Its very sad to see personal liberty treated with such contempt in cities like San Francisco.
I have a friend who's 80 year old grandmother was addicted to cigarettes. He wanted to buy her an ecigarette for christmas to help her quit, even though he subtly felt like it may be for naught given her age and how long she had been addicted. I suggested a Juul just because of how easy it is to operate and the high nicotine content, given its targeted toward people trying to quit.
A few months ago he showed me a picture of her "empty pod drawer". She didn't want to throw out the pods because she was hoping there was a way to recycle them. There were probably a hundred. She doesn't smoke anymore.
Maybe, in the worldview of the officials, no one would consume nicotine. That isn't the world we live in; in the world we live in, these city officials are simply indirectly responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of people. Moreover, I don't even know if that's a world we should be idealizing, in the same way I don't know if a world without alcohol or caffeine or tylenol would be more ideal than the one we have. Just to start thinking about it: nicotine is a nootropic, and recreation is definitely great for your productivity and wellbeing. There aren't zero positives to the chemical.
Its mostly just sad to see addiction so continually demonized in our society. We want to point blame, and then push it out of our minds like it doesn't exist. And in the case of these city officials; literally push it out of their city. I can only hope that, one day, the people who run that very strange city start the process of learning to treat other people with the love and care we all deserve.
When one's personal liberty crash with other's personal liberty, it's not personal anymore. If you believe there is a right to smoke, think about the violation of other's right.
I don't want to inhale the smoke or aerosol containing nicotine. That's my right.
If an action which exercising your right violate other's right, that action must be forbidden for protecting the other's right.
So, in this case, the right to smoke shall be allowed in the condition in which my right of no inhaling it shall be honored.
Now, if you don't have a level 3 biohazard facility, you shall not be allowed to smoke.
If I don't like someone's speech that doesn't mean they are not allowed to say it. It means I can go elsewhere or ignore it. If you don't like someone's perfume your right isn't that they stop wearing it, it's that you go elsewhere and ignore it. If you don't like smoke... it's the same thing. You have every right to not want it. In which case it is incumbent on you to do something about it.
Unless you are making a health related argument. That is a different right other than you don't want it, that is a health concern, which is why smoking inside is predominately not allowed.
I'm all for personal rights... but they come with personal responsibilities that are upon you.
I don't think this is at all analogous to speech. For example, you might be entitled to say whatever you want under free speech protections in the US, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to walk up to random people and shout in their face. If you do that long enough you'll definitely earn yourself some misdemeanors. If you consistently did it to a particular person against their wishes, you'd eventually get some kind of harassment felony charge.
At the risk of being pedantic, I think the free speech analogue is still valid. You would likely receive the same harassment charge if you were purposely walking up to strangers and blowing smoke in their face. Here in Canada, there are no laws which prevent you from standing on the street corner preaching whatever you like, just like you're allowed to smoke tobacco on the street corner.
You do not have a right to not inhale someone else's smoke. Let's be very clear about the language you're just throwing around like it doesn't mean anything, because the Rights recognized by the Constitution aren't just something that have no meaning.
That's why I never said that I believe people have a Right to smoke, yet for some reason you quote me like I did say that. People don't have a right to smoke, just like you don't have a right to not inhale other peoples' smoke.
Even your usage of the language "rights allowed" shows a clear misunderstanding of how Rights work. Rights are not "allowed" or "granted"; they are "recognized". They are God-Given, assuming you believe in that kind of thing (our fore-fathers did).
Unfortunately, you also don't have a recognized right to not be sick, nor one to guarantee comfort. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be regulated. But the situation is a little more complex than the absolute of "ban everything that makes me feel funny."
In my country(Japan), there are cases which ordered the neighbor/colleague to compensate the health damage he cause by passive smoking for his smoking inside his house or his desk.
Nobody ever considers the downside to all this heavy-handed governance. When you give the government the power to regulate lives at such a level, what do you do if social mores change, and what you support is suddenly the contrary view? Do you capitulate, or do you stand firm?
Non-legally speaking, the term "Right" in American law refers to guarantees which are recognized to be Natural, in the sense that you're born with them and they would continue to exist even if the government were to disappear. The Declaration of Independence, though not really a "legal" document, words it the most clearly:
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
In other words, the Law doesn't "grant" you a Right to something. It recognizes that these Rights already existed, and (sometimes) forbids the government from destroying them. This is also worded pretty clearly in the of-course infamous second amendment:
> the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It isn't saying that "people have the right to bear arms". Its saying that "your right to bear arms can't be infringed". So, then, where does that right come from? Its Natural.
There's an interesting, somewhat clear follow-up to this recognition of the wording of the constitution and founding documents: they don't exhaustively enumerate the rights people have. So what rights do Americans actually have? In fact, the ninth amendment recognizes this:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Constitutional interpretation is a complex, contentious thing. The way I see it, which is hardly professional: they recognized that because they aren't enumerating every Right, it follows that there must exist rights that some people believe they have, and it isn't the place of the government to either Confirm that Right or Disparage it. If I believe I have a right to kill someone for no reason... well, this shouldn't be allowed in a functioning society. So it follows that Law will inevitably supersede some Rights, just by the nature of Rights being, to a degree, self-decided (by your belief system, or your nature, or parenting, or whatever). Thus, certain protections were put in place to explicitly protect rights they believed were critical (like freedom of speech), but others may actually be "disparaged", and the ninth amendment just says that this is the case: people DO have other rights beyond the ones we listed, but we can't deny them JUST because we listed some other ones.
That's why its fascinating when people throw around language like "I have a right to not breath in smoke". There's a lot at play there. First: If you believe you have that Right, then you do! No one can take that away from you; its your right to not breath in smoke. But, also, Second: Your belief that you have some Right does not, by virtue of it being a Right, lead to the government being compelled to protect it. A Right does not have to be respected, confirmed, disparaged, or protected by the government. Its just something you have, because you're Human.
In other words, the phrase "I have a right to X" gets thrown around a lot, but it doesn't really mean much except the cases where it is enumerated, unless a bunch of people recognize that they also have that Right, in which case it is codified into Law. In an ideal world.
(And I do want to clarify in my comment I made earlier: I was being too brash by saying that the OP "does not have a right to breath in smoke". Maybe they do have that right. My point was really to emphasize that the right isn't Recognized. I have a right to run down the street naked. That doesn't mean the government will or should let me do it. So, saying "I have a right" to something isn't really all that meaningful, unless you're specifically referring to the rights protected by the constitution or law.)
> When one's personal liberty crash with other's
> personal liberty, it's not personal anymore. If
> you believe there is a right to smoke, think
> about the violation of other's right.
No. One's personal liberty should extend so far as to where it doesn't impose on someone else's rights. People are and should be allowed to be offensive, annoying our outright distasteful. YOU can go elsewhere. If the owner of a business wants to allow smokers/vapers, that should be their decision.
I'm not blind to the pragmatism of public spaces and near outside entrances, etc. That said, your premise is wrong and too narrow. Which is probably a reflection on the greater issues becoming ever more relevant to shutting down conversations, ideas and election meddling that is coming to light. It's probably time for people to start actually listening to ideas they don't agree with, empathize with those positions and rationally come to reasonable compromise. Right now there's only escalation and it will likely lead to a very real, very violent and very different civil war.
> we absolutely should penalize corporations who take advantage of addicts for a profit
Often we end up doing things to make sure they have more profit. I wouldn't be surprised if this e-cigarettes ban is coming from cigarette manufacturers lobbying for it.
Agreed; Facebook, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Lays, Twitter, CNN, Fox, Disney, and Purdue are all examples of companies that are taking advantage of people's reward path in a basically addictive way. Maybe 95% in terms of aggregate profit.
This is definitely true for a lot of the major consumer facing software companies.
"Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to unite us, but to distract us. “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” he said at an event in Philadelphia in November. To achieve this goal, Facebook’s architects exploited a “vulnerability in human psychology”, explained Parker, who resigned from the company in 2005. Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, he said, “we… give you a little dopamine hit”. Facebook is an empire of empires, then, built upon a molecule."
Why not Google? There are a lot of kids (including my son) addicted to YouTube. Why not Amazon? There are a lot people addicted to buying stuff they don't need.
The list is definitely far from comprehensive. Thanks for adding. I think we could add many more especially if you include companies that boost their profits by taking advantage of people by presenting them with a dilemma of immediacy, such as Home Depot and their overpriced key rings, or movie theaters that disallow outside food and make all their money on popcorn and soda.
I'm glad to hear e-cigarettes helped your friend's grandmother!
Unfortunately there's not very much actual evidence yet that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking, and according to the actual ordinance under discussion, there's some evidence that it can actually increase smoking.
> And while there is some evidence that the use of e-cigarettes by adults may support smoking cessation under certain circumstances, a 2018 National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report concluded that there was moderate evidence that e-cigarette use in fact increases the frequency and intensity of cigarette smoking in the future.
If you live in SF (or any major city), your health problems from breathing someone else's smoke outside is negligible compared to the damage done by car emissions.
Is second-hand smoke from ecigs equally harmful as real cigs? If that is not the case, then your comment sounds like you are entitled to fresh air everywhere you go -- which is not fair and seemingly self-centered.
I've first-hand seen the effects this Killer Drug has on the poor people caught in its grasp. One time, we were at dinner, and my friend stepped outside for five minutes for a vape. I've seen lost souls on so much nicotine, their focus is heightened significantly and they get this almost imperceptible shake in their hands, someone not even looking for it might not notice it but it must be devastating for them. Have you ever been so wasted drunk, then used nicotine to level out and pivot back toward functionality? I haven't, thank the lord.
All of this, and these poor people are also forced into paying Big Juul dozens of dollars a month. I mean, a Juul pod costs about $3, imagine if a coffee from Starbucks or a soda were to cost that much!
I'll never understand why lawmakers think that fruit and other flavorings for tobacco are aimed at getting kids hooked. It's almost like they think no adult has ever enjoyed fruit or candy, and that making teens smoke plain cigarettes will keep them from being rebellious.
I've tried almost every variation of ecigarette mod out there except mechanical mods, because I'm not an idiot enough to know I'm too much of an idiot to use one safely. Nicotine salt (the type used in juul and smok nord, among others) are the best- balance of nicotine from the sub-ohm types without the obscene amount of vapor pouring into your lungs, and the filter doesn't constantly clog / burn like the older, smaller pen and marker varieties.
Does it suck that also makes them perfect for teens to hide their addiction? Sure. Then again, there's also a market starting to boom for tobacco-free nicotine pouches, using tea leaves or other filler. It's also way, way cheaper to get the liquid for vaping online than it is in stores anyway.
This ban, at the scope of the city, won't help teens, and it's only going to hurt the people living there. For better or worse, drugs like caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, and THC are here to stay.
> I'll never understand why lawmakers think that fruit and other flavorings for tobacco are aimed at getting kids hooked.
Candy cigarettes. Big League Chew. And now e-cigarettes. It's common (and now scientifically documented) knowledge that tobacco companies have used these types of flavors and products to target young smokers. There is decades of evidence and little reason to believe it won't continue.
Whether it's 'fair' to adults in terms of how many flavors they have access to is up for debate but the lawmakers' reasoning is sound.
> Advocates of public health care consider candy cigarettes (cigarette sweets) one example of the way in which international trademark or copyright laws are violated to promote tobacco products to children.1,2 People with vested interests in confectionery and tobacco have denied these claims and argued that restrictions on confectionery resembling tobacco products are unnecessary. We review recently available documents from the tobacco industry, which describe cooperation between the manufacturers of tobacco and candy cigarettes, ineffectual trademark enforcement, evidence that candy cigarettes may promote smoking, suppression of unfavourable findings from research sponsored by the confectionery industry, and successful attempts to avoid legislation or regulation.
> Summary points
> * Candy products that mimic packaging of tobacco brands may promote smoking in young people
> * Executives of both the tobacco and confectionery industries have regarded candy cigarettes as good advertising to future smokers
> * Some tobacco companies granted confectioners permission to use cigarette pack designs and tolerated trademark infringement
> * Children who have used candy cigarettes are more likely to become smokers
> * Unfavourable research sponsored by the US candy cigarette industry was suppressed
> * Elimination of candy cigarettes and other confectionery resembling tobacco products may help achieve public health goals of reducing tobacco use in young people
I disagree with your comparison of fruity e-cigs to candy versions of tobacco products.
One is a 18+ only product (or 21+ in California) the other is in candy stores kids frequent and purchase. One is heavily restricted on advertising ESPECIALLY to youth, the other isn't (or wasn't, I don't know the current rules of big league chew).
Fruity e-cigs are made for adults, purchased by adults, advertised to adults, and are illegally obtained by teens. Candy cigerettes, and big league chew is made for kids, purchasable by kids, advertised to kids, all hoping to later get them addicted to the products they actually represent.
Adults like flavored nicotine too, but have you seen the ads? They're blatantly targeted at kids. Hell, I saw one once that showed a vape plugged into the USB port of a kid's laptop in class, where the advertising was basically saying your teacher won't know it's a vape.
I remember a concern from some decades ago of whether anti-drug ads were received by certain audiences as an encouragement to use drugs (though every kind of advertising could have impacts that its creator didn't intend).
We watched an after school special in grade school that was about cocaine. We had pixie sticks, probably 1/3 of the class then imitated the video and began snorting (painfully) flavored sugar.
Right, because intentionally designing a harmful product to appeal towards kids and get them hooked on nicotine is perfectly fine, just as long as we eventually crack down on the ads.
There is snark almost every story comment section. And derision and sarcasm and mockery. How is this comment so much worse that it uniquely deserves a rebuke?
This comment is really quite mild actually. Certainly not worthy of a moderator stepping up.
People have different interpretations of these things. If you see a particularly bad comment that deserves moderation, we'd appreciate your letting us know about it.
Yes, there's far too much snark and derision on HN. It's an internet forum after all. Surely you're not suggesting we should do less about it?
The "how is this comment so much worse" objection is based on a fallacy. You don't not get a speeding ticket just because other cars were going faster.
How is it designed to appeal towards kids? It's just good design that's dirt simple and works. If you look at their previous product, the pax, it's right in line with their design language and philosophy.
You know what's less conspicuous than a vape pen hooked into your computer in class? A pack of smokes and a lighter in your pocket. I dont see the allure to children... College kids, maybe.
Also, when did non-college-age children get allowed laptops in class? We werent even allowed to have a cell phone on our person during school hours, let alone a laptop.
>You know what's less conspicuous than a vape pen hooked into your computer in class? A pack of smokes and a lighter in your pocket.
Except the smell of having smoked cigarettes lingers on your person and when you waltz back into the room with that bathroom pass the teacher goes "How was your smoke break, I mean, bathroom trip". and your green apple jolly rancher vape smells like, a green apple jolly rancher.
Yes, but adults also really like candy flavors. Should we no longer be permitted by the state to drink mojitos or Moscow mules because they also happen to be delicious?
You also did not provide a response to the text you quoted. Why does having kids, or knowing that they like candy flavors, mean that all flavored things are aimed at children?
I'm an adult and I also really like candy. I have no interest in tobacco or nicotine, but I've considered getting tasty non-nicotine vape flavors because a zero-calorie alternative to actual candy might help in much the same way that non-tobacco vaping is a healthier alternative to smoking.
That's strange, I haven't seen any calls for bans for wine, wine coolers, candy flavored liquors, beers made with fruit such as lambics, etc.
Kids under 16 aren't old enough to drive, and yet there are plenty of toys shaped like cars and trucks.
Toy guns, movies involving gun violence without R ratings, saturday morning cartoons, television featuring people consuming alcohol, etc.
All of the above can have just as bad as, if not worse, consequences for children should the gateway argument be applied.
This is not to downplay the consequences of minors using tobacco products. It's to demonstrate that just because something appeals to a child does not mean that it should be prohibited for adults to consume / participate in situations that only adults should be allowed to consume it.
Campfires are plenty enthralling - sing along songs, s'mores, hot dogs, etc. There's no calculating the devastation caused by out of control fires, and children definitely should not be playing with it, and yet there's no call to ban adults from enjoying them either.
The whole argument is an ad absurdum, from campfires all the way back to banning pleasant tasting tobacco.
> That's strange, I haven't seen any calls for bans for wine, wine coolers, candy flavored liquors, beers made with fruit such as lambics, etc.
When Alcopops gained prominence in Europe, there was a huge outrage and much talk of bans. In the US, the FTC has investigated the link between wine coolers and underage drinking several times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcopop
Australia raised the tax for alcopops in response to a rise in teen drinking, which was kind of stupid since teens moved to spirits and cask wine instead.
I'm not sure they have been banned, but there used to be candy cigarettes, and Big League Chew is bubblegum that is patterned after chewing tobacco. Haven't seen either in a long time.
> That's strange, I haven't seen any calls for bans for wine, wine coolers, candy flavored liquors, beers made with fruit such as lambics, etc.
I'm young enough to remember caffeinated Four Loko being popular in high school. And yes, they were banned/reformulated on exactly the same premise: that they targeted underage consumption[1].
Four loko was controversial because the caffeine and alcohol contents could easily make anyone sick.
Most telling is that the article you posted was entirely focused on college age adults, not teenagers. In fact, I didn't find any references at all to underage drinking as the reason why it was reformulated. Am I missing something?
Heh. Of all the examples I gave, lambics were probably the worst, but not by as much as you think.
Nicotine, like caffeine, has a bitter taste on its own. Ecigs are flavored in part to cover the taste. Lambics aren't fruit juice, ecigs and flavored chew aren't candy. No-one would ever mistake the two.
