No, they took the stance that this crusade against good flavors should specifically and only apply to Juul. Maybe deservedly given Juul's behavior in marketing to teenagers. Today, you can go to gas stations in most states and buy Cherry Ice Lemonade Cotton Candy Mr Fog vapes, or Geekbars, or whatever brand shipped straight from China is popular this month. To be honest, even if Juul were allowed to bring Mango back, I'm not sure anyone would buy it; compared to the actual desserts you can smoke today, Juul Mango doesn't hold a candle.
In other words: Our government utterly decimated an American company just to make room in the market for Chinese competitors to dominate.
Would this not be due to the unfortunate reality that litigation and enforcement can be carried out against domestic companies more effectively than foreign ones?
Because it's hard to get any laws passed, much less a law that tackles two major things (tobacco and alcohol) at once
In most US states the sale of alcohol is already much more restricted than the sale of tobacco.
You can walk into any 7-11, convenience store, or gas station and buy tobacco. In most states, this is not true for alcohol.
Also, tobacco vape use is much more addictive and somewhat more concealable than alcohol. People can generally tell or at least suspect you've been drinking; people generally cannot tell if you just vaped 10 seconds ago in the bathroom.
It's far from ideal and you and I would certainly not design a country from scratch this way, but legislation (at least, ideally) deals with things as they are and not with an imagined tabula rasa state of affairs.
Do you mean why vapes aren't allowed to be sold in exciting flavours in a lot of countries?
Because what happened there was that 'strawberry kiwi', 'banana ice', and 'miami mint', and whatever fruity flavour in a colourful package you can come up with, turned vaping from something adults did to quit smoking tobacco into the biggest hype amongst teenagers since fidget spinners. Only they get addicted to nicotine as a bonus, and switch to 'proper' tobacco in their senior years.
Even with a complete ban on those the damage is done, and all across the globe society is now dealing with a huge profitable underground Snapchat-enabled market geared solely at selling the equivalent of a pack-a-day habit in nicotine to kids. (The ban helps to gradually denormalise vaping again, so it is good to have in place.)
Vapes aren't just for adults to quit smoking tobacco. They're a nicotine-delivery system. It's a way to use a legal stimulant. The flavors would make it potentially more enjoyable.
I don't think vape kids are ever switching to tobacco - that doesn't fit the model that they want at all: its an electronic device that delivers a stimulant.
Why is alcohol something that's okay to market to kids? (The new supergirl is a drunk party girl). Isn't alcohol much more harmful?
Every single person I've known who switched from tobacco to e-cigarettes has switched back to tobacco. They all say it's better for one reason or another.
I switched to vaping, IDK, 10 or so years ago from an off and (mostly) on cigarette habit and haven't looked back. There was a point where I was spending more on 'cheap' Chinese vape gear than I was on cigarettes but, other than that, no regrets.
And, yes, I'm a middle-aged adult who likes to vape flavors a well.
Perhaps the only downside, if you can even call it that, is I never tried to quit vaping as I enjoy it and it (probably) won't kill me before the lingering effects of a couple decades of smoking, environmental hazards of invading Iraq twice, the skin cancer and whatever else comes up due to my general lack of concern over living a healthy lifestyle.
And every person I know that vapes did so to quit tobacco and hasn't gone back. Unfortunately, I don't know anywhere near enough people to have significant conclusions based on that.
Certainly my observations are pure anecdote, and only really a handful of people; all of whom started smoking before vaping was available. That said, a cigarette is a pretty impressive way of delivering nicotine, which is why they are so addictive. It's not hard to imagine that someone who's become addicted to nicotine via vape would then try other delivery methods and find them more satisfying.
That said, I do think that vapes as a replacement for an existing tobacco habit is a nice idea and it makes sense that it would be much safer. The issue is just that I have not known people to stick with them.
