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San Francisco bans e-cigarette sales
San Francisco has become the first US city to ban e-cigarette sales until their health effects are clearer. Officials on Tuesday voted to ban stores selling the vaporisers and made it illegal for online retailers to deliver to addresses in the city.
The California city is home to Juul Labs, the most popular e-cigarette producer in the US. Juul said the move would drive smokers back to cigarettes and "create a thriving black market".
San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, has 10 days to sign off the legislation, but has indicated that she would. The law would begin to be enforced seven months from that date, although there have been reports firms could mount a legal challenge.
Anti-vaping activists say firms deliberately target young people by offering flavoured products. Critics say that not only is more scientific investigation into the health impact needed, vaping can encourage young people to switch to cigarettes.
Also at CNET.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday June 27 2019, @12:28AM (2 children)
From the articles I've been running across (like this one from Yale Medicine [yalemedicine.org] which quotes the Surgeon General) the studies over the past decade indicate that the #1 reason given by pre-teens & teenagers for why they started vaping is that the flavors/scents appealed to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 27 2019, @01:41AM
So you're insinuating that because young people like it, adults can't have it?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday June 27 2019, @02:13PM
Here's the thing. Unflavored cigarettes appealed to teenagers in great numbers long before vaping was a thing. They weren't especially inexpensive, they stank, they made their clothing stink, they made their teeth yellow, and they gave them incredibly bad breath. Clearly that wasn't about "flavor."
The general conclusion, reached over many decades, has been that the initial and continuing appeal was rebellion. Those decades of observation saw movies and cigarette companies all working to leverage that "it's cool" impression, and yeah, kids kept picking up the habit. Even after it became clear that it was fundamentally self-destructive. Even after it became much more expensive. It's worth pointing out that the cigarette companies made huge bank running with that assumption. The most "flavor" they ever really went after was that disgusting menthol garbage. That's because they didn't need flavor to sell to kids — or adults, for that matter. They used "cool." It worked.
Now we see a change in practice: these electronic things come along. The kids mostly use them. A lot of them stop using cigarettes. Okay, so what's it mean?
Looks to me like the rebellion has simply shifted from product A to product B. Assuming that's not the case requires a view that teenage desires have shifted in ways that are entirely unlikely and for which there is zero evidence.
Of course they're not going to say "I started because I wanted to be cool and rebellious like Frank"; they're going to give you a reason that gives the practice an intrinsic value: "oh, they just smell nice."
I highly doubt kids have changed enough to be "all about the flavor." No, I think they're still after "I want to be the cool kid" and I think that's almost the entirety of what we're seeing here.
If you actually want to remove the appeal of drugging, drinking and smoking (but I repeat myself... twice), not to mention whatever forbidden or socially unacceptable practice that comes along tomorrow, then you have to remove the tendency to rebel. Which very few parents ever figure out a path to.
Of course, knowing it's rebellion isn't going to stop the parental angst when they see their kids doing something self-destructive. So what to do? Focus on something they think they can go after: "Oh, it's the flavor, we'll stop the flavor!"
My prediction: the pressure will grow and grow against this, and kids will vape more because of that pressure, as the practice is perceived as even more rebellious.
It reminds me very much of how our society treats terrorism. Some bunch of mental cripples does some horrible thing. Society gives them huge attention and publicity. All the other mental cripples take notice and think "gee, I'm going to get me some of that attention."
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