>I'll never understand why lawmakers think that fruit and other flavorings for tobacco are aimed at getting kids hooked.
Because the companies themselves have admitted to marketing towards this demographic. [1]
The market was wildly unregulated and it was printing free money for these companies to target kids and sell these pods in retail stores. Heck I even remember going to a gamestop and seeing video game style vape pods.
I'm not going to comment on the ban itself, but I think it is reasonable to assume that these companies have very big incentives to target minors and create brand loyalty early on since regulations can be quite murky regarding e-cigarettes.
Just look at that packaging! It's aimed directly at kids. JFC, it's even got the leprechaun and rainbow on it, same font, same little marshmallow shapes, just like the cereal.
>I'll never understand why lawmakers think that fruit and other flavorings for tobacco are aimed at getting kids hooked. It's almost like they think no adult has ever enjoyed fruit or candy, and that making teens smoke plain cigarettes will keep them from being rebellious.
I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head that regularly smoke but say "it's not smoking, it's just hookah, it's a social thing". I guarantee you, if there weren't hookah bars and instead were "cheap-cigarette bars" exactly none of them would smoke.
Then with 'e-cigarettes' you have flavours like 'blueberry pie' 'brownies' 'waffles' pretty much anything you could ever want. You're going to sit there and tell me you don't think if a minor gets their hands on one will be like "oh man, this grape jolly rancher flavor is awesome, but I think there is nicotine in it so I must never ever ever touch it again"?
I was watching something on Hulu or Netflix this weekend that was high school aged characters and there were kids puffing away on liquid nicotine rigs in the background of multiple scenes.
I’m for regulating this as stringently as for regular cigs... but it’s weird... they don’t bother addicts injecting, they provide needles and let them shoot up, no problem. But you wanna vape? Nah!
If they think banning is a solution to vaping and it’ll be successful, why not ban syringes —I’m sure they’re equally effective.
Hepatitis A, B and Swine Flu. You can literally buy little plastic condoms for your e-cigs. Don't pass that e-cig in the club kids.
On a different note, as someone who's used e-cigs to wean off cigarettes and eventually quit altogether, this ban is pants-on-head puritanical stupidity.
This is perverse given that tobacco cigarettes are still widely available. I can't remember the last time I was actually satisfied with a decision from the Board of Supervisors.
While I don't live in SF or even CA, I'll try to offer an explanation of why this might make sense based on what I've observed.
I'm 29, which puts me sort of at the intersection of two age groups right now. I'm starting to be able to connect with older folks, and I can still connect with younger 20somethings.
Nobody I know under 25 smokes cigarettes. Anecdotally, cigarettes in that age group are nearly universally abhorred. Vaping, however, is seen as counter-cultural and cool. Moreover, and perhaps worse, it's seen as nonaddictive and harmless. Yet severe, almost crippling nicotine addiction is celebrated in popular culture (e.g., https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/06/sophie-turner-d...).
In fact, I've seen a depth of addiction to Juul that exceeds what I've seen from older pack-a-day cigarette smokers. I know folks who have to take a hit off their Juul every 3-5 minutes all day long except when sleeping. When sleeping, they won't sleep through the night continuously, and if they do they won't sleep more than six hours because they'll need to wake up and take several hits.
Kids do not want to smoke cigarettes. Young people generally do not want to smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes are mostly a risk to the older generation. Juul and other brands have caused a new generation to become shockingly addicted to nicotine all over again from scratch.
Of course, with all that said, one must wonder which group of people should be prioritized: kids or the older folks? This legislation is trying to protect the former at the expense of the latter (by taking away an effective smoking cessation tool). Clearly, this does not make sense in San Francisco -- a city that more or less does not have kids at all.
It's also worth noting that the unpopularity of cigarettes preceded the rise of vaping by several years. So it felt like the problem was finally being solved for a while.
While I agree the cancer risk is probably lower... I don't think we really know what the true cancer risk is for vaping yet, let alone the risk for other cardiovascular diseases like COPD and popcorn lung.
This product hasn't existed for very long, so long term studies just don't exist yet.
Or what must also be considered: Personal choice in doing something irresponsible. Alcohol is clearly a mental and physical destructive force when abused, and is probably worse for you than nicotine addiction. E-Cigarettes are bad, but not nearly so as cigarettes.
This is just truly absurd. For some reason I thought maybe it meant the use of vapes indoors or something similar, but the entire sale? Fucking overbearing politicians. This kind of hypocritical action makes progressives look bad.
"There was a substantial increase in youth vaping prevalence beginning in about 2014. Time trend analyses showed that the decline in past 30-day smoking prevalence accelerated by two to four times after 2014. Indicators of more established smoking rates, including the proportion of daily smokers among past 30-day smokers, also decreased more rapidly as vaping became more prevalent...
The inverse relationship between vaping and smoking was robust across different data sets for both youth and young adults and for current and more established smoking. While trying electronic cigarettes may causally increase smoking among some youth, the aggregate effect at the population level appears to be negligible given the reduction in smoking initiation during the period of vaping’s ascendance."
So, it seems to be mixed. Certainly more younger folks vaping than using cigarettes, though it's roughly 55%/45%... and this might not have a strong impact on overall smoking rates.
(I'm actually surprised. I expected to see more vape use based on my own anecdotal observations!)
13.4% of San Francisco is under 18 years of age. And over 65s are 15.7%.
It’s entirely reasonable to take regulatory steps to protect younger persons. Habits ingrained now last a lifetime - that’s why Juul is fighting this - a new generation of consumers is at risk of not having access to their product. Other cities and states are watching this play out.
By the way, just because you don’t see a lot of kids where you hang out, believe me there are tons of kids here. I have one. We live in San Francisco. There is a robust parent community here. You may not see it if you aren’t looking for it. For example, did you know there’s a large playground at ... mission Dolores park? And if you and your childless friends decided it was a fun place to play, you will get asked to leave. Possibly by the police.
I don't entirely understand the attacks on e-cigs and vaping.
1) e-cigs/vaping is safer with less carcinogens going into lungs. That will lead to less health issues down the line. Even if kids are getting them, which they shouldn't because it is sold in an age limited regulated market, it is still safer than cigarettes and a regulated market with good production is always safer than an unregulated black market.
2) vaping/e-cigs don't combust, so there is no fire, which almost cuts out the threat of a fire starting completely unless a battery explodes which is very rare. A burning cigarette falling will continue to burn by design every single time.
3) e-cigs/vaping leave no butts, no trash and are mostly devices people want to keep and reuse. Reusability and no pollution are what e-cigs/vaping bring. Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean pollution [1], and next to gum, all over all the time.
Prohibitions and illegality of substances a certain percentage of people will always use, make these areas more dangerous in use/production and make harm reduction much more difficult.
It's quite simple. Not smoking at all > vaping > cigarettes.
Massive progress has been made in getting kids not to take up smoking. If you're a smoker, switching to vaping is a good thing. If you're not, it's a bad thing.
I picked up a refillable cart with two flavors, tobacco and blueberry. Maybe it wasn't the highest quality kit, but I still prefer the occasional pipe tobacco over vaping.
I took a long time deciding to try vaping. I've never liked cigarettes, cigars are a rare thing for me, and I usually let my pipe tobacco go stale. I was still quite worried about trying vaping regardless. I had the same worries you elude too. Vaping nicotine put the nail in the coffin for the idea that I'll start consuming tobacco addictively.
I have a completely different experience with cannabis BTW.
Smoking's been in a very successful decades-long decline due to public policy interventions. "Not smoking" is an entirely reasonable goal for most people.
I support legal medical marijuana, and decriminalization of recreational.
When vaping is discovered to have medical benefits, I'll happily change my stance on it. (I'd be happy to have vaping be prescription-only for smoking cessation, in a similar regulatory regime as many states' medical marijuana programs.)
I think education would work better than banning. The "vaping > smoking" comparison is even more apt for weed, because it can be vaped in its natural form, whereas nicotine needs additives like propylene glycol.
(That said, kids should avoid weed in any form, since it's known to affect brain development.)
1. What is the difference between banning and criminalizing? You are going to use the power of the state to punish someone that does not obey your ban, right? Is it about fines versus jail time?
2. Do you support SF treating weed the same as e-cigs?
>What is the difference between banning and criminalizing?
I would assume banning the sale of via business located inside San Francisco vs police throwing you against a wall and patting you down when they see you vaping something.
So your problem is the level of intensity? E.g. it's OK if a business is given a huge fine and maybe has to close as long as the owner of the business is not "thrown up against the wall"?
It seems to me that whether someone is thrown against a wall is not nearly as important as whether something is legal or illegal, in terms of infringing on liberties.
> e-cigs/vaping leave no butts, no trash and are mostly devices people want to keep and reuse.
Most commercial e-cigs have some form of disposable component, ranging from the plastic pods used by Juul to some Blu-branded devices which are entirely one-time-use.
I think this is somewhat justified, smoking rates were decreasing nationally until e-cigs came into fashion, of course some conventional smokers switched which lowered the health detriments of smoking - but many more of the e-cig users are new smokers.
I'd prefer a full ban but this is at least staunching what was a regression for public health. E-cigarettes, since their introduction, haven't improved public health - they've worsened it.
Heh. Well, I realize this is anecdotal, but I'd probably still be smoking a pack a day if I hadn't tried out e-cigs as a cessation tool. It really makes it easy. Smoke and Vape free for around 4 years now.
I know a bunch of people with you and e-cigs have real benefits for allowing people to ween off the addiction that patches never offered... it's just that the marketing actions of these companies have been incredibly irresponsible and the inaction from the US Surgeon General has been embarrassing.
I really don't want anyone to feel shamed over their smoking habit but it's an unhealthy thing and if you get into as an adult you should do so only when you're fully aware of the consequences - the way they've been advertised has hooked a lot of minors.
When you talk about irresponsible marketing, do you mean from the e-cig companies specifically and do you have examples?
My only experience with the e-cigarette marketing have been commercials where some guy is standing there telling you the same type of stories being shared here “I used to smoke x amount of cigarettes a day, now I use this”, followed by the usual boilerplate “nicotine is an addictive substance” disclaimer, a brand/logo, commercial ends.
Seems benign enough, I can certainly see how some may be turned off by the existence of such marketing at all, is this perhaps what you meant by them being irresponsible or could you help me understand a bit better?
I do have an example, the skytrain station I usually disembark on recently was plastered with vape ads[1][2]. I don't really see why e-cigarettes should need to advertise at all, they could simply be devices suggested to smokers by medical professionals as a cessation aid.
I think we can also look to history when it comes to the flavouring of things, it used to be that medicines would be sweetened to override the natural bitter or acidic tastes of the active ingredients but this led to more abuse of those substances.
I don't really see why e-cigarettes should need to advertise at all, they could simply be devices suggested to smokers by medical professionals as a cessation aid.
Had to let this post sit for a minute before responding, and on the grounds you're offering, to really think about it and look at other examples; ultimately I think I agree with you. Your point is well met.
Up here in Canada I've seen more Vype ads[1] which aren't quite as bad... those are hilarious - I really don't understand how people can say they're not targeting young people with a straight face.
> For decades, the percentage of high school and middle school students who smoked cigarettes had been declining. For the past three years, it has flattened, according to new numbers released Monday. There may be several reasons, but a recent boom in vaping is the most likely explanation, said Brian King of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Not really. If you decide to smoke then that’s a personal decision. The bigger problem is littering from spent e-cigarette cartridges and batteries. That is a problem that affects smokers and non smokers alike. So the ban is a good idea, but unrelated to any health issues.
It's a personal decision with far-reaching societal impact [0]. Even types of addiction that are not obviously health-destroying can, in fact, be killing you and thus imposing indirect burden on society [1].
I thought the health effects of e-cigs were relatively benign? I know it's common to consider the health profile of a substance with 'no substance' as the basis of comparison, but people seem to like stimulation and get it however they can. I don't like e-cigs, but I imagine they have to be one of the least harmful ways of getting stimulated.
Is there a safer stimulant and do you think this ban will encourage people to use that?
Yes, they are vastly less harmful than cigarettes. Anyone who says different is misled, or misleading.
They are, however, still extremely addictive. Arguably more so than cigarettes, since they enable the consumption of much higher doses of nicotine.
A friend once told me, having quit nicotine and heroin, that while quitting heroin was 'like being the living dead', he could probably go through it again, but not nicotine.
Isn't every stimulant? I'm reluctant to ban things on the basis of their addictive potential without considering the consequences of the addiction. I'm pretty sure at least half the people I know need coffee in the morning, but I don't think that means we should ban caffeine. I don't see nicotine as objectively better or worse than caffeine so it's unfortunate that one is the target of legislation and one flows like the manna from heaven in most gathers of people.
Additionally, I think there's a 'good' in letting people choose the stim that works best for them. I personally prefer amphetamine, others prefer coffee, some people find comfort in nicotine.
I've always kind of pondered why so many things get banned or receive strong, moralizing scrutiny under the auspices of "addiction" while coffee/caffeine remains the uncontested king of addicting commoditized chemical compounds.
Open mind here, but can someone elucidate this to me? It came up once in a rather intense discussion with my father in my teens once I discovered the devil's lettuce (cannabis) and my curiosity has yet to be abated by a convincing enough take on the matter.
Social class divisions. Vaping is seen as lower class. Coffee has always been a white collar stimulant. Weed is becoming more upscale and thus more accepted. Meth and crack are for poor white and black people. Cocaine is for bankers and trendsetters so it tends to have lighter sentences and lenient enforcement. Alcohol depends on the form it takes, wine vs four loko.
E-cigarettes greatly reduces a lot of the ash related health issues with smoking and regular ash inhalation is quite bad for you and not limited to smoking - being immersed in smoke, even just from a bon-fire, isn't great for your respiratory system. Like most other health things it's moderation that counts for ash inhalation, smoking occasionally, going to a bon-fire once a month in the summer... these are going to instantly damage your lungs but it can add up. A properly tuned vape will produce only trace amounts of ash, but hot vapes can end up ashing the liquid - this is especially prevalent in vapes that have been tuned to heat up more quickly. And, just for reference, smoking other things like an mj joint carries the same health risks.
Aside from the ash related risks tobacco is highly addictive due to the nicotine and contains other toxins that can harm you in the long term. For reference, here's what Canada has to say about the chemicals[1].
>I thought the health effects of e-cigs were relatively benign?
As far as we know. However, I've got a gut instinct that coating your lungs with flavor additives and propylene glycol or glycerin probably isn't the healthiest thing to do.
Then the atomizer, cheaper ones basically use a piece of steel wool. If you let that variety get mostly dry and still puff away (this was more of an issue a decade ago when they were newer and people had 'drip tips' before all these tanks and battery mods caught on) you absolutely start to get metal fumes which are often quite hazardous to your health.
We have zero long term studies on coating your lungs with this stuff, it may be relatively benign or we may see in 5, 10, 20 years people developing some crazy sort of lung disease.
It's also far more easier to give yourself nicotine poisoning vaping than it is via cigarettes as you can sit there and just constantly puff away because you've got blueberry soda, brownie, super duper wacky fun fruity pebbles bubble gum, etc flavors.
I know people that will vape through ten plus ml a day because they are just constantly puffing away due to the flavor and the nicotine. His 'rig' is effectively permanently attached to his hand and he carries around multiple large batteries in a man-clutch with a few extra tanks. I'm betting he's not alone, in the minority sure but there are likely a lot like him and having your lungs saturated 18 hours a day in nicotine, dye and flavoring agent can not be good.
But banning the sale of e-cigarettes--in the city where smoking weed is more socially acceptable than cigarettes--is easy. Building housing and improving transit is hard and can cost you votes next election.
How are they sold? In Australia they have the gory death warnings, are sold in cabinets with no logos (just a plain font list of brand names) and are ridiculously expensive $40 for 20. Cigars might be an exception(?)
The gory death warnings are the most useless counter measure I’ve seen. We have them all over in France and they have no effect. They have no effect because people still think it’s cool to smoke.
What Australia does that other countries don't do in terms of packaging is they completely block out the branding of a pack. So like in Thailand for instance you'll have a regular Marlboro pack with a picture on the back of diseased lungs or whatever. In Australia they block out the designs of packs branding so they're just dark brown with health warnings and in white text somewhere they'll say Marlboro lights or whatever they are.
> How are they sold? In Australia they have the gory death warnings
I was just in a vape shop in the American south for the first time a few days ago.
They are presented as technological marvels. No noticable gory death warnings.
There are several different vape models out in the store center plugged in for you to try out. Everything is extremely clean and shiny, it basically looks like an Apple store. The juice is kept behind the counter in bottles that are backlit with a pleasant blue light [1]. The store is also lit from above by those lightbulbs that have the vintage looking exposed thick filaments [2].
Everything about the store screams, "This is healthy, this is the future, this is cool"
The actual vapes available for sale are locked in a display cabinet, making it feel as if they are as valuable and desirable as jewelery. Behind the counter is a counterculture looking person with guages and tattoos and a laid-back but professional attitude.
Completely different from a typical tobacco store.
There are also ads out on the counter about CBD oil and how it's totally not illegal, so you should definitely give it a try.
I'd imagine the presentation is much the same in California.
In Australia too - most people I know just buy undeclared cigarettes. Almost all international students that travel into the country bring a bunch of cartons with them and sell them at $10-$15/packet. It's a way for the international students to make a bit more money given how fucked over they are by the lack of working rights they have, coupled with the ridiculously high cost of living and expensive education costs.