In the Netherlands the scientific Trimbos Institute has been reporting this based on their regular demographic research polls, but health care professionals are drawing this conclusion too. Near the end of high school vaping is something the kids do. To be really cool, you gotta smoke — and as this group of unfortunate kids is already addicted to nicotine…
As a former smoker and vaper for 12 years this is unfathomable to me. Vaping is just better in every way. It takes some getting used to when coming straight from cigarettes, but after that the flavor of tobacco is just pure stench when compared to vanilla, strawberries etc.
No, what is reported is that older high school kids who vape take up smoking tobacco because vaping is perceived as childish by that time.
This is from a Dutch newspaper article interviewing one of the researchers from the Trimbos Institute:
> De overstap naar sigaretten met tabak is vervolgens snel gemaakt, zegt Croes. „We horen ook dat de jonkies op het schoolplein vapen, maar dat in de bovenbouw niet meer stoer vinden. Dan gaan ze roken, wat in hun ogen nu weer een positief imago heeft gekregen.” Zo vormen e-sigaretten volgens haar een „enorme tegenkracht” voor campagnes die jongeren van roken moeten weerhouden.¹
(Tobacco) smoking is cool again. The young kids vape, so to be really cool and adult…
Central planning saviors to the rescue, keeping everyone safe from themselves or else in jail or public supervision. So no, it is not "good to have in place".
Rules around fruity flavors (trying to target sales that disproportionately go to kids) are one thing. Rules around menthol are another, only slightly less heinous thing.
About 85% of African Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes, compared to a rate of less than 30% menthol use among white Americans. [1] They're disproportionately advertised and were (in the past) literally given away in poor Black communities to get people addicted.
Basically, policy makers can target their regulations to a specific group by specifying flavor. Sure, an individual white adult might like fruity flavors or menthols, a black adult might like originals, and some kids might prefer original or menthols, but there's a strong statistical bias.
When health departments are trying to address a particular health concern - say, young children smoking - they can do so by targeting fruity flavors. Conversely, when tobacco company marketing departments are trying to advertise their products to Black users without drawing unwanted attention from disproportionately white regulators, they can achieve their goals by promoting menthols. An individual from any population might have any flavor preference, but the dice are shockingly heavily weighted when you're looking at large groups.
there is no exception to alcohol for this. Anybody who was a teenager or older in the aughts remembers "alcopops" (might have had a different name depending on where you're from). Lots of countries regulated or raised taxes on mixed drinks because they were seen (probably justifiably so) as targeting teenagers. In Germany it resulted in Smirnoff Ice and some Bacardi mix drink largely going off the shelves.
To be fair 99 Bananas still tastes like ass with a hint of incredible artificial banana.
Also the cultural aspect is just different. It is generally harder for kids to get alcohol in my experience and also you (usually) don’t carry a bottle of 99 bananas and swig it every few minutes out in public.
Perhaps most importantly is that alcohol doesn’t contain nicotine. People get addicted to alcohol but not in the same way people get addicted to nicotine.
I don't know. But they clearly don't have a lot of money, a refined pallet, and don't mind crazy flavors. Everyone I know seemed to have tried it in a particular time in their lives, and oddly they don't seem to drink it anymore.
Regulators have no control over who looks at a given billboard or television ad.
It's a new phenomenon that they might (might) be able to tell TikTok or Youtube to estimate the age of individual viewers and limit which topics can appear in advertisements to different age groups.
The existence of the candy flavors and any public marketing of those flavors (even on the label in the store aisle) is implicitly marketing to children.
Because of the belief that making them desirable to adults is a method to sell them to kids. It also makes them less desirable which keeps cigarette sales up. Tobacco lobby is still going strong with its influence.
the point is that as far as they are permitted to be sold and consumed with regulations for largely cultural reasons, alcohol and tobacco are both subject to cultural (fluid) regulations, and inconsistencies between them are a matter of the speed and power of diffuse cultural forces, not some sort of big conspiracy against libertarians
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/e-cigarettes/why-youth-vape.html
https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/ctp-newsroom/misleading...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6663555/
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/05/...
https://www.drugs.com/news/study-finds-powerful-sweetener-va...