As a former smoker who quit with the help of vaping, I find it disturbing that so many people, particularly politicians, appear to be doing all they can to prevent people from following in my footsteps. Anything that can break the cycle of smoking – gum, patches, hypnosis, vapes, whatever – should be employed as soon as you can convince yourself or someone else to use them. To limit those options is to call into question the seriousness of all the virtue signaling about ending tobacco use.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) led the fight to shut down Juul and now has a company called Elf Bar in his sights. Politicians from both parties have been pushing to ban flavored cigarettes, then flavored vapes. OK, fine. Not exactly the cornerstone of a free society – limiting what adults can choose to do with their own bodies – but whatever.
After decades of subsidizing the growing of tobacco, now government is moving to do everything short of banning it. I say “short of banning it” because they haven’t moved that far…yet.
They likely won’t push for a full ban, not only would it be unpopular with smokers and non-smokers who like the concept of induvial liberty, but governments at all levels rake in billions of dollars in tax revenue from its sale. Politicians care about people’s health, sure, but they really love tax revenue more.
While there’s not nationwide ban on tobacco planned, or even really talked about, vaping is in their crosshairs. Vaping liquid, or “juice,” doesn’t generate that type of cash for governments, so it’s no sweat to target them.
In addition to the idea that companies are “targeting” kids somehow, we now have the boogeyman or fentanyl added to the mix.
Fentanyl is horrible and a killer, but it doesn’t have anything to do with nicotine vaping – something 10 million American adults are doing in large part to quit smoking deadly cigarettes. Still, in a piece entitled, “China is fueling America’s fentanyl epidemic through illegal, disposable flavored vapes,” a claim is made that vaping is the new Russian Roulette, with any inhale from a vape possibly to be that person’s last thanks to the deadly drug. The only problem with the column is there’s zero actual evidence of it happening, at least not how the article describes it.
The article states, “A 13-year-old in Georgia was hospitalized after unwittingly consuming fentanyl contained in a disposable flavored vape. One school district in Iowa reported in February that officials are finding ‘vape devices across the country are being laced with fentanyl, and local authorities have reported an increase of laced devices in the Quad Cities area.’"
After a basic search, the 13-year old in Georgia appears to have been given a laced vape by classmates (9 of whom his mom said were bullying him to use the vape), not as part of a mass importation scheme. “Why did those kids do that to me? They said they were my friends,” the boy asked.
As for the quote in the second story about “vape devices across the country being laced,” that came from a school superintendent in Iowa in a story about 1 vape pen with THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) and fentanyl, though it wasn’t confirmed by a lab at the time.
But, there’s no evidence in either example that the product was “imported from China” loaded with fentanyl. Admittedly, the Georgia incident was a single and terrible case involving a nicotine disposable, but it was a case in which PCP and THC was also found. Aside from killing your customer base being bad for business, it would also be easily traceable back to the source. The more likely and logical suspect is kids or drug dealers adulterating their THC vapes by tossing in other drugs because, face it, if you’re inclined to try pot, you’re likely not thinking logically about the dangers of other drugs.
Activists who want to ban flavored nicotine vaping for whatever reason, and I don’t question that some want to do it to “protect kids” in their minds, aren’t about to let an opportunity pass them by. Out of context quotes and anecdotal “evidence” no one is going to look to verify are useful tools, but that doesn’t make them true. And the media is more than complicit in continuing to run “fentanyl-laced vape” headlines without even knowing or specifying what products they are talking about.
I quit smoking with the help of vaping. It was a temporary measure for me, a critical step in the process to get me off cigarettes. Now, more than 10 years later, I’ve been completely nicotine-free, and vape-free, and feel great. Am I typical? No, but that is because the FDA and special interest groups have convinced the American public that smoking is safer than vaping, which is categorically false. Quitting smoking is really hard and has a low success rate – people keep failing, in part, because the FDA hasn’t given us the tools to quit. Politicians and activists, whether their intentions are good or not, should stop attempting to demonize a very effective tool in that effort.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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