All the price raising on tobacco has done is push revenue into the black market, invent crimes from nothing and turn otherwise honest people into criminals.
I'm not a data scientist, but that downwards slope started twenty years before the 2010 tobacco excise and continuing to fall is a culmination of years upon years of education.
Absolutely, there are many reasons for decreasing smoking rates, it's a combination of strategies that have seen the decrease but one of those is increasing the price.
I hate cigarettes, I hate the litter, the smell, and the smokers' belief that they have the divine right to pollute my airspace. I also hate the taxes I spend on keeping them in hospital - but. E cigarettes don't cause litter, the smoke is far less offensive. If people are going to smoke they will smoke. SF would be far better off banning actual cigarettes.
Btw, it’s counterintuitive and morbid to think about, but the healthcare and other public spending is actually less for smokers than nonsmokers on average: they tend to die right around retirement age before social security and expensive healthcare is needed. See e.g. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1210319
Because of this belief by vapers, in my experience they tend to be more indiscriminate about where they puff and exhale...the end result is far more exposure to second-hand vape than second hand cigarette smoke.
Living in New York, I see littered Juul cartridges constantly- on the sidewalks, in windowsills, crushed in the street- and I get sprayed with other people's second-hand vaping while walking to work at least as often as with cigarette smoke. As a bystander, I'm hard-pressed to find E-Cigs any less irritating than ordinary smoking.
Really? It seems like every pack of 20 cigs, seemingly at least 10 of the filters end on the ground somewhere, apparently based on some kind of fanciful "Oh, this isn't litter somehow..." thinking.
You're gonna have to source that claim, because that's insane to suggest. The pods are definitely bad for the environment, but relatively speaking when compared to, say, large-sized McDonalds cups or the dozens of cigarette butts a smoker may go through in a single day, one little 2cm by 2cm piece of plastic every few days doesn't seem like it should be top-of-mind.
At least with ecigs the batteries and cartridges probably end up in a trash bin instead of thrown on the ground like with cigarette butts. A single pack of cigarettes is 20 butts, and having been a smoker (and having known many other smokers), a good deal of butts are discarded wherever without care. Ecig components typically last longer than a single pack (an atomizer lasts longer than a pack of cigarettes, anywhere from 2-20 packs worth). A battery lasts longer and gets more use. So while ecig components will be thrown out, they are thrown away much less frequently than cigarette butts are thrown out.
You don't waste more taxes on cigarette smokers than any other person. Almost everybody are sick towards the end of their life and waste the system money exactly like smokers, sometimes even more because they live longer. Not to mention the taxes on smoking which cover any supposed cost to society and probably much more than that. If anything it is the smokers that finance you. And don't make me start on the cost of many other lifestyle choices, from people who break their arms during some sport activity to people who stopped smoking and became fat and have all the issues driving from it. Calculating which lifestyle is more costly to society is very hard because there are so many parameters and implications, it is better we just leave this issue alone and let everybody live the lifestyle they like or move to a fully privatised healthcare where each person pay for their own problems. But nobody wants that except from Americans
Convinced part of the problem with political offices is that elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass. Everything is optimized for first order effects only e.g. optics because that is what they think "shows" they did something.
> elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass.
You're absolutely right. And why should they care? They don't own the power they wield, they're merely renting it for some period of time. After their time is up, and they're done throwing their weight around, they can wash their hands of all repercussions.
Exactly, this is a major problem. If anything, they're incentivized to not use second-order thinking, because most voters don't. Plus it's more complicated to communicate second-order effects.
> Convinced part of the problem with political offices is that elected politicians have no incentive to actually consider second order or third order effects of any piece of legislation they pass.
Whereas companies that harm the public often don't even care about the first order effects of their business.
As a result the entire planet is in grave danger due to climate change. How do we fix this? To borrow a little from Switzerland, I think a direct democracy at every level of government is needed. But first we must have many more remote jobs so people don't feel pressured to live in cities. They can then result in the creation of new cities elsewhere with a direct democracy via cryptographically secure apps.
Sure, but office jobs are a fairly small portion of the overall workforce. Based on [0], it looks like the "Information", "Financial activities", "Professional and business services" and I'll assume 50% of "other" and the government jobs could be done remotely. I'm sure this is missing some jobs in the other categories, and there are certainly many, jobs in these categories that can't be done remotely, but so goes. That leaves < 30% of jobs that could be done remotely.
I would say ~30% is not "fairly small". Also that 30% predominately works circa 9-5 and is disproportionately responsible for traffic congestion.
Plus, it's unclear how those industries get split. For example utilities, trade, healthcare, and leisure/hospitality all have a large number of office jobs. And cities have a higher concentration of office jobs than rural areas. I would be willing to bet that in most medium-large sized cities, half of all jobs could be done remotely.
A direct democracy would be even worse. In California, prop 13 didn’t come from the legislature. It came through ballot proposition. And that law is the granddaddy of second and third order effects.
I totally agree that it would be worse in the absence of an app based system. The point is to be adaptive and correct the legislative mistakes that get made. Adaptability is always a key requirement for the success of any system. Right now this rate of change is IMHO too bottlenecked.
A two-thirds vote can also be minimally required for major changes, so as to stabilize the system.
Are you sure? After Prop J and Prop K, I’m positive that the California populace will just go after things that seem like they’ll make them individually better off in the short term. In fact, I can’t see why an app would make it different. People will still want the stability of laws being enforced for a long term. I see your proposed system as amplifying the problem honestly.
So I dug up the actual ordinance itself¹ and it turns out to not be a "ban all e-cigarettes" ordinance. It is in fact "ban e-cigarettes that have not received FDA premarket approval". Which is to say, if the FDA actually does their job and approves the damn things, then they can be sold in SF again.
That's a pretty significant part which was left out of the article. I mean it is effectively a ban right now since e-cigarettes don't have approval, but requiring FDA approval seems far more reasonable than a permanent ban.
All prohibition is asinine but this has to take the cake.
Even if there is no way to prevent more kids from getting addicted to vaping (and that's a big if), having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health.
--
Anecdotally I went from 2 packs a day to chain vaping for a few years, health improved enough to start being much more active, finally weaned down nicotine, quitting vaping was hard but not near as yard as other cigarette quits, have been nicotine free for almost a year (not even a puff) and now I avg about 10+ miles a week running and 50+ miles a week biking and am in the best shape of my life at almost-40.
I am happy that's worked out for you - and e-cigs are definitely less dangerous than conventional cigarettes, but the adoption rate of smoking among younger folks has spiked since flavoured e-cigs were introduced.
I really want vapes to be available as an alternative to conventional smoking but the companies pushing them now are addicting a lot of new users, if the market participants were more responsible these devices could have been all positive.
There has been an increase in vaping, but the health benefits of vaping instead of smoking are so large that they swamp the ill health effects from increased vaping unless you get 20 new vapers for each person who quits smoking.
In this debate people really underestimate how bad smoking is for you.
Anecdotally, I (as a college student) know more than 20x the number of people who vape than people who smoke. Smoking is bad, but vaping is becoming incredibly mainstream with young people to the point where it's a bigger health risk.
I really don't think that this is a accurate statement at all.
There are a few dangers to vaping.
The biggest one is having a vaporizer that is malfunctioning and is burning things instead of heating them up. The complex chemical reactions are difficult to predict. But it has the side effect of tasting like shit.
The second biggest danger is the flavorings. However the community has been very good at self-policing and eliminating flavors that are found to pose a risk.
The last danger is a sort of being a idiot and using way too much nicotine.
On the flip side you can have zero nicotine. So peer pressure isn't really even a problem as you can get zero nicotine juices.
You can get zero nicotine, but not everyone does. I know a few people who accidentally got themselves addicted to nicotine by vaping too much without really thinking of the consequences.
Everyone knows nicotine is addictive, not everyone knows how much nicotine they are ingesting when they vape as you can take in much more way faster than you can by smoking.
There's so much unheated air accompanying the vapour, through the air vents, that my recollection of vaping is it wasn't even warm. I'm sure there is a temperature difference after the vaporiser, but I never noticed it. Completely unlike smoking where you often noticed it was hot.
Sounds like something for a Youtuber to measure. :)
I never tried a Juul, just regular mods and vape pens if that makes a difference.
The proportion of VG and PG, vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol, decides how hard it is on the throat. Known as "throat hit" on vaping sites. More PG gives more throat hit - it feels harsher, and more chance of a cough, but fewer clouds. I used to prefer the high VG liquids as I thought the throat hit part of the bad of smoking that I wanted to quit.
Maybe some of the flavours have impact too, I don't know. One thing that is different is it's "just" a cough from immediate irritation. None of the horrible green and yellow crap coming up from a coughing fit next morning that you got from tobacco.
That's ignoring Juul which works differently, I have no idea what goes on in those.
~20 years ago when I was in high school/college, 90%+ of those people you know that vape would have been cigarette smokers. I don't think you grasp just how much harm reduction there is from all those kids vaping instead of smoking cigarettes.
I get that everyone smoking is way worse than everyone vaping, but nowadays smoking (cigarettes) isn't popular at all. Even without vaping claiming some of the would-be smokers, I doubt a significant portion of my generation would smoke.
Of course, I'm also biased by having only lived in LA and the Bay Area where I bet smoking is less prevalent than other parts of the country.
I am calling it smoking, "vaping" is a euphemism that just recently entered the language in an effort to rebrand the action of smoking because being "a smoker" now has a negative connotation. "Smoking" has never been a literal description of that action - the literal description is "inhaling tobacco" which is still occurring. The fact that using e-cigarettes is viewed as a more healthy way for smokers to continue their habit sort of puts the nail in the coffin in terms of word meanings.
There is no tobacco in the e-cigs. The inhalants are liquid droplets that are about 10 times larger than the smoke particles they replace. They do far less damage to the lungs, and deliver a tiny fraction of the carcinogens that smoking does.
Vaping isn't a euphemism. It's really a different thing altogether. In fact, I euphemize it back to "smoking" because I hate the term "vaping". It sounds so lame.
What are you talking about? Smoking is inhaling the smoke of a burned product. Vaping is not. It's not comparable. The bad part of smoking tobacco is not the nicotine, it's all of the terrible health effects of inhaling smoke. Other than addiction nicotine has very few negative health effects.
There are health effects of e-cigarettes aren't fully known but there are well known health risks associated with tobacco aside from the ash (which still can be present in mis-tuned vapes but is greatly reduced), see this other comment[1].
I work with someone who's crusaded against e-cigs and part of the reason the ban was put in place was that JUUL was making kid-desired flavors like "candy corn" and "unicorn milk".
E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
I vape, used to smoke 20 a day quit for 7 years, started again and then switched to a vape.
JUUL absolutely should be banned from marketing at children, it’s blatantly obvious they know what they are doing.
I’m generally not in favour of legislation because it often either doesn’t work or has bad 2nd order effects but this is one of those cases I’d make an exception for.
Over here in the UK they limited the max strength of vape fluid to 18mg (previously 24mg was common) and reduced the max tank size (I kept my old one as the they are where interchangeable).
It remains to be seen what effect if any that has though.
I know adults who vape and many like these flavors that you claim are marketed to kids. Just because kids like something doesn't mean adults don't like it too.
>JUUL was making kid-desired flavors like "candy corn" and "unicorn milk".
No, that's incorrect. Juul manufactured "Fruit Medley" and "Mango," both of which are now restricted to online-only sales through their age-verification platform. There are thousands of other vendors who sell sweet-flavored nicotine solutions, though.
I also fundamentally disagree that only children like sweet flavors, and I wonder why fruit-flavored ciders and liqueurs are still legal.
>E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
So are regular cigarettes. But regular cigarettes also include the inhalation of a significant amount of tar.
>They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
It's not a disguise. When first released, Juul's form factor was fairly distinctive but there are a wide variety of commercial e-cigarette form factors now. I'm also not sure what "hard to detect" has to do with anything -- by who, when, in what context?
>I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
What does this mean? The phrasing is usually "Company X lobbied Politician Y" or "Company X hired a lobbyist to lobby members of Legislature Z."
>but the adoption rate of smoking among younger folks has spiked since flavoured e-cigs were introduced.
People cite this as if its the end of the justification for legislative action. No, it's merely the beginning of the argument. So the rate of e-cig usage is growing rapidly among teens. Why should I care?
Yes, thank you. Almost everyone seems to think that's it's self evident why vaping/smoking is immoral and must be stopped. I personally see nothing wrong with it. Having healthier options (vaping) seems like a huge win for everyone involved. Can we just stop meddling in eveyrbody elses business?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -- CS Lewis
> E-cigarette use among U.S. youth and young adults is now a major public health concern. E-cigarette use has increased considerably in recent years, growing an astounding 900% among high school students from 2011 to 2015. [0]
> About 4.9 million middle and high school students were current users (used in the past 30 days) of some type of tobacco product in 2018, up from 3.6 million in 2017.
The 30-day prevalence for vaping use is about the same as for marijuana. See https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/marijuana (TL;DR: 5.60%, 16.70%, and 22.20% for 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, respectively, for 2018.)
And despite the scary stories, it seems reported vaping use hasn't sharply risen. It peaked in 2015, substantially declined in 2017, and for 2018 seems to have returned to 2015 levels. But overall vaping use has at worst replaced cigarette smoking and possibly accelerated the long-term decline in smoking. A recent study, https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2018/10/31/toba..., concludes
> If our primary concern is population-level trends in youth and young adult smoking, which we believe is appropriate, then vaping has not shown to be a serious cause for concern, even if the catalyst hypothesis is correct, and it is possible that vaping may be playing a contributing role to the recent steep declines in youth and young adult smoking.
The anti-vaping hysteria is irresponsible and to the extent it ignores the data and creates a boogeyman out of unknowns it's anti-science. Compared to the parade of horribles consequent to tobacco use and even marijuana use, not to mention alcohol and other drugs, nicotine itself should be the least of our worries. And that's before we even consider the efficacy of a ban in terms of preventing teen vaping. (And if we as a community could manage to have an adult conversation about nicotine, like we briefly did for THC, we might appreciate the benefits of nicotine--e.g. that it's used by a significant fraction of adults and teens alike to self-medicate real behavioral and mental health problems.)
As a non-smoker who can't stand the smell, and hate smoking with a passion, I for one would rather people vape all day. At least it's only affecting their health then.
But yeah, banning all of it (with priority on getting rid of the real cigarettes that cause others' harm) in public spaces would be my preference.
It actually isn't, if their vape is mis-tuned and producing ash you're inhaling it the same as you would second hand smoke - additionally the health dangers of vape fluid aren't fully understood, a lot of the chemicals that contribute to the carcinogenous natural of tobacco smoking are still present in e-cigs but at generally lower levels. The misinformation that's going around is basically "No one has had time to conduct a long term study and prove it's dangerous so it must be safe!"
That's not a thing. Are you thinking of heated vaporization of tobacco leaf? Because what "vaping" is today is a liquid that's atomized by a heating element, not solid matter. There can't be ash from glycerin and propelyne glycol
It's technically possible for the wick and the VOCs in the flavorings to burn in a vape that reaches too high a temperature. However: the exposure to VOC is vastly less than you would receive when, say, standing over a wok preparing stir fry.
It should be noted that many vapes, including Juul, use temperature regulation and it's highly unlikely that they would produce a burnt wick.
We have mountains of evidence that cigarettes are one of the most harmful habits one can do.
Do we have proof e-cigs cause lung cancer, or other types of cancer? COPD? asthma? no, we do not.
edit: people seem to be very downvote-happy on this site when they disagree with something.
Combustion of tobacco produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which are heavily carcinogenic. Vaporization of nicotine does NOT produce these compounds.
Additionally the UK Government claims that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, suggesting they are less damaging than junk food, soda, or car exhaust. Why not ban coca-cola and real cigarettes besides ecig?
Can I devil's devil's advocate - various players in the tobacco industry carried out a long PR campaign trying to downplay the health effects of smoking after being internally aware of them so... maybe let's wait to see if this new way to inhale tobacco is safe before accepting the word of tobacco industry participants again?
This is going by the old "Fool me once shame on you, falsely convince me that tobacco products pose no health risks twice shame on me" - I think that's how that quote goes.
Combustion of tobacco produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which are heavily carcinogenic. Vaporization of nicotine does NOT produce these compounds.
I'm not claiming e-cigs are _good_ for you, but greater harm than, say, soda and junk food, has not been proven.
"The nicotine in e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes is addictive. E-cigarettes are considered tobacco products because most of them contain nicotine, which comes from tobacco.
Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes can contain harmful and potentially harmful ingredients, including:
>ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs
>flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease
Eh, you'd need to show me some evidence that e-cigs are more unhealthy than drinking soda, or the exhaust in a big city. Standing in the sunlight is also harmful; want to ban that?
Comparing e-cigs to other unhealthy things does not make e-cigs any better for you.
Best advice. Don't be stupid. Don't smoke anything at all. It's unnatural. Your lungs are trying to tell you something when you first try it. Listen to them.
You don't sound like you're overdoing it, but get yourself screened for atrial fib.
Family member finally quit smoking to ride more, went a little too gung-ho on endurance and developed an afib. He couldn't take blood thinners due to arthritis meds. Mixing those is apparently worse than your stroke risk. But he lost that lottery and threw a clot a few years ago and things were pretty bad.
