicotine vapes, which have been used by 12-13 million Americans daily for the last dozen years without a single incident and are produced by a responsible, adult-oriented industry.
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I’m not too concerned. If state or federal authorities don’t regulate vaping, Darwin will take care of the problem
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Darwin applies to adaptations of entire species, not the individual choices of organisms.
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@Austin W - True, but individuals who are unable to pass their genes along (because they made dumb choices and died from vaping before they had a chance to breed) may contribute to the overall fitness of the species in future generations.
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I have a co-worker who uses e-cigarettes. I spoke with him about this grave concern regarding deaths associated with these devices.
He shared that the deaths are caused by the sale of flavors on the black-market being sold at lower prices. Additives used are the cause of deaths.
“I don’t think we have a lot of ability to control what comes through distributors, except to regulate the flavors and the packaging,” Dr. Till said."
Dr. Till is right. However, if my co-worker is correct, I don't know how this can be stopped other than educating those that opt to buy flavor enhancers from unauthorized dealers.
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I'm sorry, I think some responsibility is on the shoulders of "the kids." If 50 years of anti-smoking campaigns haven't made them a little skeptical of big corporations pushing "safe" cigarettes, then the vaunted "savviness" of this young generation is way overblown.
Half of them are on overhyped specialty diets for health, but they're vaping??? It does not compute!
Over and over, I hear what "sophisticated" consumers young people are, how they can't be reached by advertising campaigns, how they see through phoniness. So a fruit-flavored vapor completely overcomes them?
This is an easy issue to understand and form a judgment about. If you are over 12, you can do it. I expect more on this issue from teenagers.
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@Susan: The diets and vaping are likely related. Nicotine is an effective appetite suppressant. The kids know well enough not to smoke cigarettes, but vaping is considered safe.
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@Susan This is a great point! I don't suppose that Public Health officials (not to mention Micheal Bloomberg) could be distorting the facts to impose their views on us...
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@Susan Why do you suppose advertising firms make so much $$$? This isn't about the kids being dumb, adults are just as stupid as well in both similar and different ways. Businesses study how people's mind works and what will make them covet and buy something. (Watch Mad Men and read Cialdini's Influence.)
For tobacco in particular, by the time the kids understand how addictive nicotine is (more than alcohol, cocaine, heroin), they're already hooked.
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E-Cigarettes as "quit devices" may some day win the Nobel Prize, as they could save millions of lives for people who otherwise would have died of traditional cigarette related problems.
E-Cigarettes as "use devices" seem to be creating an entire generation of young people who are addicted to nicotine.
Both of the above statements are true. It is up to us as a society to navigate this nuance.
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@Timothy Brennan, MD
As another MD, I'm more worried about the second point than the first. (And the first isn't proven yet given the e-cigs have not been around long enough.) We don't need young people -- who would otherwise not have taken up smoking regular cigarettes or chew tobacco -- picking up vaping as a habit. That will just lead to a new generation of smokers. We have a few Millenial-age researchers in our group and have even hosted talented teenage scientists and over the last 1-2 years, they've mention to us how dismaying it is to them to see their friends and peers pick up vaping when they otherwise don't smoke. One of them told her friend they were "death sticks". Our group studies infectious diseases/autoimmunity so these were spoken about during lunch/ break times and not even in the context of our work.
I'm upset that the professors cited in this article question the rules being passed. The rules are aimed at flavored cigarettes: non-flavored ones are still available for smokers trying to quit. Also, some rules are aimed at under-21s, not adults. UCSF traditionally has been at the forefront of the tobacco wars but I would ask that NY Times check to see these profs aren't funded by tobacco interests. Historically, the war against smoking was obstructed by tobacco-funded researchers , physicians, and professors.
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@Timothy Brennan, MD - Being a doctor one might think you'd recognize that dangerous products with a medical utility are to sold as prescription only products. But then of course we'd have to involve your kind, who can't take a pulse at the wrist without billing an arm & a leg.
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Will we ever learn education, regulation and legalization are better than prohibition?
