[arkades]

(1) nicotine gum is used as a weaning assist, not an ongoing alternative

(2) you chose to overlook his point that vapes are also an on-ramp to smoking, not just an off-ramp.

(3) people really oversell the whole “vape isn’t combustion” bs. Both the solvent and the flavors form toxic aldehydes when vaped, and their long term safety has not been assessed.

[strathmeyer]

The only reason you could want a smoking-cessation product to not be available is because it causes big tobacco to lose money. Why are you telling lies that other people have to be paid to tell? Why are you doing it for free?

[flyingcircus3]

Welcome to the Oppression Olympics, where there are always exactly two points of view.

Back here in the land of analog spectra, there are people who are concerned that an addictive product wildly successful with teenagers is generally problematic, regardless of what it is displacing. Astroturfing with crocodile tears exacerbates these concerns.

It is possible to acknowledge a problem, and, at the same time, criticize suboptimal solutions as kicking the can down the road, while maintaining the general goal of solving the problem.

Stop foisting binary propositions upon your interlocutors.

[arkades]

No, reasons to not want a supposed smoking cessation product to not be available - which by the way, wasn't a position I was taking - is because it has other harms, and the magnitude of those harms has to be weighed against the magnitude of the harm of smoking.

Nor did I lie; nor did you have a single lie to point to.

And suggesting that I'm a paid shill - or worse than that, an unwitting shill - without even having grounds on which to criticize what I said is both a value-less contribution to this discussion, and well below the HN standard.