Had a full work up. Lungs are "undistinguishable from a non smoker" in terms of capacity. Heart rhythm is normal and RHR has dropped from 90s as a smoking coder that sat a lot to the 60s as a non-smoking coder that moves a lot more (Thanks apple watch!). HRV has gone from 20s to 60s-70s in the past year. VO2 Max (at least from Apple Watch) has gone from about low 30s to low 40s in a year which puts me at good, but not yet super in shape for a 40 year old.
When I broke up with my last girlfriend, she said one of the best things I ever did for her was get her to quit smoking. Now things taste better, she smells things better, and she's not huffing after climbing the stairs.
"having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health."
It's not about quitting anymore though. It's way beyond that.
Vaping is incredibly addictive, and because it's 'not smoking' and Juul is marketing it as 'cool' - it's massively taking over.
While vaping is obviously better than smoking, it has odd side effects due to the fact it's not, for example, I found myself vaping all the time, as opposed to just 'smoke breaks'.
Understand a few things:
1) Marketing works
2) Trends are real
3) Young people are very impressionable
4) The earlier addiction happens, the more life-long issues it causes
5) Critical masses are real: 5 kids in a high school doing it may not flip the school, but 25 might be enough and flip it into 1/2 the school
6) Supply and Demand is real. Make things harder to get, more expensive, higher barriers, the less people do it, the less likely there is to be a 'tipping point' collective behaviour.
I don't think they should have banned it, but they should totally ban all forms of advertising and promotion, there should be relatively high taxes on it, health warnings, and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school. At least if the kids can go all day without vaping, they might not fall into a hole.
In Canada, vaping among teenagers has increased 75% in one year this is quite a substantial thing to worry about. [1]
Would you support methadone being freely available over the counter? After all, it is a valuable tool in helping get people off more dangerous opioids.
Would you support methadone being banned while heroin is available over the counter? Because that's the proper equivalent comparison to the e-cig policy.
Why not? Heroin is essentially decriminalized in SF. I work in Civic Center and watch cops casually walk and drive past people actively shooting up every single day.
They are providing a drug to treat overdoses which is an entirely different thing than a drug that is used to ease someone out of a chemical addiction. There are different priorities when someone is minutes from dying rather being addicted to a deadly substance that might take years to kill them.
The problem with ecigs is that they are way more polluting than regular cigarettes, due to all the plastic cartridges from the liquid and the batteries in the ecig devices.
So regardless of anything else, it’s good that ecigs are banned as much as possible.
This is only a problem with the cheaper Zuul-style units, which use disposable parts with vendor lock-in. Even with those, I'd not automatically believe that they are more polluting than cigarette butts.
Instead of writing short rages or immediately drawing party lines, those who enjoy consuming nicotine might benefit from writing openly and honestly about the fact that they enjoy these products. Perhaps mention the fact that current research leans in the direction that secondhand vapor is less harmful than secondhand smoke [1] and so vaping could be treated as more of an individual freedom.
Personally, I think society should allow adults to vape, though I believe there should be incredibly strong regulations against companies benefiting from the sale of addictive chemicals. The interesting conversation to me is how to protect children and inform the public while not compromising liberties that don't need to be compromised.
"Personally, I think society should allow adults to vape..."
Not to nit pick, but that sentiment may be backwards. Society should not disallow vaping. By default, we are free beings and we are allowed to vape. Until someone stops us by threat or force.
San Francisco assumes that the existing controls on the purchase of tobacco products by minors are a failure. They must act.
San Francisco's reaction to this is to ban all tobacco products from the city, for the children. This is perfectly rational.
But wait, no, their reaction is to ban the harm reduction option and keep the worst tobacco product known to be the most addictive and the most harmful to health on store shelves, where they believe they can't keep it from being purchased by minors.
The headline should read, "San Fransisco insists that minors switch to cigarettes." That's the only rational conclusion any sane person could draw from this.
But as someone with two kids living in San Francisco I think it's actually a great city for kids. The city spends extravagantly on parks, libraries, and youth programs.[1] The homeless and drug addict situations are very problematic, but mostly concentrated outside the neighborhoods (rich and poor) where families are more common. That said, there are quite alot of kids in the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use are endemic, than one would think.
Vaping plus flavored nicotine is marketed at kids. If vaping were strictly an alternative to cigarettes, marketed at existing smokers, as a harm reduction alternative then it would be fine. But it's not, it's marketed as a hip new thing, getting kids hooked on nicotine that would have otherwise never touched a cigarette.
Also, that flavored nicotine smoke smells nasty. Most smokers tend to be aware that people don't like their smoke and they make some effort to keep it out of people's faces, but vaping isn't smoking, it's vaping, and cool and less harmful than cigarettes, so who could possibly object to vape smoke filling the air? /s
> Vaping plus flavored nicotine is marketed at kids.
Great, ban all advertising of nicotine products. I'd be fine with banning soft drink ads while we're at it. However, what does this to for public health when the harm reduction option is removed and literally the most harmful option available is for sale by the very system that SF doesn't trust to keep its products away from children?
According to the actual ordinance itself¹, according to a 2018 National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, there's moderate evidence that e-cigarette use actually increases the frequency and intensity of cigarette smoking in the future.
Also, SF did in fact ban flavored tobacco products last year, but it seems that wasn't sufficient to combat the rise in e-cigarette usage among SF high school students.
In any case, it seems the ordinance doesn't actually ban e-cigarettes. It bans e-cigarettes that have not received FDA premarket approval, which is required by law for any new tobacco product. So basically, the city is saying the FDA isn't doing their job, and so the product that shouldn't be allowed to be sold in general without this approval is now banned in SF until it receives this approval.
Can you name any examples of this marketing for a curious reader? After the "blu" e-cigarette commercials were kicked offline several years ago, the only marketing I've seen for e-cigarettes are point-of-sale ads in gas stations or tobacco shops.
“...how on earth would big tobacco profit off of the loss of this young man. I would hate to think on such callous terms, but if anything, we would be losing a customer. It is not only our hope, but in our best interest to keep Robin alive and smoking.”
This is the medical marijuana issue, where the harm reduction is being overshadowed by the recreational use. The thing is, cigarettes were heavily frowned upon, so new users weren't really doing them. Vaping isn't, and it seems to be catching on well beyond the need for weaning off cigarettes.
You lumped all tobacco products together when really there is a specific problem with kids purchasing e-cigarettes. If cigarette rates were spiking in the same manner then maybe they would need further restrictions.
The point still stands. It's like if you knew liquor stores would just break the law and sell alcohol to anyone who could see over the counter, and you won't do anything to stop them...instead your response is to ban only beer.
The (wholly unfounded by extant evidence)theory is that substantial numbers of teens who vape are going to move on to the more harmful cigarettes, and so e-cigarettes should be discouraged. Great. However, if that's your theory, step one should be ban regular cigarettes.
You don't get it maybe because you don't have kids. e-cigarettes have a different appeal than smoking. Cigarettes are what your parents did and its not cool at all. Vaping with all the different flavors and drugs you can inhale, is all the rage. Its very hard to for schools to control because there is no real smoke and can be hidden easily. I have kids in high school and middle school and they both report lots of vaping on the bus and campus. They don't see anyone smoking cigarettes. SF cracks down on a problem. Makes perfect sense.
Because my baby keeps finding steaks and choking on them!
Shouldn't you just...take responsibility for your baby and keep it away from steak? Plenty of people eat steaks and they're fine.
No! You don't get it because you don't have kids.
Edit: Seriously though, I do understand, and if I were a parent I too would probably try to deflect my responsibilities onto the rest of society. Parenting is hard, and it's much easier to try to control the whole world than to control the little people you're personally responsible for. It's an easy impulse to indulge, and history is full of examples of this. I don't blame you.
There's just so much wrong in your response its hard to even respond. I suggest you save your post and someday if and when your kid is in high school, re-read it. You will have a good laugh.
I f hate SF. Housing/homelessness crisis? Do nothing. Terrible roads which are worse than Chicago (which gets tons of snow): do nothing. Horrendous traffic? Do nothing.
But: Vaping! Freak out! NIMBY! Move fast!
Agree with all other comments, this is stupid. Vaping isn't great. But banning it without any other options is...ultra dumb.
The city is attempting to address this very complicated problem and invest in shelters / affordable housing. A lot of wealthy home owners protest when they attempt to build housing for the poor (in their backyard). I'd argue the homeless problem in SF is more of a national / United States issue than SF specifically.
>Terrible roads which are worse than Chicago
I haven't been to Chicago in like half a decade but I don't think the roads in SF are terrible?
>Horrendous traffic? Do nothing
Traffic isn't bad unless you spend all of your time commuting in the East Bay, the Peninsula, or you pick terrible driving times on the weekend. During the work week the traffic within the city outside of FiDi is usually fine (which is most of the city). Outside of SF proper traffic is definitely pretty bad though, especially in the East Bay.
I can usually leave on a Saturday at 8am, get to upper North Bay (Novato, etc), crank out a 5+ mile hike, grab lunch, and be back at home by 11:30am without hitting any traffic. People who decide to sleep in and leave at 11am definitely hit a ton of traffic (because that's a terrible driving time).
>Agree with all other comments, this is stupid. Vaping isn't great. But banning it without any other options is...ultra dumb.
I don't really get it, I imagine it's more of a jab towards Juul than anything else.
"I can usually leave on a Saturday at 8am, get to upper North Bay (Novato, etc), crank out a 5+ mile hike, grab lunch, and be back at home by 11:30am without hitting any traffic."
Surely you must be exaggerating? How quickly do you cover 5 miles hiking? How quickly do you eat lunch for that matter?
Did it last weekend, 1200ft increase in elevation. Pack a sandwich to eat or grab one on the go. I hike often and hit the gym 4+ days a week so I might be moving faster than average. My lunch stop is usually 10-15 min.
Either way, if you start the hike before 9am in the North Bay you'll beat the traffic rush out of the city. You could spend an extra couple hours if you wanted. As long as you head back before 2pm you'll beat the re-entry rush into the city.
You are wrong here. California has the worst homelessness problem in the country, and SF is leading within California. It is just not a national issue. I travel for work...no where is like SF for homeless. Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, NYC, DC,... nothing.
Roads: down town is like a warzone! Huge potholes everywhere.
Traffic...ummm, east bay/south bay are where most people live. Also traffic in the city is terrible too. Your Saturday routine sounds like you don't leave Marin...which sure, yeah, not a ton of traffic.
>You are wrong here. California has the worst homelessness problem in the country, and SF is leading within California. It is just not a national issue. I travel for work...no where is like SF for homeless. Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, NYC, DC,... nothing.
Where do you think most of these homeless people from? SF originally? It's a national issue, they migrate to the West Coast from all over the country because of weather and better programs. The West Coast is pretty much the social safety net of the United States for people with mental illness and other issues.
>Traffic...ummm, east bay/south bay are where most people live. Also traffic in the city is terrible too. Your Saturday routine sounds like you don't leave Marin...which sure, yeah, not a ton of traffic.
I don't hit traffic in the city before 11am on the weekends. People sleep in and get started later, if you beat the rush you beat traffic.
Yeah the traffic is definitely going to be where all the people live because that's where all the people live. You said SF specifically in your comment not the "Bay Area" or East Bay / Peninsula.
Wow. Ban the way that so many have people quit their tobacco addictions with. Just enforce the existing no smoking laws. I get it’s annoying when people vape wherever but as someone who used to to quit then eventually quit vaping, we’re taking an extremely valuable tool away from people who would like to quit.
From the article: ``illegal . . . for online retailers to ship the goods to San Francisco addresses."
Does anyone know how the government of SF would enforce that on an online retailer not based in SF? Tell them they've been fined, then sue them in state court if they don't pay?
The city I live in (in the US) collects sales tax from online retailers, so I am inclined to think that the government of SF has some way to inflict pain on the online retailers that ignore this ban.
I want to accept the challenge but I don't understand it. Are you asking for a case where a capitalist loses? I can show plenty even in the US. Hell, the number #1 platform of the democratic platform is to abolish private insurance, and its not tied to a buyout as far as I know.
If you're claiming that forbidding e-cigs makes them cooler, then that might be a better overall outcome because the people who desperately want to be cool will migrate to the suddenly cooler illegal e-cigs.
Do you want needles for heroin distributed for free or do you want your tax dollars to be spent on treating easily preventable diseases because it's hard to obtain needles?
Making things illegal doesn't stop people from doing them.
1. I'd prefer to spend my money as I see fit through charity. Bureaucrats didn't distribute mosquito nets across Africa, Bill and Melinda Gates did.
2. If the government is going to take my money, they should be spending it on treatment of the underlying issues. Not putting a bandaid on the needle diseases.
The HN response seems strongly negative so far. Can someone educated in the space play devil’s advocate and share ideas on why it might be a good move?
Vaping is much safer than smoking, so you should allow vaping while you restrict tobacco.
We don't know if vaping is safe. So, using the precautionary principle, you could ban it or restrict it for non-smokers until we get more data. Public Health deals with population sizes, not individuals. Imagine 100,000 non smokers take up vaping. Some of them will be harmed (because nothing is risk free). We need to have a discussion about how many people being harmed is an acceptable risk, and how we communicate that risk to users.
And there's some evidence that people who start vaping with nicotine-containing products will become addicted to nicotine and move to tobacco. That isn't helped by companies going out of their way to design a more addictive vaping product. This is another reason to restrict vaping products and only allow them to be used by people who smoke tobacco.
Sure, it might be a bad thing for SF if too many people stop smoking cigarettes and switch to e-cigarettes. In the late 90s tobacco settlements, States and municipalities got payments from tobacco companies. Some of them traded that annuity income for up-front bonds. If too many people quit smoking, they might have to pay back those bonds[1].
It's a ban on non-FDA approved products. They need to get approved by 2022 anyway, and presumably can apply earlier. At worst its a two year ban. It doesn't seem awful to say the product needs to go through the same evaluations that cigarettes have already gone through
>Reported use of vaping nicotine specifically in the 30 days prior to the survey nearly doubled among high school seniors from 11 percent in 2017 to 20.9 percent in 2018. More than 1 in 10 eighth graders (10.9 percent) say they vaped nicotine in the past year, and use is up significantly in virtually all vaping measures among eighth, 10th and 12th graders.
It's already illegal for kids to buy them, but it's trivial for them to just get'm anyway when the shops are already selling them. This will mean that kids will have to leave the city to get it, or get it on the black market. That will reduce usage, and send a message to other cities that it's a tenable proposition (somebody had to be the first to ban it).
There are valid issues. The typical anti-prohibition ones that crop up are "criminal black market uprising" i.e. the mob in Chicago during alcohol prohibition. I'm not sure this is as valid as vape usage isn't as prevalent as alcohol, nor is it as integral a part of our culture. Worth watching, though.
Another issue is the apparent hypocrisy - for some reason, cigarettes can still be sold in the city, besides being decidedly more disgusting, environmentally unfriendly, and unhealthy. On the one hand, they got this vape ban through quick, so it might finally allow the banning of tobacco products as a whole to come through as well. On the other hand, why target vapes before cigarettes? I have no idea.
In any case, the goal is to get kids to stop smoking. Doing one part of that (banning juuls) isn't the entire battle, and shouldn't be treated as such.
There's the devil's advocate argument. I personally believe that a better solution is no prohibition, but massive tax to ensure the proper cost is being levied on these products - i.e., for cigarettes, purchasers need to offset their decision by providing the State with the funds to cover the environmental, public health, and public image impact of the cigarettes. Similar to the carbon tax argument. Furthermore, government resources being levied on educational outreach to ensure that the public is aware of the genuine detriments to these kinds of products. Finally (this is already implemented), ensuring companies like Marlboro aren't allowed to make false claims regarding the unhealthiness of their products, even hinting as such through imagery (i.e. showing an ad of a doctor smoking or something).
Prohibition kinda works, kinda doesn't. I think it really depends. Banning something like alcohol that the vast majority of the population partakes in was very silly. Banning heroin? I'm not so sure it's as simple.
i think that if the legalized substance has strong sanctions and limits, it can work. Like smoking is legal, but disapproved, heavily taxed, and limited in public. If the sanctions don't or can't exist, legalization won't work in the long run.
I meant just the opposite. Keeping weed illegal didn’t affect the usage. If it only went up a couple of percentage points that implies that anyone who wanted it, was easily able to get it and it being illegal wasn’t a deterrent.
The environmental impact that goes into making the plastics, batteries, and fluids (please don't try to catch me out on hypocrisy here: yes, I do believe the same should be true for cars, phones, and other consumer products). The environmental impact on the pens that use disposable, non recyclable cartridges. The public health impact from the increase in chance of heart attack to vape pen users.
Sure but... it's sort of crazy that juul has been allowed to get a whole new generation of folks hooked on tobacco. There's been a myth spread around that e-cigs exist solely as a more healthy alternative to traditional cigs - they are more healthy but those candy flavours have resulted in my office now having more smokers in it than ever before... and they're all under 23.
Smokers, as in cigarette smokers, or as in e-cigarette smokers? I thought all the candy flavored tobacco cigs (minus menthols) were blown out of the water back in 2011 or whenever the new tobacco act was passed. Interestingly enough, the law led to clove cigarettes being relabeled to cigarillos in order to get around the law.
So called “candy flavors” attracting kids is problematic as a hypothesis for a few reasons. One is adults enjoy them. Secondly, for well over a century teenagers smoked cigarettes that were not candy flavored. They don’t care what the flavor is. Nicotine feels good.
Should we ban sweet alcoholic drinks?