I’m reminded of reefer madness
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If the "1 in 4" number is true, then parents don't have a clue what is going on with their kids. I personally can't believe it is that high, but I suppose if a kid tried it just once (ever), they get counted as having vaped.
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Go hang out in a high school bathroom. You’ll see the numbers are actually much higher.
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@Cathy
Always happy to learn things via direct observation, but how do you propose that I hang out in my teenage kid's school bathroom without getting arrested?
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In none of this vaping boogeyman hysteria is the issue vaping in itself, but chemicals used for bootleg vaping carts. Clean up the industry, bring everything above board, eradicate the black market, and these issues cease to be. Eliminating flavored vapes and vaping itself in the interest of protecting the youth is short sighted and punitive against adults without just cause.
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@Dan
"punitive to adults" - wouldn't adults also benefit from a ban on flavored vaping? I mean vaping isn't good for the health (the whole point of the article) so why allow products that help increase addiction?
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@AN
Adults would benefit from bans on booze, sugar, red meat and fast cars, too.
It used to be the benefit of being an adult was that you could make your own risk calculation and decide for yourself.
Now apparently every do-gooder with an agenda thinks they're going to help adults with a ban or some other restriction on vices they don't like.
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It was probably three years ago that my now college-age son's pediatrician got very serious with him about the dangers of vaping, and I'm extremely grateful for that. He definitely got the point across to not just my son but to our entire family. I'm happy to see this issue getting wide press coverage. By all means, sound the warning bell!
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Legalize marijuana. Federally. Then the regulated and tested vape pens from legal states won’t be bootlegged and filled with the dangerous poisons that are causing this problem. For to long, people in non legal states have assumed that “professional” packaging means it’s a legit, tested product from a legit, tested company. They’re not. Packaging is readily available on line of all the legit brands. This is not the regulated e cigarette companies owned by companies like Marlboro. There are no vaping illnesses in Asia. When alcohol prohibition ended it ended in every state. Companies could distribute across state lines. That’s why jack Daniels is the same jack Daniels in every state. When demand for a brand is created someone will fill the supply. The illnesses going on in the Caribbean where demand for American booze is as high as the taxes, it shouldn’t be a surprise someone is making an unsafe product to meet that demand. Same thing with vapes. Legalize now. Safe products for the consumers. It’s that simple.
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Lots of hysterical rushing to judgement taking place on this issue. Let's try for some context. The CDC says that over 480.000 deaths _each year_ are attributable to tobacco. Add in over 41,000 deaths per year from second hand smoke. And yet cigarettes, pipe tobacco, snuff, and other tobacco products are still sold. And no one is talking about banning tobacco products entirely. The science isn't clear yet about whether vaping reduces tobacco use, because a good body of scientific knowledge takes time to develop.
Now we have about 7 deaths from very sketchy vaping probably, and those are likely from low quality or homemade thc vapes. There are about 350 cases identified, but the CDC needs a lot more time and cases to make recommendations that are scientifically sound. In the meantime, the state of Michigan is implementing a broad ban that would be laughable if it weren't so draconian. It's time to calm down and let the researchers work.
I doubt that any call to reason will influence Dear Leader to act based on scientific fact though. He is going through his usual process of flip-flopping currently and we all know how that goes.
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Vaping is getting an entire generation of kids who don’t want to smoke addicted to nicotine. Make no mistake: juuls flavor pods and clever packaging is going after the Joe Camel segment and it is working.
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@Cathy I was discussing the deaths due to tobacco in general and the recent spate of vaping related deaths. That is a separate though related issue from the marketing of flavored vapes to teens. We need tried and true public health measures to address vaping in general. The counterfeit thc vapes that are damaging lungs are a matter for regulation. Conflating the attraction teens have for flavored vapes with attempts to outlaw vaping entirely would be counterproductive and just as difficult to stop as general tobacco products have been for generations. There is no quick fix for either problem.
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@Cathy "Make no mistake" that this is being seized upon by anti-smoking crusaders to push their agenda. I see this as a personal liberty issue; If I want to smoke, or vape, you have no right to restrict me from doing so. "Keep your laws off my body"
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