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I have a few friends that have quit smoking and gone to vaping. None of them use tobacco flavors.It's always one of those watermelon strawberry or apple pie flavors. Apparently not even smokers like tobacco flavor as much as the candy flavors which you think have no appeal to adults, at least in my experience. Not that it matters. They're not trying to ban them, just restrict them to dedicated smoke/vape shops. That might help as maybe the smoke/vape shops care more about the regulations as opposed to convenience stores which just sell to minors because a buck's a buck. It's a big if, but at least it would cut down the number of inspection points.
Still need to do the enforcement though or it's not of any use. Almost everywhere it's been illegal to sell c-cigarettes to minors for quite a while, but since it's not enforced a lot of them either do not know or don't care. I could buy that for the mom and pop liquor stores. Any chain with stores in multiple states, not a chance. I can guarantee someone up the chain knows they're breaking the law. They just don't care as not selling to minors would hurt their bottom line.
Restrict to vape/smoke shops would make inspection easier. Less places to check if they're selling to minors, which is more difficult. Regular convenience stores you just walk in and see if they have non-tobacco/menthol flavors. Give a warning the first time and then a $5,000 fine. They'll catch on pretty quick. Still have to deal with all the convenience stores selling the menthol/tobacco stuff to minors at the end of the day though.
Might not be a big enough penalty to stop convenience stores from selling, but I'm not really in favor of gov't making decisions for everyone. I know of police sting operations where the send the oldest looking not quite 18 year old into a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes and if they sell to them they lose their tobacco license for a year, essentially a $1,000,000 fine.
It might be time to ban tobacco completely--a zero-tolerance "War on Tobacco"--and legalize cannabis instead. Cannabis legalization should throw a wrench to a Mexican drug cartel's revenues. (They can't get rich off of tobacco because cigarettes are viewed as un-cool.)
Alcohol? That's a different story. (Leave that for another time!)
i asked a 19 yr old how and why he started vaping when he was about 17 (this was about 4 yrs ago). He said, "Well, there are just so many flavors to try! You want to try them all!" If a 17 yr old got caught up in this idiocy, how much more so are 12 yr olds vulnerable to this? The tobacco companies clearly designed and pitched this to kids. What adult wants to smoke something that is bubble gum flavored? The flavored varieties should have been banned immediately. Now we have a whole new generation hooked on tobacco. Horrible.
The FDA is now talking about banning "mentholated" cigarettes. All other flavors have been banned already in tobacco cigarettes, so I suppose they'll go after flavored nicotine oil next.
I'm still shocked by all the hypocrisy that continues to bash and regulate smoking and doesn't just make it illegal altogether. Stop the insanity and ban it already.
Would you want prison for cigarette smokers at taxpayer expense, or do you have a more creative penalty?
Most smokers are low income, so huge fines would likely be impossible.
I read about a country that long ago had the death penalty for tobacco, and it still didn't stop everyone from smoking. I do not have the solution.
I don't understand why everyone is so hyped up about this. What is so bad about vaping? Some of the people who vape would be smoking cigarettes otherwise. And don't a lot people who quit smoking only did so because they could vape?
Is vaping more harmful than drinking soda? I've never heard of a harm associated with it.
Vaping involves the poison nicotine, which constricts (narrows) blood vessels and is thought to sometimes lead to eventual heart problems. But there is a question as to if gov't should ban everything possibly unhealthy. And it is the corporations that run our gov't that come up with unhealthy products.
Sugar is supposed to be bad for us, too, and diet pops trick us into thinking we're still hungry when we're not, so if all who did something unhealthy were thrown in jail, we'd likely have rioting. Might still leave some possibilities, though exactly what and rate of effectiveness I don't know. Many view the gov't as not having all the best solutions, or even the source of a great many problems.
There's an old joke, which MAD magazine riffed on a few times, about someone being told to "stay away from cigarettes!"... so they started using a holder.
I'm not sure it's all that different to say "I stopped smoking... now I just inhale a processed form of cigarette smoke from an industrially-produced electronic system."
But you're still a nicotine addict, and if vapies go away for any reason it will be another pack of Kools, right?
So you only got started in smoking because it tasted minty-fresh? Does that point alone make the case for not selling fruity, sweet, tasty "smoking" experiences that only make the juvenile appeal greater? (A significant argument against menthol is that, for whatever reason, it's 35% of the African-American market... which makes it deserve special attention.)
As for "Americans should be allowed to smoke, gosh darn it!" - sure. Prohibition would be a massive failure as always. But eliminating crop and industry subsidies and selling tobacco only under the stricter controls used for alcohol and weed would go a long way toward reducing the number of slow suicides, especially if it becomes as impossible for the underage to buy as legal recreational weed. (Here in Colorado, you have to show proof of age to even enter a dispensary.)
Weed doesn't kill anyone, according to professors at top universities who've studied it seriously for decades.
Why shouldn't the non-fatal product have a lower age limit? 5.5 million Americans under 18 use weed. Do you think they should be in prison 4 choosing a healthier substance? Just wondering. Of course, parents can leave their weed sitting around where the kids can help themselves. I've heard of kids, their parents, and their grandparents smoking it together, and a couple of them illegally growing it.
Now Denver is going to decrim psychedelics and wonder how that will change drug(s) of choice? They say they don't kill, either.
It might be time to ban tobacco completely--a zero-tolerance "War on Tobacco"--and legalize cannabis instead. Cannabis legalization should throw a wrench to a Mexican drug cartel's revenues. (They can't get rich off of tobacco because cigarettes are viewed as un-cool.)
Alcohol? That's a different story. (Leave that for another time!)
Low-grade Mexican cannabis is largely unwanted in the US, though probably still available in the poorer areas of states like TX, where everyone caught with cannabis except Willie Nelson has been jailed.
In the states with legal medical or recreational, some high grade strains go for as little as $150/oz at dispensaries. Rumors of low-grade Mexican for as little as $60/oz may be true, but haven't seen it for that.
Low-grade Mexican cannabis is largely unwanted in the US...
Which is why they've been growing the same high-THC strains as the US for quite a while. There's surely ditch weed still on sale, but no one smuggling weed is going to bother with Acapulco Gold these days.
Weed doesn't kill anyone, according to professors at top universities who've studied it seriously for decades.
...under the extreme limitations of studying a Schedule I substance, and needing illegal smokers to form any kind of meaningful sample size. "For decades" is essentially meaningless given the paucity of good data and the continual re-use of older data, collected largely by interview in the illegal/ditch weed era.
Studies are likely to progress much faster in the next few years, and there is both evidence and solid reasons to expect that weed is on a par with tobacco as a causative of lung cancer. It has nothing much to do with THC or nicotine and everything to do with all the toxic byproducts of burning vegetable matter... and it's been pointed out that cigarette smokers only inhale deeply some of the time, rarely hold a draw, and very rarely smoke a cigarette down to the tar-laden stub.
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