I remember when it was the Republican Party that went to the “what about the kids?!” well to justify asinine legislation and laws.
Vaping is not smoking. Tobacco is not nicotine. Learn the differences in health risks between the former and the latter and how much of a positive it is for people to transfer to the latter group before crying.
Vaping is so much better than tobacco than we should be discussing banning alcohol before vaping as far as harm to society is concerned.
The ordinance just passed the Board of Supervisors and will need to be signed by Mayor London Breed to go into effect.
There are no minutes from today's Board of Supervisors meeting posted yet, but you can see from last week's minutes that the ordinance has support from all 11 members of the board: https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/bag061819_minutes.pdf
If you want to comment on this legislation, I think the best way at this point is to contact London Breed's office by calling (415) 554-6141 or emailing MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org. Again, the mayor has to sign the legislation before it becomes law.
This just screams of a moral panic that's no different from when Congress held hearings about how violent music lyrics or violent video games were corrupting the youth.
Do you think they care if you waste your time on that? The board has proven to be incompetent for decades. The government of SF is fundamentally broken.
I think that your comment is counterproductive. Even if the board wouldn't listen today, if more people wrote, more people would feel a sense of engagement with their city, thus more people would do other things, and more things would change. Also, just how much time do you think this would "waste" out of your day? You could do it sitting on the toilet.
There is no evidence that having people voice their concerns to unconcerned idiots is in anyway productive. If anything, talking to deaf ears makes you feel like you have even less of a voice.
I can’t help but question if this is really how the forefathers intended the land of the free to solve difficult problems by simply banning them. All this hope for a better future is making a worse present with no real proof that will even payoff.
Perhaps the ban should have been targeted at ways to decrease the litter and pollution that comes from disposable vaporizer products. Other commenter have pointed out how Juul pods are treated as disposable and can end up as litter on the sidewalk like cigarettes. However, there are refillable pod systems that would cut down on behavior like that.
A side effect of requiring refillable pods may be an increased initial cost for the device and a bottle of juice, but at the moment there are refillable systems that are cheaper (and lower quality) than Juul.
As far as the waste from batteries and the risk of devices not being disposed of properly, my personal device actually recommends contacting the manufacturer or a shop that sells the product to perform a proper battery replacement. The old battery is then disposed of safely.
Vaping in a way that affects other people is always wrong, but until there is a push for society to call out the users who vape in improper places, legislation will not fix the issue. I would like to see more efforts to educate current or potential users about the risks of vaping and also the risks of misusing their devices. The current culture of vaping cannot be relied upon to accurately reflect the health issues that can from from it, as the vaping community seems to always fight back against any possible health risks.
Does anyone have a link to the text of the actual legislation? The article paints this as a general ban on sale/distribution/manufacture, but elsewhere narrows it to "on city property", so I'm curious about what the legislation actually says.
Regardless, it's asinine that San Francisco would ban e-cigarettes and not actual cigarettes. It's also pointless; nothing stopping people from heading to Oakland or Daly City (or further) for their vape pens/juice.
Here is the link to the proposed ballot measure, which was somehow not linked to by ANY of the sources covering this story.
https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/LI031919.pdf
Looks to be two separate measures, one banning all nicotine products from being sold, manufactured, or distributed from City property, the 2nd banning all Non-FDA approved products (vapes) from the entire city: 190311 & 190312, respectively.
Nice, thanks! Yeah, it's ridiculous that news sites seem to be deathly averse to actually linking to sources; if they took a cue from Wikipedia maybe they'd be less vulnerable to "fake news" accusations...
Almost 2 years ago I saw a comment on HN from a guy who quit smoking after reading Alan Carr's "The Easy Way". As a person who was heavily addicted, often smoking more than a pack a day, struggling to quit for good, I decided to read the book. It did wonders - for almost 2 years I haven't smoked and I don't miss it. It also helped friends to whom I recommended the book. I wanted to drop a comment here in case I can inspire others to give it a try.
A friend of mine who I was hounding for years to quit got this book six months ago and quit. Then he gave it to his dad and he quit. I was fortunate enough to quit six years ago but it sounds like this book is really transformative. I haven’t read it myself, only seen these effects.
The rich and politically-connected SF elite figure this'll kill the underclass faster by pushing them toward cigarettes.
\end{tinfoil}
More seriously, I'm more-or-less in favor of banning e-cigarettes... if they actually bothered to ban actual cigarettes, too. The failure to pass a general nicotine ban has turned a presumably-well-intentioned piece of legislation into yet another paver on the road to Hell.
EDIT: apparently the actual laws are more nuanced than that, and while they do specifically target electronic cigarettes, that targeting is as an example of a class of product not previously considered under existing legislation. I haven't read through the full details on the relevant ordinances[1][2], but it ain't quite as simple as "SF wants to extort Juul for money"; on the surface they actually seem pretty well-reasoned.
I have never smoked cigarettes, and I have a severe reaction to the smoke from them, when merely walking behind people on the sidewalk. I have never had a single, negative reaction to vape smoke. My nose doesn't even detect it.
Also, I hate it when cigarette smokers throw butts on the ground or in the gutter. I've had yelling matches with people on the street over it.
I understand the issues with vaping, but seriously, this is just insane.
Seems like politicians just trying to win public favor by taking broad swings at a hot topic, rather than trying something that would actually protect the youth, or anyone for that matter.
How has history not convinced these people that prohibition is ineffective and a waste of public funds?
2) the largest fucking evape co (JUUL) is hq in sf
3) JUUL is investing heavily into vape tech and cannabis
4) have you ever been to any place in SF without smokers
5) SF has the highest number of michelin starred resta of any city on the planet - which means that you have a bunch of stressed out industry ppl who are going to smoke cigs/vape cigs
—
Also, who the heck is “passing” this bullshit. They should have a /r/ for “stupid things sf wants to do”
I dont smoke cigs or vape or even smoke cannabis!!! Yet i build cannabis tech. But get your nimby ass out of here and stop acting progressive.
Progressive is to force the tech companies to provide data and services to help you manage city sentiment.
I can't help but think of San Francisco as a giant joke that can be used to make fun of liberals. "San Francisco first city to ban e-cigs, leaving cigarettes perfectly legal" reads like something from the Onion.
I do not understand why this thread is so against this legislation.
Issues with e-cigarettes:
1) they bypass laws regarding cigarette advertising: compare e-cig packaging with cigarette packaging; this is problematic, especially for youth (the non-users most likely to be vulnerable to advertising for such products)
2) contrary to what is portrayed, they are not interested in helping people quit tobacco usage: tobacco companies have a large stake in this business
3) e-cigs minimize the danger of tobacco, by making the "delivery mechanism" seem most problematic, and thus "solvable"
4) there are other methods to deal with cigarette addiction (nicotine addiction, in particular): they just aren't as sexy
As for the law itself, it sets a historic precedent (if it truly bans e-cigs outright, rather than just on city property/public spaces): tobacco products can no longer skirt flat out prohibition.
I find it ridiculous that:
1) Juul's spokesperson cites "thriving black market" creation as a problematic side effect of this law: the point of prohibition is not to stamp out usage entirely (as history has shown this is not feasible), but to make it more difficult than usual to obtain said prohibited product. Its all about probability. Furthermore, when it comes to habits, even small barriers to existing habits can go a long way in changing them (and conversely, removing small barriers to new habits can go a long way in promoting them).
2) Commenters claim that e-cig users can just go to other jurisdictions, making this law "pointless": again, its about introducing barriers.
The law is far from a perfect solution, and I doubt it was intended to be, but it's just a small step in the right direction.
Finally, I think substance abuse problems fundamentally come from a lack of satisfaction/connection with the world around us. There are a billion and one ways to handle this issue, and I think normalizing substance usage only works as a barrier to usage (e.g. Netherlands: remove the "sex factor" due to "prohibition") when the substance has already been commonplace for years. E-cigs are new enough that prohibition can send strong signals to people who might be considering getting into it, especially because as a society we have successfully built quite a lot of "energy" behind the idea that tobacco usage in general is fairly harmful/not sexy (c.f. the situation with alcohol, where it remains synonymous with "socializing").
Because, at best, it is a very dubious and hamhanded way to solve a problem that is ill-defined.
Is the problem advertising, or advertising to minors, of nicotine products? Then ban that.
Is the problem that minors are able to buy vapes even though they shouldn't be able to? Then strengthen enforcement (ah, but that costs money).
Is the problem that some vape products are too easily smuggled into schools and look like USB sticks? Fine, then set a minimum size requirement on vaping devices. Heck, mandate they be colored a bright primary color.
Who cares what Juul or the tobacco industry says? They will say whatever they need to say to sell stuff, we know that. What matters is that vaping is substantially less harmful than tobacco by all accounts.
Personally, I could potentially get behind a total ban on tobacco, as it is very harmful and costly to society, although I'm generally anti-prohibition. But what makes no sense in any possible universe is banning vaping while keeping cigarettes legal.
I think most people are against prohibition because prohibition brings in police violence to a situation where there was no violence.
I guess it depends on what happens if you break this law. If police officers use violence against you if you use an e-cigarette then that is way, way wrong. Violence should not be used when no violence is happening and the person hasn't defrauded or hurt anyone.
Haha, I wonder how much of an effect this is going to have. Most SF kids know how to take BART down to Daly City and everyone knows enforcement of using a vape is not going to happen. Like you could always smoke weed on the streets of SF. It was defacto legal for years.
It’ll be interesting to see if taking BART/muni down to Daly City will be a problem.
The moral panic regarding tobacco and nicotine is well past its expiration date.
Yes, the prevalence of smoking was a problem; yes, it's social acceptability in places people had to be (workplaces for example) impacted the health of people who didn't want it; and yes, some people still get addicted with sad consequences.
BUT, at some point you have to let people have their freedom to choose and not stop people using nicotine products who understand the risks and don't have dependence issues.
Vaping tobacco products is excellent for quitting because the nicotine delivered is less effective. There is not less of it, it has diminished desirable effects.
MAOIs are drugs which inhibit a kind of enzyme in the brain and among other effects have strong drug interactions increasing the potency of many psychoactive drugs.
Cigarette smoke either contains or has similar effects to MAOIs the effect which is significantly more addictive [1] nicotine.
Meanwhile you can buy vape cartridges of weed at any dispensary in SF. What makes no sense is SF is going to wait for the FDA to study ecig health effects while at the same time the FDA has made its position pretty clear on weed.
The homeless in SF use cigs, not e-cigs. It would've therefore been productive to actually ban the sale of cigs instead so as to drive out the homeless, but why would one expect an ounce of unbiased logic from politicians?
Actually I think that substance abuse (cigs, alcohol, heroin, etc.) is the reason why many of them are homeless to begin with. The right thing to do for them would be to medically cure their addiction, thereby making them capable of helping themselves. This is hard to accept for those who don't know how to cheaply and sustainably treat addictions.
Mental illness exists mostly due to controllable factors. Those who don't know of or understand these factors consider it a mystery that requires medical management. Medical management is legitimately required due to evidence of genetic or structural damage only. It is quite overused otherwise.
Here are many of the somewhat avoidable factors that result in mental illnesses:
(1) insufficient sleep
(2) insufficient physical activity
(3) serious infections
(4) excessive stress
(5) high BP
(6) high bad cholesterol
(7) insufficient omega-3s
(8) unhealthy processed food intake and/or SAD diet
(9) vitamin and mineral insufficiencies
(10) side effects of prescription drugs, not limited to PPIs and anticholinergics
(11) narcotic use or abuse
If you fix the above lifestyle factors, there would be far fewer cases of "mental illness".
So, like in Chicago with the gun-stores, you'll have vape stores open up just outside the city limits. It's not illegal to vape, just to sell vaping products or ship vaping products to SF addresses.
There is a bit of a contradiction in banning e-cigarettes "for the good of the children" while legalising cannabis, which is known to have adverse effects on teenagers.
Vaping is epidemic in US middle schools and high schools. Restrooms are filled with vaping smoke and causing lot of problems for others. Schools are not doing anything about it.
So.. should we ban everything which teens find trendy for everyone? E-cigs are already age-restricted, same as alcohol and weed (which kids are also consuming). Why is vaping specifically targeted? Perhaps we should go after the schools which are not doing anything about it or after the parents who aren't paying attention to their kid's finances?
All of the issues Californians face and this is all they can accomplish? Another ban? The largest economy in the US and this is it? What a shithole. Literally.
I got a recruiting email from Juul a couple of weeks ago : "Help power the movement to end cigarette-related deaths!"
That's bullshit. From all the stats I have seen so far (and to be fair, since I don't smoke, it is not a subject I follow very closely), e-cigarettes are on track to negate all the progress made on young smokers.
A good proportion of the teens that start vaping and go on to start smoking cigarettes would not have started smoking without juul.
And before somebody starts claiming that Juul has zero responsability there, Juul is also paying social influencer directly targetting teens.
The "queers hate techies" thing is all over. While walking down Valencia once and checking out ATA's window gallery, I got the impression that the vandalism might be coming from them. Or someone masquerading as ATA.
The real reason this ban is good is because e-cigarettes cause lots of plastic (cartridge) and battery pollution. Regular cigarettes believe it or not are not as bad for the environment (even the filters break down after a while).
I don’t think this health issue really matters because if someone is addicted to smoking regular cigarettes that only affects them. Pollution from e-cigarettes on the other hand is bad for everyone, even the non-smokers.
This has to be political, as singling out vaping while allowing alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, AND requesting tax dollars for "safe spaces" for drug injection, make zero common sense.
Let this be a lesson - politicians will greenlight you as long as you fill their coffers
Sigh... with all the real and urgent problems the city (homelessness, housing shortage, vehicle break-ins, etc.) has they somehow have time to enact garbage laws.
"After Donald Trump took office the next year, the agency said it would push back until 2022 a requirement that vape companies submit applications to continue selling their products. Once a product has FDA approval, the legislation would allow its sale in San Francisco again."
The city supes want e-cigs regulated by the FDA before they are sold, just like regular cigarettes are.
Just because FDA approval is not mandatory until 2022 does not mean that Juul can't submit an application for FDA approval now, if it wants to sell in SF.
At first I was against it, then I heard a rant from the local cornerstore about how e-ciggs were one of his best sellers and he was pissed and I realized it was probably a net good since it was both rabidly popular and really unhealthy. Sure, it's ironic cigarettes are still legal, but that doesn't mean we should stop passing marginally good laws.
Crazy. Good for them. It's like we forget about big tobacco. From a health/social point of view I'm glad they coming out ahead of everyone else. Curious how it will play out in the end, and if the Mayor intends on signing it.
Forget about big tobacco? Are you kidding? Bans like these are a huge boon to big tobacco. I'm sure they're writing thank you notes to the Board of Supervisors as we speak.
I have a friend who's 80 year old grandmother was addicted to cigarettes. He wanted to buy her an ecigarette for christmas to help her quit, even though he subtly felt like it may be for naught given her age and how long she had been addicted. I suggested a Juul just because of how easy it is to operate and the high nicotine content, given its targeted toward people trying to quit.
A few months ago he showed me a picture of her "empty pod drawer". She didn't want to throw out the pods because she was hoping there was a way to recycle them. There were probably a hundred. She doesn't smoke anymore.
Maybe, in the worldview of the officials, no one would consume nicotine. That isn't the world we live in; in the world we live in, these city officials are simply indirectly responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of people. Moreover, I don't even know if that's a world we should be idealizing, in the same way I don't know if a world without alcohol or caffeine or tylenol would be more ideal than the one we have. Just to start thinking about it: nicotine is a nootropic, and recreation is definitely great for your productivity and wellbeing. There aren't zero positives to the chemical.
Its mostly just sad to see addiction so continually demonized in our society. We want to point blame, and then push it out of our minds like it doesn't exist. And in the case of these city officials; literally push it out of their city. I can only hope that, one day, the people who run that very strange city start the process of learning to treat other people with the love and care we all deserve.
I don't want to inhale the smoke or aerosol containing nicotine. That's my right.
If an action which exercising your right violate other's right, that action must be forbidden for protecting the other's right.
So, in this case, the right to smoke shall be allowed in the condition in which my right of no inhaling it shall be honored.
Now, if you don't have a level 3 biohazard facility, you shall not be allowed to smoke.
My right is constantly violated almost everyday.
Unless you are making a health related argument. That is a different right other than you don't want it, that is a health concern, which is why smoking inside is predominately not allowed.
I'm all for personal rights... but they come with personal responsibilities that are upon you.
That's why I never said that I believe people have a Right to smoke, yet for some reason you quote me like I did say that. People don't have a right to smoke, just like you don't have a right to not inhale other peoples' smoke.
Even your usage of the language "rights allowed" shows a clear misunderstanding of how Rights work. Rights are not "allowed" or "granted"; they are "recognized". They are God-Given, assuming you believe in that kind of thing (our fore-fathers did).
Honest question, what do you mean by that?
> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
In other words, the Law doesn't "grant" you a Right to something. It recognizes that these Rights already existed, and (sometimes) forbids the government from destroying them. This is also worded pretty clearly in the of-course infamous second amendment:
> the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It isn't saying that "people have the right to bear arms". Its saying that "your right to bear arms can't be infringed". So, then, where does that right come from? Its Natural.
