Why should the FDA use up government resources to regulate vaping?
Put another way, why do we think the solution for people with no integrity or no clue or both trying to make money out of vaping (Juul included) is to spend taxpayers money helping them behave themselves?
I find this attitude pretty crazy to be frank. Consider that whatever happens from here, however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.
There is that, and then Juul pretending to be a benefit to society while getting children addicted to nicotine and then selling themselves to big tobacco... what exactly is the benefit of vaping? The argument it minimises the harm from smoking is nonsense and unproven. There are well established methods of reducing smoking on a societal level (put up the taxes), which return money to the government to pay for all the negative externalities of smoking which big tobacco isn’t held accountable for.
Anyway, the USA has a funny attitude about these things. Personal choice and optionality are considered paramount. Someone else can pick up the pieces. Applying it everywhere is obviously flawed if you ask me.
With the risk of creating a slippery slope, you could make the same argument for spending federal budget regulating breast implants, they are only fractionally used for breast reconstruction, so for the majority of cases they are elective and used by someone who has made that choice.
The substance is legal and consumed by your citizens. Either make it illegal or regulate it, I am not sure there is much point in making moral judgements.
You could apply this to virtually any product category. Liquor, beer, tobacco, soda, meat, toothpaste, soap, on and on and on.
Well you don’t need soda it’s a vice so we aren’t going to regulate it and make sure products are safe.
Who defines the start and end for what should be regulated? You? Legal products in the US should be safe to purchase. If marijuana is legalized it should be safe to purchase also.
> Why should the FDA use up government resources to regulate vaping?
Precisely because people are putting adulterants in black market cartridges.
> however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.
However much joy everybody gets from swimming in a pool, it isn't ever going to be worth 3,536 dead people.
If you're advocating for banning vaping, you're advocating for the creation of a black market. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, it's not working for drugs, and it won't work for vaping.
That’s correct, we should ban the ability to profit from selling harmful products. The swimming pool analogy is completely off base.
You are supposing that prohibition won’t work. But it is the easiest and cheapest approach. All the problems with prohibition apply equally to regulation, but with much greater complexity and cost. Eg there will still be a black market for cheap unregulated vape juice, just like there is for cigarettes. So just put a moratorium on sale for 5 years, and if the pros outweigh the cons, ban it permanently. If not then come up with some other solution, regulation, whatever.
>That’s correct, we should ban the ability to profit from selling harmful products.
Can't tell of this is actually serious or not. There are so many products that can cause harm you might as well just make a whitelist of allowed products at that point.
>You are supposing that prohibition won’t work. But it is the easiest and cheapest approach.
Yet it's never worked and always just created dangerous unregulated black markets that causes more deaths and health issues than regulation and as far as cheapest, I think you're forgetting the cost of enforcement of prohibition.
No matter how much joy people get from driving, it is not worth 37,000 deaths per year. There are proven ways to reduce road fatalities (busses). The government should not be in the business of wasting taxpayer money regulating private pleasure cars.
Put another way, why do we think the solution for people with no integrity or no clue or both trying to make money out of vaping (Juul included) is to spend taxpayers money helping them behave themselves?
I find this attitude pretty crazy to be frank. Consider that whatever happens from here, however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.
There is that, and then Juul pretending to be a benefit to society while getting children addicted to nicotine and then selling themselves to big tobacco... what exactly is the benefit of vaping? The argument it minimises the harm from smoking is nonsense and unproven. There are well established methods of reducing smoking on a societal level (put up the taxes), which return money to the government to pay for all the negative externalities of smoking which big tobacco isn’t held accountable for.
Anyway, the USA has a funny attitude about these things. Personal choice and optionality are considered paramount. Someone else can pick up the pieces. Applying it everywhere is obviously flawed if you ask me.