There's an interesting, somewhat clear follow-up to this recognition of the wording of the constitution and founding documents: they don't exhaustively enumerate the rights people have. So what rights do Americans actually have? In fact, the ninth amendment recognizes this:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Constitutional interpretation is a complex, contentious thing. The way I see it, which is hardly professional: they recognized that because they aren't enumerating every Right, it follows that there must exist rights that some people believe they have, and it isn't the place of the government to either Confirm that Right or Disparage it. If I believe I have a right to kill someone for no reason... well, this shouldn't be allowed in a functioning society. So it follows that Law will inevitably supersede some Rights, just by the nature of Rights being, to a degree, self-decided (by your belief system, or your nature, or parenting, or whatever). Thus, certain protections were put in place to explicitly protect rights they believed were critical (like freedom of speech), but others may actually be "disparaged", and the ninth amendment just says that this is the case: people DO have other rights beyond the ones we listed, but we can't deny them JUST because we listed some other ones.
That's why its fascinating when people throw around language like "I have a right to not breath in smoke". There's a lot at play there. First: If you believe you have that Right, then you do! No one can take that away from you; its your right to not breath in smoke. But, also, Second: Your belief that you have some Right does not, by virtue of it being a Right, lead to the government being compelled to protect it. A Right does not have to be respected, confirmed, disparaged, or protected by the government. Its just something you have, because you're Human.
In other words, the phrase "I have a right to X" gets thrown around a lot, but it doesn't really mean much except the cases where it is enumerated, unless a bunch of people recognize that they also have that Right, in which case it is codified into Law. In an ideal world.
(And I do want to clarify in my comment I made earlier: I was being too brash by saying that the OP "does not have a right to breath in smoke". Maybe they do have that right. My point was really to emphasize that the right isn't Recognized. I have a right to run down the street naked. That doesn't mean the government will or should let me do it. So, saying "I have a right" to something isn't really all that meaningful, unless you're specifically referring to the rights protected by the constitution or law.)
I'm not blind to the pragmatism of public spaces and near outside entrances, etc. That said, your premise is wrong and too narrow. Which is probably a reflection on the greater issues becoming ever more relevant to shutting down conversations, ideas and election meddling that is coming to light. It's probably time for people to start actually listening to ideas they don't agree with, empathize with those positions and rationally come to reasonable compromise. Right now there's only escalation and it will likely lead to a very real, very violent and very different civil war.
I doubt you'll stop driving tomorrow to spare my health though.
Often we end up doing things to make sure they have more profit. I wouldn't be surprised if this e-cigarettes ban is coming from cigarette manufacturers lobbying for it.
You just sighed a death warrant to HN, and 95% of all corporations that make a profit.
"Sean Parker, the 38-year-old founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that the social network was founded not to unite us, but to distract us. “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” he said at an event in Philadelphia in November. To achieve this goal, Facebook’s architects exploited a “vulnerability in human psychology”, explained Parker, who resigned from the company in 2005. Whenever someone likes or comments on a post or photograph, he said, “we… give you a little dopamine hit”. Facebook is an empire of empires, then, built upon a molecule."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/has-dopam...
Profit is a share of the increased wealth created, not stealing what is because you are invulnerable, soulless and can.
Unfortunately there's not very much actual evidence yet that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking, and according to the actual ordinance under discussion, there's some evidence that it can actually increase smoking.
> And while there is some evidence that the use of e-cigarettes by adults may support smoking cessation under certain circumstances, a 2018 National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report concluded that there was moderate evidence that e-cigarette use in fact increases the frequency and intensity of cigarette smoking in the future.
Anyway, I don't smoke and I don't understand why should I endure cigarette smoke on the street.
Personal freedoms.
I've first-hand seen the effects this Killer Drug has on the poor people caught in its grasp. One time, we were at dinner, and my friend stepped outside for five minutes for a vape. I've seen lost souls on so much nicotine, their focus is heightened significantly and they get this almost imperceptible shake in their hands, someone not even looking for it might not notice it but it must be devastating for them. Have you ever been so wasted drunk, then used nicotine to level out and pivot back toward functionality? I haven't, thank the lord.
All of this, and these poor people are also forced into paying Big Juul dozens of dollars a month. I mean, a Juul pod costs about $3, imagine if a coffee from Starbucks or a soda were to cost that much!
I've tried almost every variation of ecigarette mod out there except mechanical mods, because I'm not an idiot enough to know I'm too much of an idiot to use one safely. Nicotine salt (the type used in juul and smok nord, among others) are the best- balance of nicotine from the sub-ohm types without the obscene amount of vapor pouring into your lungs, and the filter doesn't constantly clog / burn like the older, smaller pen and marker varieties.
Does it suck that also makes them perfect for teens to hide their addiction? Sure. Then again, there's also a market starting to boom for tobacco-free nicotine pouches, using tea leaves or other filler. It's also way, way cheaper to get the liquid for vaping online than it is in stores anyway.
This ban, at the scope of the city, won't help teens, and it's only going to hurt the people living there. For better or worse, drugs like caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, and THC are here to stay.
Candy cigarettes. Big League Chew. And now e-cigarettes. It's common (and now scientifically documented) knowledge that tobacco companies have used these types of flavors and products to target young smokers. There is decades of evidence and little reason to believe it won't continue.
Whether it's 'fair' to adults in terms of how many flavors they have access to is up for debate but the lawmakers' reasoning is sound.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118335/
> Advocates of public health care consider candy cigarettes (cigarette sweets) one example of the way in which international trademark or copyright laws are violated to promote tobacco products to children.1,2 People with vested interests in confectionery and tobacco have denied these claims and argued that restrictions on confectionery resembling tobacco products are unnecessary. We review recently available documents from the tobacco industry, which describe cooperation between the manufacturers of tobacco and candy cigarettes, ineffectual trademark enforcement, evidence that candy cigarettes may promote smoking, suppression of unfavourable findings from research sponsored by the confectionery industry, and successful attempts to avoid legislation or regulation.
> Summary points
> * Candy products that mimic packaging of tobacco brands may promote smoking in young people
> * Executives of both the tobacco and confectionery industries have regarded candy cigarettes as good advertising to future smokers
> * Some tobacco companies granted confectioners permission to use cigarette pack designs and tolerated trademark infringement
> * Children who have used candy cigarettes are more likely to become smokers
> * Unfavourable research sponsored by the US candy cigarette industry was suppressed
> * Elimination of candy cigarettes and other confectionery resembling tobacco products may help achieve public health goals of reducing tobacco use in young people
One is a 18+ only product (or 21+ in California) the other is in candy stores kids frequent and purchase. One is heavily restricted on advertising ESPECIALLY to youth, the other isn't (or wasn't, I don't know the current rules of big league chew).
Fruity e-cigs are made for adults, purchased by adults, advertised to adults, and are illegally obtained by teens. Candy cigerettes, and big league chew is made for kids, purchasable by kids, advertised to kids, all hoping to later get them addicted to the products they actually represent.
Juul has never even hinted at teenage use of their product. They’re fanatically trying to position themselves as a “switch” product for smokers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This comment is really quite mild actually. Certainly not worthy of a moderator stepping up.
Yes, there's far too much snark and derision on HN. It's an internet forum after all. Surely you're not suggesting we should do less about it?
The "how is this comment so much worse" objection is based on a fallacy. You don't not get a speeding ticket just because other cars were going faster.
"Oh, right, because <inverted quippy opinion that they think is self-evidently correct instead of just writing an actual response>!"
Also, when did non-college-age children get allowed laptops in class? We werent even allowed to have a cell phone on our person during school hours, let alone a laptop.
Except the smell of having smoked cigarettes lingers on your person and when you waltz back into the room with that bathroom pass the teacher goes "How was your smoke break, I mean, bathroom trip". and your green apple jolly rancher vape smells like, a green apple jolly rancher.
Do you have kids? They love what their friends have, and really really like candy flavors.
You also did not provide a response to the text you quoted. Why does having kids, or knowing that they like candy flavors, mean that all flavored things are aimed at children?
When kids start demanding moscow mules, I'll give them a free copper cup.
For $0.10 you can have endless flavors, real health benefits, and as much as you want.
Anyway...cheers. :)
So if you're trying to avoid caffeine or sugar you need to be careful when choosing your teas.
Kids under 16 aren't old enough to drive, and yet there are plenty of toys shaped like cars and trucks.
Toy guns, movies involving gun violence without R ratings, saturday morning cartoons, television featuring people consuming alcohol, etc.
All of the above can have just as bad as, if not worse, consequences for children should the gateway argument be applied.
This is not to downplay the consequences of minors using tobacco products. It's to demonstrate that just because something appeals to a child does not mean that it should be prohibited for adults to consume / participate in situations that only adults should be allowed to consume it.
Campfires are plenty enthralling - sing along songs, s'mores, hot dogs, etc. There's no calculating the devastation caused by out of control fires, and children definitely should not be playing with it, and yet there's no call to ban adults from enjoying them either.
The whole argument is an ad absurdum, from campfires all the way back to banning pleasant tasting tobacco.
When Alcopops gained prominence in Europe, there was a huge outrage and much talk of bans. In the US, the FTC has investigated the link between wine coolers and underage drinking several times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcopop
I'm young enough to remember caffeinated Four Loko being popular in high school. And yes, they were banned/reformulated on exactly the same premise: that they targeted underage consumption[1].
[1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2009-08-24-090823...
Most telling is that the article you posted was entirely focused on college age adults, not teenagers. In fact, I didn't find any references at all to underage drinking as the reason why it was reformulated. Am I missing something?
Nicotine, like caffeine, has a bitter taste on its own. Ecigs are flavored in part to cover the taste. Lambics aren't fruit juice, ecigs and flavored chew aren't candy. No-one would ever mistake the two.
Because the companies themselves have admitted to marketing towards this demographic. [1]
The market was wildly unregulated and it was printing free money for these companies to target kids and sell these pods in retail stores. Heck I even remember going to a gamestop and seeing video game style vape pods.
I'm not going to comment on the ban itself, but I think it is reasonable to assume that these companies have very big incentives to target minors and create brand loyalty early on since regulations can be quite murky regarding e-cigarettes.
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2018/11/16/t...
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/ctp-newsroom/e-liquids-...
Just look at that packaging! It's aimed directly at kids. JFC, it's even got the leprechaun and rainbow on it, same font, same little marshmallow shapes, just like the cereal.
'Oh, but adults like colors too!'
Give me a break.
I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head that regularly smoke but say "it's not smoking, it's just hookah, it's a social thing". I guarantee you, if there weren't hookah bars and instead were "cheap-cigarette bars" exactly none of them would smoke.
Then with 'e-cigarettes' you have flavours like 'blueberry pie' 'brownies' 'waffles' pretty much anything you could ever want. You're going to sit there and tell me you don't think if a minor gets their hands on one will be like "oh man, this grape jolly rancher flavor is awesome, but I think there is nicotine in it so I must never ever ever touch it again"?
I was watching something on Hulu or Netflix this weekend that was high school aged characters and there were kids puffing away on liquid nicotine rigs in the background of multiple scenes.
If they think banning is a solution to vaping and it’ll be successful, why not ban syringes —I’m sure they’re equally effective.
On a different note, as someone who's used e-cigs to wean off cigarettes and eventually quit altogether, this ban is pants-on-head puritanical stupidity.
That's both an amusing mental image and a pretty great idea. One that has no analog with hypodermic needles, so it's still a false comparison.
I'm 29, which puts me sort of at the intersection of two age groups right now. I'm starting to be able to connect with older folks, and I can still connect with younger 20somethings.
Nobody I know under 25 smokes cigarettes. Anecdotally, cigarettes in that age group are nearly universally abhorred. Vaping, however, is seen as counter-cultural and cool. Moreover, and perhaps worse, it's seen as nonaddictive and harmless. Yet severe, almost crippling nicotine addiction is celebrated in popular culture (e.g., https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/06/sophie-turner-d...).
In fact, I've seen a depth of addiction to Juul that exceeds what I've seen from older pack-a-day cigarette smokers. I know folks who have to take a hit off their Juul every 3-5 minutes all day long except when sleeping. When sleeping, they won't sleep through the night continuously, and if they do they won't sleep more than six hours because they'll need to wake up and take several hits.
Kids do not want to smoke cigarettes. Young people generally do not want to smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes are mostly a risk to the older generation. Juul and other brands have caused a new generation to become shockingly addicted to nicotine all over again from scratch.
Of course, with all that said, one must wonder which group of people should be prioritized: kids or the older folks? This legislation is trying to protect the former at the expense of the latter (by taking away an effective smoking cessation tool). Clearly, this does not make sense in San Francisco -- a city that more or less does not have kids at all.
So even if people just swap smoking for vaping, a HUGE problem was solved.
This product hasn't existed for very long, so long term studies just don't exist yet.
That said, there is some research that suggest caution is at least still warranted: https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/impact-of-e-...
This is just truly absurd. For some reason I thought maybe it meant the use of vapes indoors or something similar, but the entire sale? Fucking overbearing politicians. This kind of hypocritical action makes progressives look bad.
Here's some interesting public polls (Gallup): https://news.gallup.com/poll/237818/young-people-adopt-vapin...
According to their data, in the 18-29 demographic, 20% vape compared to 16% using traditional cigarettes.
And some analysis from the academic side: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2018/10/31/toba...
"There was a substantial increase in youth vaping prevalence beginning in about 2014. Time trend analyses showed that the decline in past 30-day smoking prevalence accelerated by two to four times after 2014. Indicators of more established smoking rates, including the proportion of daily smokers among past 30-day smokers, also decreased more rapidly as vaping became more prevalent...
The inverse relationship between vaping and smoking was robust across different data sets for both youth and young adults and for current and more established smoking. While trying electronic cigarettes may causally increase smoking among some youth, the aggregate effect at the population level appears to be negligible given the reduction in smoking initiation during the period of vaping’s ascendance."
So, it seems to be mixed. Certainly more younger folks vaping than using cigarettes, though it's roughly 55%/45%... and this might not have a strong impact on overall smoking rates.
(I'm actually surprised. I expected to see more vape use based on my own anecdotal observations!)
It’s entirely reasonable to take regulatory steps to protect younger persons. Habits ingrained now last a lifetime - that’s why Juul is fighting this - a new generation of consumers is at risk of not having access to their product. Other cities and states are watching this play out.
By the way, just because you don’t see a lot of kids where you hang out, believe me there are tons of kids here. I have one. We live in San Francisco. There is a robust parent community here. You may not see it if you aren’t looking for it. For example, did you know there’s a large playground at ... mission Dolores park? And if you and your childless friends decided it was a fun place to play, you will get asked to leave. Possibly by the police.
1) e-cigs/vaping is safer with less carcinogens going into lungs. That will lead to less health issues down the line. Even if kids are getting them, which they shouldn't because it is sold in an age limited regulated market, it is still safer than cigarettes and a regulated market with good production is always safer than an unregulated black market.
2) vaping/e-cigs don't combust, so there is no fire, which almost cuts out the threat of a fire starting completely unless a battery explodes which is very rare. A burning cigarette falling will continue to burn by design every single time.
3) e-cigs/vaping leave no butts, no trash and are mostly devices people want to keep and reuse. Reusability and no pollution are what e-cigs/vaping bring. Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean pollution [1], and next to gum, all over all the time.
Prohibitions and illegality of substances a certain percentage of people will always use, make these areas more dangerous in use/production and make harm reduction much more difficult.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigar...
Massive progress has been made in getting kids not to take up smoking. If you're a smoker, switching to vaping is a good thing. If you're not, it's a bad thing.
I took a long time deciding to try vaping. I've never liked cigarettes, cigars are a rare thing for me, and I usually let my pipe tobacco go stale. I was still quite worried about trying vaping regardless. I had the same worries you elude too. Vaping nicotine put the nail in the coffin for the idea that I'll start consuming tobacco addictively.
I have a completely different experience with cannabis BTW.
Abstinence > safe sex > unsafe sex
Yes, the first is desirable, but let’s be serious, it’s not a reasonable goal for most people.
Smoking's been in a very successful decades-long decline due to public policy interventions. "Not smoking" is an entirely reasonable goal for most people.
And my point was, teenagers are always going to use mind altering substances. Vaping is a mind altering substance.
People don’t like kids vaping because sobriety is the goal. And I’m saying that’s unrealistic.
When vaping is discovered to have medical benefits, I'll happily change my stance on it. (I'd be happy to have vaping be prescription-only for smoking cessation, in a similar regulatory regime as many states' medical marijuana programs.)
(That said, kids should avoid weed in any form, since it's known to affect brain development.)
2. Do you support SF treating weed the same as e-cigs?
I would assume banning the sale of via business located inside San Francisco vs police throwing you against a wall and patting you down when they see you vaping something.
It seems to me that whether someone is thrown against a wall is not nearly as important as whether something is legal or illegal, in terms of infringing on liberties.
Most commercial e-cigs have some form of disposable component, ranging from the plastic pods used by Juul to some Blu-branded devices which are entirely one-time-use.
I'd prefer a full ban but this is at least staunching what was a regression for public health. E-cigarettes, since their introduction, haven't improved public health - they've worsened it.
I really don't want anyone to feel shamed over their smoking habit but it's an unhealthy thing and if you get into as an adult you should do so only when you're fully aware of the consequences - the way they've been advertised has hooked a lot of minors.
My only experience with the e-cigarette marketing have been commercials where some guy is standing there telling you the same type of stories being shared here “I used to smoke x amount of cigarettes a day, now I use this”, followed by the usual boilerplate “nicotine is an addictive substance” disclaimer, a brand/logo, commercial ends.
Seems benign enough, I can certainly see how some may be turned off by the existence of such marketing at all, is this perhaps what you meant by them being irresponsible or could you help me understand a bit better?
I think we can also look to history when it comes to the flavouring of things, it used to be that medicines would be sweetened to override the natural bitter or acidic tastes of the active ingredients but this led to more abuse of those substances.
[1] https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/vaping-ad...
[2] https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/web-vape-...
Had to let this post sit for a minute before responding, and on the grounds you're offering, to really think about it and look at other examples; ultimately I think I agree with you. Your point is well met.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=vype+ads&oq=vype+ad...
[citation needed]
> For decades, the percentage of high school and middle school students who smoked cigarettes had been declining. For the past three years, it has flattened, according to new numbers released Monday. There may be several reasons, but a recent boom in vaping is the most likely explanation, said Brian King of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[0]: https://www.erswhitebook.org/chapters/tobacco-smoking/ [1]: https://www.alternet.org/2012/09/how-gambling-can-kill-you-f...
That's well beyond personal liberty.
Is there a safer stimulant and do you think this ban will encourage people to use that?
They are, however, still extremely addictive. Arguably more so than cigarettes, since they enable the consumption of much higher doses of nicotine.
A friend once told me, having quit nicotine and heroin, that while quitting heroin was 'like being the living dead', he could probably go through it again, but not nicotine.
Isn't every stimulant? I'm reluctant to ban things on the basis of their addictive potential without considering the consequences of the addiction. I'm pretty sure at least half the people I know need coffee in the morning, but I don't think that means we should ban caffeine. I don't see nicotine as objectively better or worse than caffeine so it's unfortunate that one is the target of legislation and one flows like the manna from heaven in most gathers of people.
Additionally, I think there's a 'good' in letting people choose the stim that works best for them. I personally prefer amphetamine, others prefer coffee, some people find comfort in nicotine.
Open mind here, but can someone elucidate this to me? It came up once in a rather intense discussion with my father in my teens once I discovered the devil's lettuce (cannabis) and my curiosity has yet to be abated by a convincing enough take on the matter.
Aside from the ash related risks tobacco is highly addictive due to the nicotine and contains other toxins that can harm you in the long term. For reference, here's what Canada has to say about the chemicals[1].
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-toba...
As far as we know. However, I've got a gut instinct that coating your lungs with flavor additives and propylene glycol or glycerin probably isn't the healthiest thing to do.
Then the atomizer, cheaper ones basically use a piece of steel wool. If you let that variety get mostly dry and still puff away (this was more of an issue a decade ago when they were newer and people had 'drip tips' before all these tanks and battery mods caught on) you absolutely start to get metal fumes which are often quite hazardous to your health.
We have zero long term studies on coating your lungs with this stuff, it may be relatively benign or we may see in 5, 10, 20 years people developing some crazy sort of lung disease.
It's also far more easier to give yourself nicotine poisoning vaping than it is via cigarettes as you can sit there and just constantly puff away because you've got blueberry soda, brownie, super duper wacky fun fruity pebbles bubble gum, etc flavors.
I know people that will vape through ten plus ml a day because they are just constantly puffing away due to the flavor and the nicotine. His 'rig' is effectively permanently attached to his hand and he carries around multiple large batteries in a man-clutch with a few extra tanks. I'm betting he's not alone, in the minority sure but there are likely a lot like him and having your lungs saturated 18 hours a day in nicotine, dye and flavoring agent can not be good.
Smokers become desensitised to the warnings really quickly from looking at them every time they smoke.
I was just in a vape shop in the American south for the first time a few days ago.
They are presented as technological marvels. No noticable gory death warnings.
There are several different vape models out in the store center plugged in for you to try out. Everything is extremely clean and shiny, it basically looks like an Apple store. The juice is kept behind the counter in bottles that are backlit with a pleasant blue light [1]. The store is also lit from above by those lightbulbs that have the vintage looking exposed thick filaments [2].
Everything about the store screams, "This is healthy, this is the future, this is cool"
The actual vapes available for sale are locked in a display cabinet, making it feel as if they are as valuable and desirable as jewelery. Behind the counter is a counterculture looking person with guages and tattoos and a laid-back but professional attitude.
Completely different from a typical tobacco store.
There are also ads out on the counter about CBD oil and how it's totally not illegal, so you should definitely give it a try.
I'd imagine the presentation is much the same in California.
[1]: https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/YNiG2iB_3prcuo0araZY...
[2]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0903/0788/products/Thomas_...
All the price raising on tobacco has done is push revenue into the black market, invent crimes from nothing and turn otherwise honest people into criminals.
Here is the evidence of the public health meaures:
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.n...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB-WCX6ndow&feature=youtu.be...
Because of this belief by vapers, in my experience they tend to be more indiscriminate about where they puff and exhale...the end result is far more exposure to second-hand vape than second hand cigarette smoke.
You're gonna have to source that claim, because that's insane to suggest. The pods are definitely bad for the environment, but relatively speaking when compared to, say, large-sized McDonalds cups or the dozens of cigarette butts a smoker may go through in a single day, one little 2cm by 2cm piece of plastic every few days doesn't seem like it should be top-of-mind.
To be clear, I no longer smoke.
You're absolutely right. And why should they care? They don't own the power they wield, they're merely renting it for some period of time. After their time is up, and they're done throwing their weight around, they can wash their hands of all repercussions.
Whereas companies that harm the public often don't even care about the first order effects of their business.
[0] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...
Plus, it's unclear how those industries get split. For example utilities, trade, healthcare, and leisure/hospitality all have a large number of office jobs. And cities have a higher concentration of office jobs than rural areas. I would be willing to bet that in most medium-large sized cities, half of all jobs could be done remotely.
A two-thirds vote can also be minimally required for major changes, so as to stabilize the system.
¹https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=7111897&GUID=7C3...
Even if there is no way to prevent more kids from getting addicted to vaping (and that's a big if), having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health.
--
Anecdotally I went from 2 packs a day to chain vaping for a few years, health improved enough to start being much more active, finally weaned down nicotine, quitting vaping was hard but not near as yard as other cigarette quits, have been nicotine free for almost a year (not even a puff) and now I avg about 10+ miles a week running and 50+ miles a week biking and am in the best shape of my life at almost-40.
I really want vapes to be available as an alternative to conventional smoking but the companies pushing them now are addicting a lot of new users, if the market participants were more responsible these devices could have been all positive.
In this debate people really underestimate how bad smoking is for you.
UK NHS estimates e-cigarettes about 95% less damaging than smoking. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vaping-quit-smokin...
Huff post says that in 2011 it was 16% for youth.
So if you know 20-30x vapers than smokers that's incredible evidence that vaping is reducing the number of smokers dramatically.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cigarette-smoking-decline_n_6...
For some historical context when I started college in mid 2000's 20-30% of the people I knew smoked.
There are a few dangers to vaping.
The biggest one is having a vaporizer that is malfunctioning and is burning things instead of heating them up. The complex chemical reactions are difficult to predict. But it has the side effect of tasting like shit.
The second biggest danger is the flavorings. However the community has been very good at self-policing and eliminating flavors that are found to pose a risk.
The last danger is a sort of being a idiot and using way too much nicotine.
On the flip side you can have zero nicotine. So peer pressure isn't really even a problem as you can get zero nicotine juices.
Sounds like something for a Youtuber to measure. :)
I never tried a Juul, just regular mods and vape pens if that makes a difference.
Maybe some of the flavours have impact too, I don't know. One thing that is different is it's "just" a cough from immediate irritation. None of the horrible green and yellow crap coming up from a coughing fit next morning that you got from tobacco.
That's ignoring Juul which works differently, I have no idea what goes on in those.
I have a feeling most of your college friends will grow out of vaping.
Of course, I'm also biased by having only lived in LA and the Bay Area where I bet smoking is less prevalent than other parts of the country.
Without vaping, that smoking rate would probably be 1/6 people, which is worse than everyone vaping.
Are you calling vaping "smoking"? Because that would be disingenuous.
Also you may as well just say "since e-cigs were introduced" since there was never a time that they weren't flavored.
Vaping isn't a euphemism. It's really a different thing altogether. In fact, I euphemize it back to "smoking" because I hate the term "vaping". It sounds so lame.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20280258
E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
JUUL absolutely should be banned from marketing at children, it’s blatantly obvious they know what they are doing.
I’m generally not in favour of legislation because it often either doesn’t work or has bad 2nd order effects but this is one of those cases I’d make an exception for.
Over here in the UK they limited the max strength of vape fluid to 18mg (previously 24mg was common) and reduced the max tank size (I kept my old one as the they are where interchangeable).
It remains to be seen what effect if any that has though.
No, that's incorrect. Juul manufactured "Fruit Medley" and "Mango," both of which are now restricted to online-only sales through their age-verification platform. There are thousands of other vendors who sell sweet-flavored nicotine solutions, though.
I also fundamentally disagree that only children like sweet flavors, and I wonder why fruit-flavored ciders and liqueurs are still legal.
>E-cigs are essentially a very addictive substance (Nicotine) and a bunch of unregulated (and unreported) substances + flavor.
So are regular cigarettes. But regular cigarettes also include the inhalation of a significant amount of tar.
>They're also disguised as usb-keys and hard to detect (not like a cigarette).
It's not a disguise. When first released, Juul's form factor was fairly distinctive but there are a wide variety of commercial e-cigarette form factors now. I'm also not sure what "hard to detect" has to do with anything -- by who, when, in what context?
>I'm sure SF lobbied with JUUL before laying down the ban-hammer.
What does this mean? The phrasing is usually "Company X lobbied Politician Y" or "Company X hired a lobbyist to lobby members of Legislature Z."
People cite this as if its the end of the justification for legislative action. No, it's merely the beginning of the argument. So the rate of e-cig usage is growing rapidly among teens. Why should I care?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -- CS Lewis
> E-cigarette use among U.S. youth and young adults is now a major public health concern. E-cigarette use has increased considerably in recent years, growing an astounding 900% among high school students from 2011 to 2015. [0]
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/e-cigarettes...
And when were E-cigs invented anyway? Comparing against 2011 may be a way to get big percentage numbers, without describing much about prevalence.
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0211-youth-tobacco-...
And despite the scary stories, it seems reported vaping use hasn't sharply risen. It peaked in 2015, substantially declined in 2017, and for 2018 seems to have returned to 2015 levels. But overall vaping use has at worst replaced cigarette smoking and possibly accelerated the long-term decline in smoking. A recent study, https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2018/10/31/toba..., concludes
> If our primary concern is population-level trends in youth and young adult smoking, which we believe is appropriate, then vaping has not shown to be a serious cause for concern, even if the catalyst hypothesis is correct, and it is possible that vaping may be playing a contributing role to the recent steep declines in youth and young adult smoking.
The anti-vaping hysteria is irresponsible and to the extent it ignores the data and creates a boogeyman out of unknowns it's anti-science. Compared to the parade of horribles consequent to tobacco use and even marijuana use, not to mention alcohol and other drugs, nicotine itself should be the least of our worries. And that's before we even consider the efficacy of a ban in terms of preventing teen vaping. (And if we as a community could manage to have an adult conversation about nicotine, like we briefly did for THC, we might appreciate the benefits of nicotine--e.g. that it's used by a significant fraction of adults and teens alike to self-medicate real behavioral and mental health problems.)
But yeah, banning all of it (with priority on getting rid of the real cigarettes that cause others' harm) in public spaces would be my preference.
That's not a thing. Are you thinking of heated vaporization of tobacco leaf? Because what "vaping" is today is a liquid that's atomized by a heating element, not solid matter. There can't be ash from glycerin and propelyne glycol
It should be noted that many vapes, including Juul, use temperature regulation and it's highly unlikely that they would produce a burnt wick.
Where's the proof that e-cigarettes are harmful?
We have mountains of evidence that cigarettes are one of the most harmful habits one can do.
Do we have proof e-cigs cause lung cancer, or other types of cancer? COPD? asthma? no, we do not.
edit: people seem to be very downvote-happy on this site when they disagree with something.
Combustion of tobacco produces polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which are heavily carcinogenic. Vaporization of nicotine does NOT produce these compounds.
Additionally the UK Government claims that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, suggesting they are less damaging than junk food, soda, or car exhaust. Why not ban coca-cola and real cigarettes besides ecig?
This is going by the old "Fool me once shame on you, falsely convince me that tobacco products pose no health risks twice shame on me" - I think that's how that quote goes.
I'm not claiming e-cigs are _good_ for you, but greater harm than, say, soda and junk food, has not been proven.
The UK government claims they are 95% less harmful than cigarettes: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/vaping-quit-smokin...
Besides nicotine, e-cigarettes can contain harmful and potentially harmful ingredients, including:
>ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs
>flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease
>volatile organic compounds
>heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead"
https://e-cigarettes.surgeongeneral.gov/
UK government claims ecigs are far, far less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.
"Research estimates that, while not risk-free..."
Less harmful but harmful nonetheless. Not without risk. Contaminants and other unnatural elements are introduced into the lungs.
Vaping is harmful, too.
Best advice. Don't be stupid. Don't smoke anything at all. It's unnatural. Your lungs are trying to tell you something when you first try it. Listen to them.
Family member finally quit smoking to ride more, went a little too gung-ho on endurance and developed an afib. He couldn't take blood thinners due to arthritis meds. Mixing those is apparently worse than your stroke risk. But he lost that lottery and threw a clot a few years ago and things were pretty bad.
It's not about quitting anymore though. It's way beyond that.
Vaping is incredibly addictive, and because it's 'not smoking' and Juul is marketing it as 'cool' - it's massively taking over.
While vaping is obviously better than smoking, it has odd side effects due to the fact it's not, for example, I found myself vaping all the time, as opposed to just 'smoke breaks'.
Understand a few things:
1) Marketing works 2) Trends are real 3) Young people are very impressionable 4) The earlier addiction happens, the more life-long issues it causes 5) Critical masses are real: 5 kids in a high school doing it may not flip the school, but 25 might be enough and flip it into 1/2 the school 6) Supply and Demand is real. Make things harder to get, more expensive, higher barriers, the less people do it, the less likely there is to be a 'tipping point' collective behaviour.
I don't think they should have banned it, but they should totally ban all forms of advertising and promotion, there should be relatively high taxes on it, health warnings, and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school. At least if the kids can go all day without vaping, they might not fall into a hole.
In Canada, vaping among teenagers has increased 75% in one year this is quite a substantial thing to worry about. [1]
[1] http://www.cancer.ca/en/about-us/for-media/media-releases/na...
I think criminalizing drugs leads to a lot of societal problems. I don't think legalizing all drugs is the answer to those problems.
Info for those interested here: https://harmreduction.org/issues/overdose-prevention/dope-sf...
The analogy was not a comparison of methadone and vaping.
So regardless of anything else, it’s good that ecigs are banned as much as possible.
Personally, I think society should allow adults to vape, though I believe there should be incredibly strong regulations against companies benefiting from the sale of addictive chemicals. The interesting conversation to me is how to protect children and inform the public while not compromising liberties that don't need to be compromised.
[1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Comparison-of-the-effe...
From the abstract: "For all byproducts measured, electronic cigarettes produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes."
Not to nit pick, but that sentiment may be backwards. Society should not disallow vaping. By default, we are free beings and we are allowed to vape. Until someone stops us by threat or force.
San Francisco assumes that the existing controls on the purchase of tobacco products by minors are a failure. They must act.
San Francisco's reaction to this is to ban all tobacco products from the city, for the children. This is perfectly rational.
But wait, no, their reaction is to ban the harm reduction option and keep the worst tobacco product known to be the most addictive and the most harmful to health on store shelves, where they believe they can't keep it from being purchased by minors.
The headline should read, "San Fransisco insists that minors switch to cigarettes." That's the only rational conclusion any sane person could draw from this.
San Francisco is bending backward on a lot of issues. Homelessness, scooters, airbnb, housing, weed and now vaping.
I will never understand what the officials are smoking here.
They aren't throwing money at this one, obviously.
But as someone with two kids living in San Francisco I think it's actually a great city for kids. The city spends extravagantly on parks, libraries, and youth programs.[1] The homeless and drug addict situations are very problematic, but mostly concentrated outside the neighborhoods (rich and poor) where families are more common. That said, there are quite alot of kids in the Tenderloin, where homelessness and drug use are endemic, than one would think.
[1] The City of SF has a $12 billion budget, greater than that of ~14 states judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
Also, that flavored nicotine smoke smells nasty. Most smokers tend to be aware that people don't like their smoke and they make some effort to keep it out of people's faces, but vaping isn't smoking, it's vaping, and cool and less harmful than cigarettes, so who could possibly object to vape smoke filling the air? /s
Great, ban all advertising of nicotine products. I'd be fine with banning soft drink ads while we're at it. However, what does this to for public health when the harm reduction option is removed and literally the most harmful option available is for sale by the very system that SF doesn't trust to keep its products away from children?
Let's assume what you say is correct, that they're marketing it for kids. The correct action isn't to ban it, it's to ban the marketing.
Also, SF did in fact ban flavored tobacco products last year, but it seems that wasn't sufficient to combat the rise in e-cigarette usage among SF high school students.
In any case, it seems the ordinance doesn't actually ban e-cigarettes. It bans e-cigarettes that have not received FDA premarket approval, which is required by law for any new tobacco product. So basically, the city is saying the FDA isn't doing their job, and so the product that shouldn't be allowed to be sold in general without this approval is now banned in SF until it receives this approval.
¹https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=7111897&GUID=7C3...
Can you name any examples of this marketing for a curious reader? After the "blu" e-cigarette commercials were kicked offline several years ago, the only marketing I've seen for e-cigarettes are point-of-sale ads in gas stations or tobacco shops.
- thank you for smoking
So now you have a new issue.
The (wholly unfounded by extant evidence)theory is that substantial numbers of teens who vape are going to move on to the more harmful cigarettes, and so e-cigarettes should be discouraged. Great. However, if that's your theory, step one should be ban regular cigarettes.
Why?
Because my baby keeps finding steaks and choking on them!
Shouldn't you just...take responsibility for your baby and keep it away from steak? Plenty of people eat steaks and they're fine.
No! You don't get it because you don't have kids.
Edit: Seriously though, I do understand, and if I were a parent I too would probably try to deflect my responsibilities onto the rest of society. Parenting is hard, and it's much easier to try to control the whole world than to control the little people you're personally responsible for. It's an easy impulse to indulge, and history is full of examples of this. I don't blame you.
More like banning near beer.
But: Vaping! Freak out! NIMBY! Move fast!
Agree with all other comments, this is stupid. Vaping isn't great. But banning it without any other options is...ultra dumb.
The city is attempting to address this very complicated problem and invest in shelters / affordable housing. A lot of wealthy home owners protest when they attempt to build housing for the poor (in their backyard). I'd argue the homeless problem in SF is more of a national / United States issue than SF specifically.
>Terrible roads which are worse than Chicago
I haven't been to Chicago in like half a decade but I don't think the roads in SF are terrible?
>Horrendous traffic? Do nothing
Traffic isn't bad unless you spend all of your time commuting in the East Bay, the Peninsula, or you pick terrible driving times on the weekend. During the work week the traffic within the city outside of FiDi is usually fine (which is most of the city). Outside of SF proper traffic is definitely pretty bad though, especially in the East Bay.
I can usually leave on a Saturday at 8am, get to upper North Bay (Novato, etc), crank out a 5+ mile hike, grab lunch, and be back at home by 11:30am without hitting any traffic. People who decide to sleep in and leave at 11am definitely hit a ton of traffic (because that's a terrible driving time).
>Agree with all other comments, this is stupid. Vaping isn't great. But banning it without any other options is...ultra dumb.
I don't really get it, I imagine it's more of a jab towards Juul than anything else.
Surely you must be exaggerating? How quickly do you cover 5 miles hiking? How quickly do you eat lunch for that matter?
Either way, if you start the hike before 9am in the North Bay you'll beat the traffic rush out of the city. You could spend an extra couple hours if you wanted. As long as you head back before 2pm you'll beat the re-entry rush into the city.
Roads: down town is like a warzone! Huge potholes everywhere.
Traffic...ummm, east bay/south bay are where most people live. Also traffic in the city is terrible too. Your Saturday routine sounds like you don't leave Marin...which sure, yeah, not a ton of traffic.
Where do you think most of these homeless people from? SF originally? It's a national issue, they migrate to the West Coast from all over the country because of weather and better programs. The West Coast is pretty much the social safety net of the United States for people with mental illness and other issues.
>Traffic...ummm, east bay/south bay are where most people live. Also traffic in the city is terrible too. Your Saturday routine sounds like you don't leave Marin...which sure, yeah, not a ton of traffic.
I don't hit traffic in the city before 11am on the weekends. People sleep in and get started later, if you beat the rush you beat traffic.
Yeah the traffic is definitely going to be where all the people live because that's where all the people live. You said SF specifically in your comment not the "Bay Area" or East Bay / Peninsula.
Does anyone know how the government of SF would enforce that on an online retailer not based in SF? Tell them they've been fined, then sue them in state court if they don't pay?
SF City is one of the most corrupt institutions I know.
Making things illegal doesn't stop people from doing them.
2. If the government is going to take my money, they should be spending it on treatment of the underlying issues. Not putting a bandaid on the needle diseases.
We don't know if vaping is safe. So, using the precautionary principle, you could ban it or restrict it for non-smokers until we get more data. Public Health deals with population sizes, not individuals. Imagine 100,000 non smokers take up vaping. Some of them will be harmed (because nothing is risk free). We need to have a discussion about how many people being harmed is an acceptable risk, and how we communicate that risk to users.
And there's some evidence that people who start vaping with nicotine-containing products will become addicted to nicotine and move to tobacco. That isn't helped by companies going out of their way to design a more addictive vaping product. This is another reason to restrict vaping products and only allow them to be used by people who smoke tobacco.
Personally, I disagree with the ban and I prefer Public Health England's stance. I think banning vaping while allowing internal combustion engine vehicles on the road is dumb. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-le...
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-tobacco-bonds-work-an...
That said, this is 100% showboating for the 'family friendly' schmoe vote. There is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent online purchases.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/news-releases/2018/12/...
>Reported use of vaping nicotine specifically in the 30 days prior to the survey nearly doubled among high school seniors from 11 percent in 2017 to 20.9 percent in 2018. More than 1 in 10 eighth graders (10.9 percent) say they vaped nicotine in the past year, and use is up significantly in virtually all vaping measures among eighth, 10th and 12th graders.
It's already illegal for kids to buy them, but it's trivial for them to just get'm anyway when the shops are already selling them. This will mean that kids will have to leave the city to get it, or get it on the black market. That will reduce usage, and send a message to other cities that it's a tenable proposition (somebody had to be the first to ban it).
There are valid issues. The typical anti-prohibition ones that crop up are "criminal black market uprising" i.e. the mob in Chicago during alcohol prohibition. I'm not sure this is as valid as vape usage isn't as prevalent as alcohol, nor is it as integral a part of our culture. Worth watching, though.
Another issue is the apparent hypocrisy - for some reason, cigarettes can still be sold in the city, besides being decidedly more disgusting, environmentally unfriendly, and unhealthy. On the one hand, they got this vape ban through quick, so it might finally allow the banning of tobacco products as a whole to come through as well. On the other hand, why target vapes before cigarettes? I have no idea.
In any case, the goal is to get kids to stop smoking. Doing one part of that (banning juuls) isn't the entire battle, and shouldn't be treated as such.
There's the devil's advocate argument. I personally believe that a better solution is no prohibition, but massive tax to ensure the proper cost is being levied on these products - i.e., for cigarettes, purchasers need to offset their decision by providing the State with the funds to cover the environmental, public health, and public image impact of the cigarettes. Similar to the carbon tax argument. Furthermore, government resources being levied on educational outreach to ensure that the public is aware of the genuine detriments to these kinds of products. Finally (this is already implemented), ensuring companies like Marlboro aren't allowed to make false claims regarding the unhealthiness of their products, even hinting as such through imagery (i.e. showing an ad of a doctor smoking or something).
Because banning substances has worked so well in the past - see weed.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, without further argument. Marijuana usage went up a couple percentage points in Colorado after legalization.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-viz-met-colorado-lega...
Prohibition kinda works, kinda doesn't. I think it really depends. Banning something like alcohol that the vast majority of the population partakes in was very silly. Banning heroin? I'm not so sure it's as simple.
Should we ban sweet alcoholic drinks?
I remember when it was the Republican Party that went to the “what about the kids?!” well to justify asinine legislation and laws.
Vaping is so much better than tobacco than we should be discussing banning alcohol before vaping as far as harm to society is concerned.
The specific ordinance (#190312) that passed is covered on this page: https://sfgov.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3895574...
That page links to this video of the discussion last week on the measure (no video yet from today's meeting): http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/33463?view_id=1...
The ordinance just passed the Board of Supervisors and will need to be signed by Mayor London Breed to go into effect.
There are no minutes from today's Board of Supervisors meeting posted yet, but you can see from last week's minutes that the ordinance has support from all 11 members of the board: https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/bag061819_minutes.pdf
If you want to comment on this legislation, I think the best way at this point is to contact London Breed's office by calling (415) 554-6141 or emailing MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org. Again, the mayor has to sign the legislation before it becomes law.
- Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org
- https://sfbos.org/contacts-office-clerk-board
Or if you have thoughts about this particular issue, it is now in Mayor Breed's hands:
- MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org
- https://sfmayor.org/contact-mayor-london-breed
[1]: https://sfist.com/2019/06/18/juul-just-bought-a-28-story-som...
- Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org
- https://sfbos.org/contacts-office-clerk-board
Or if you have thoughts about this particular issue, it is now in Mayor Breed's hands:
- MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org
- https://sfmayor.org/contact-mayor-london-breed
A side effect of requiring refillable pods may be an increased initial cost for the device and a bottle of juice, but at the moment there are refillable systems that are cheaper (and lower quality) than Juul.
As far as the waste from batteries and the risk of devices not being disposed of properly, my personal device actually recommends contacting the manufacturer or a shop that sells the product to perform a proper battery replacement. The old battery is then disposed of safely.
Vaping in a way that affects other people is always wrong, but until there is a push for society to call out the users who vape in improper places, legislation will not fix the issue. I would like to see more efforts to educate current or potential users about the risks of vaping and also the risks of misusing their devices. The current culture of vaping cannot be relied upon to accurately reflect the health issues that can from from it, as the vaping community seems to always fight back against any possible health risks.
Regardless, it's asinine that San Francisco would ban e-cigarettes and not actual cigarettes. It's also pointless; nothing stopping people from heading to Oakland or Daly City (or further) for their vape pens/juice.
Thanks to that, I was able to find the "legislative background" for the restriction on non-FDA-approved tobacco products: https://sfosb.org/sites/default/files/documents/SBC/190312%2...
And for the prohibition of tobacco sale/manufacture/distribution from city property: https://sfosb.org/sites/default/files/documents/SBC/190311%2...
Are they trying to make the health consequences of their existing drug abuse problems even worse?
The rich and politically-connected SF elite figure this'll kill the underclass faster by pushing them toward cigarettes.
\end{tinfoil}
More seriously, I'm more-or-less in favor of banning e-cigarettes... if they actually bothered to ban actual cigarettes, too. The failure to pass a general nicotine ban has turned a presumably-well-intentioned piece of legislation into yet another paver on the road to Hell.
EDIT: apparently the actual laws are more nuanced than that, and while they do specifically target electronic cigarettes, that targeting is as an example of a class of product not previously considered under existing legislation. I haven't read through the full details on the relevant ordinances[1][2], but it ain't quite as simple as "SF wants to extort Juul for money"; on the surface they actually seem pretty well-reasoned.
[1]: https://sfosb.org/sites/default/files/documents/SBC/190311%2...
[2]: https://sfosb.org/sites/default/files/documents/SBC/190312%2...
Also, I hate it when cigarette smokers throw butts on the ground or in the gutter. I've had yelling matches with people on the street over it.
I understand the issues with vaping, but seriously, this is just insane.
1) so vaping pot is ok? Vs nicotine
2) the largest fucking evape co (JUUL) is hq in sf
3) JUUL is investing heavily into vape tech and cannabis
4) have you ever been to any place in SF without smokers
5) SF has the highest number of michelin starred resta of any city on the planet - which means that you have a bunch of stressed out industry ppl who are going to smoke cigs/vape cigs
—
Also, who the heck is “passing” this bullshit. They should have a /r/ for “stupid things sf wants to do”
I dont smoke cigs or vape or even smoke cannabis!!! Yet i build cannabis tech. But get your nimby ass out of here and stop acting progressive.
Progressive is to force the tech companies to provide data and services to help you manage city sentiment.
Because youre failing at being progressive.
What the fuck, SF?
Issues with e-cigarettes:
1) they bypass laws regarding cigarette advertising: compare e-cig packaging with cigarette packaging; this is problematic, especially for youth (the non-users most likely to be vulnerable to advertising for such products)
2) contrary to what is portrayed, they are not interested in helping people quit tobacco usage: tobacco companies have a large stake in this business
3) e-cigs minimize the danger of tobacco, by making the "delivery mechanism" seem most problematic, and thus "solvable"
4) there are other methods to deal with cigarette addiction (nicotine addiction, in particular): they just aren't as sexy
As for the law itself, it sets a historic precedent (if it truly bans e-cigs outright, rather than just on city property/public spaces): tobacco products can no longer skirt flat out prohibition.
I find it ridiculous that:
1) Juul's spokesperson cites "thriving black market" creation as a problematic side effect of this law: the point of prohibition is not to stamp out usage entirely (as history has shown this is not feasible), but to make it more difficult than usual to obtain said prohibited product. Its all about probability. Furthermore, when it comes to habits, even small barriers to existing habits can go a long way in changing them (and conversely, removing small barriers to new habits can go a long way in promoting them).
2) Commenters claim that e-cig users can just go to other jurisdictions, making this law "pointless": again, its about introducing barriers.
The law is far from a perfect solution, and I doubt it was intended to be, but it's just a small step in the right direction.
Finally, I think substance abuse problems fundamentally come from a lack of satisfaction/connection with the world around us. There are a billion and one ways to handle this issue, and I think normalizing substance usage only works as a barrier to usage (e.g. Netherlands: remove the "sex factor" due to "prohibition") when the substance has already been commonplace for years. E-cigs are new enough that prohibition can send strong signals to people who might be considering getting into it, especially because as a society we have successfully built quite a lot of "energy" behind the idea that tobacco usage in general is fairly harmful/not sexy (c.f. the situation with alcohol, where it remains synonymous with "socializing").
Is the problem advertising, or advertising to minors, of nicotine products? Then ban that.
Is the problem that minors are able to buy vapes even though they shouldn't be able to? Then strengthen enforcement (ah, but that costs money).
Is the problem that some vape products are too easily smuggled into schools and look like USB sticks? Fine, then set a minimum size requirement on vaping devices. Heck, mandate they be colored a bright primary color.
Who cares what Juul or the tobacco industry says? They will say whatever they need to say to sell stuff, we know that. What matters is that vaping is substantially less harmful than tobacco by all accounts.
Personally, I could potentially get behind a total ban on tobacco, as it is very harmful and costly to society, although I'm generally anti-prohibition. But what makes no sense in any possible universe is banning vaping while keeping cigarettes legal.
I guess it depends on what happens if you break this law. If police officers use violence against you if you use an e-cigarette then that is way, way wrong. Violence should not be used when no violence is happening and the person hasn't defrauded or hurt anyone.
I can understand wanting to control access to something that kids are getting into, but it feels like we're repeating some mistakes here.
It’ll be interesting to see if taking BART/muni down to Daly City will be a problem.
Yes, the prevalence of smoking was a problem; yes, it's social acceptability in places people had to be (workplaces for example) impacted the health of people who didn't want it; and yes, some people still get addicted with sad consequences.
BUT, at some point you have to let people have their freedom to choose and not stop people using nicotine products who understand the risks and don't have dependence issues.
Vaping tobacco products is excellent for quitting because the nicotine delivered is less effective. There is not less of it, it has diminished desirable effects.
MAOIs are drugs which inhibit a kind of enzyme in the brain and among other effects have strong drug interactions increasing the potency of many psychoactive drugs.
Cigarette smoke either contains or has similar effects to MAOIs the effect which is significantly more addictive [1] nicotine.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16177026
But e-cigs are banned?
That's messed up. If you're going to protect people's health (at the expense of some freedom) be consistent about it.
How nice of you to think of the homeless too. Where do you want to drive them to?
Given the way healthcare works in America (or doesn’t as the case may be) I’m curious how that could be addressed.
Here are many of the somewhat avoidable factors that result in mental illnesses: (1) insufficient sleep (2) insufficient physical activity (3) serious infections (4) excessive stress (5) high BP (6) high bad cholesterol (7) insufficient omega-3s (8) unhealthy processed food intake and/or SAD diet (9) vitamin and mineral insufficiencies (10) side effects of prescription drugs, not limited to PPIs and anticholinergics (11) narcotic use or abuse
If you fix the above lifestyle factors, there would be far fewer cases of "mental illness".
I don't know why I keep expecting consistency in my public policy but I am once again thoroughly disappointed.
This is just another moral panic.
Which imo is nowhere near as harmful as tobacco. I don't understand the hysteria.
I got a recruiting email from Juul a couple of weeks ago : "Help power the movement to end cigarette-related deaths!"
That's bullshit. From all the stats I have seen so far (and to be fair, since I don't smoke, it is not a subject I follow very closely), e-cigarettes are on track to negate all the progress made on young smokers.
A good proportion of the teens that start vaping and go on to start smoking cigarettes would not have started smoking without juul.
And before somebody starts claiming that Juul has zero responsability there, Juul is also paying social influencer directly targetting teens.
Banning vaping and not tobacco keeps with the aesthetic of embracing tradition and rejecting technology. Ridiculous, but unsurprising.
[1] http://www.atasite.org/
I don’t think this health issue really matters because if someone is addicted to smoking regular cigarettes that only affects them. Pollution from e-cigarettes on the other hand is bad for everyone, even the non-smokers.
Let this be a lesson - politicians will greenlight you as long as you fill their coffers
We need new blood in our city government.
The city supes want e-cigs regulated by the FDA before they are sold, just like regular cigarettes are.
Just because FDA approval is not mandatory until 2022 does not mean that Juul can't submit an application for FDA approval now, if it wants to sell in SF.
Isn't vaping an improvement over smoking?
Vaping nicotine and e-cigarettes are both far more innocuous than marijuana and THC/CBD.
- Traffic - Homelesness - Heroin Epidemic - Housing Crisis - Street Fecal Matter - Public Transportation
Jesus Christ, San Francisco.
YAY!
I hope you HN mods get cancer of the dick.
Such brave. Wow.