[deleted]
San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
101–110 of 426 posts
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#102Let's work through the logic here: San Francisco assumes that the existing controls on the purchase of tobacco products by minors are a failure. They must act. San Francisco's reaction to this is to ban all tobacco products from the city, for the children. This is perfectly rational. But wait, no, their reaction is to ban the harm reduction option and keep the worst tobacco product known to be the most addictive and…
Also. There are almost no kids in SF. There are more dogs than children. True fact. San Francisco is bending backward on a lot of issues. Homelessness, scooters, airbnb, housing, weed and now vaping. I will never understand what the officials are smoking here.
They can't solve the hard problems, so they look for crowd pleasers and throw money at them.
They aren't throwing money at this one, obviously.
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#103Let's work through the logic here: San Francisco assumes that the existing controls on the purchase of tobacco products by minors are a failure. They must act. San Francisco's reaction to this is to ban all tobacco products from the city, for the children. This is perfectly rational. But wait, no, their reaction is to ban the harm reduction option and keep the worst tobacco product known to be the most addictive and…
Also. There are almost no kids in SF. There are more dogs than children. True fact. San Francisco is bending backward on a lot of issues. Homelessness, scooters, airbnb, housing, weed and now vaping. I will never understand what the officials are smoking here.
Not Juul, evidently.
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#104The HN response seems strongly negative so far. Can someone educated in the space play devil’s advocate and share ideas on why it might be a good move?
Easily. Vape usage among children and teenagers is going up. That should be stopped. https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/news-releases/2018/12/... >Reported use of vaping nicotine specifically in the 30 days prior to the survey nearly doubled among high school seniors from 11 percent in 2017 to 20.9 percent in 2018. More than 1 in 10 eighth graders (10.9 percent) say they vaped nicotine in the past year, and use is…
Easily. Vape usage among children and teenagers is going up. That should be stopped.
Because banning substances has worked so well in the past - see weed.
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#105Of all the things they could be doing… taking a crap in the streets is fine, but vaping is not. Got it.
You can write to them about your feelings that they should be focusing on different things.
- Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org
- https://sfbos.org/contacts-office-clerk-board
Or if you have thoughts about this particular issue, it is now in Mayor Breed's hands:
- MayorLondonBreed@sfgov.org
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#106All prohibition is asinine but this has to take the cake. Even if there is no way to prevent more kids from getting addicted to vaping (and that's a big if), having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health. -- Anecdotally I went from 2 packs a day to chain vaping for a few years, health improved enough to start being much more active, finally weaned down nicotine, quittin…
I am happy that's worked out for you - and e-cigs are definitely less dangerous than conventional cigarettes, but the adoption rate of smoking among younger folks has spiked since flavoured e-cigs were introduced. I really want vapes to be available as an alternative to conventional smoking but the companies pushing them now are addicting a lot of new users, if the market participants were more responsible these devi…
> the adoption rate of smoking among younger folks has spiked since flavoured e-cigs were introduced
Are you calling vaping "smoking"? Because that would be disingenuous.
Also you may as well just say "since e-cigs were introduced" since there was never a time that they weren't flavored.
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with ecigs is that they are way more polluting than regular cigarettes, due to all the plastic cartridges from the liquid and the batteries in the ecig devices. So regardless of anything else, it’s good that ecigs are banned as much as possible.
This is only a problem with the cheaper Zuul-style units, which use disposable parts with vendor lock-in. Even with those, I'd not automatically believe that they are more polluting than cigarette butts.
Most ecigs are the cheaper disposable kind.
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#108I do not understand why this thread is so against this legislation.
Issues with e-cigarettes:
1) they bypass laws regarding cigarette advertising: compare e-cig packaging with cigarette packaging; this is problematic, especially for youth (the non-users most likely to be vulnerable to advertising for such products)
2) contrary to what is portrayed, they are not interested in helping people quit tobacco usage: tobacco companies have a large stake in this business
3) e-cigs minimize the danger of tobacco, by making the "delivery mechanism" seem most problematic, and thus "solvable"
4) there are other methods to deal with cigarette addiction (nicotine addiction, in particular): they just aren't as sexy
As for the law itself, it sets a historic precedent (if it truly bans e-cigs outright, rather than just on city property/public spaces): tobacco products can no longer skirt flat out prohibition.
I find it ridiculous that:
1) Juul's spokesperson cites "thriving black market" creation as a problematic side effect of this law: the point of prohibition is not to stamp out usage entirely (as history has shown this is not feasible), but to make it more difficult than usual to obtain said prohibited product. Its all about probability. Furthermore, when it comes to habits, even small barriers to existing habits can go a long way in changing them (and conversely, removing small barriers to new habits can go a long way in promoting them).
2) Commenters claim that e-cig users can just go to other jurisdictions, making this law "pointless": again, its about introducing barriers.
The law is far from a perfect solution, and I doubt it was intended to be, but it's just a small step in the right direction.
Finally, I think substance abuse problems fundamentally come from a lack of satisfaction/connection with the world around us. There are a billion and one ways to handle this issue, and I think normalizing substance usage only works as a barrier to usage (e.g. Netherlands: remove the "sex factor" due to "prohibition") when the substance has already been commonplace for years. E-cigs are new enough that prohibition can send strong signals to people who might be considering getting into it, especially because as a society we have successfully built quite a lot of "energy" behind the idea that tobacco usage in general is fairly harmful/not sexy (c.f. the situation with alcohol, where it remains synonymous with "socializing").
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#109I hate cigarettes, I hate the litter, the smell, and the smokers' belief that they have the divine right to pollute my airspace. I also hate the taxes I spend on keeping them in hospital - but. E cigarettes don't cause litter, the smoke is far less offensive. If people are going to smoke they will smoke. SF would be far better off banning actual cigarettes.
Btw, it’s counterintuitive and morbid to think about, but the healthcare and other public spending is actually less for smokers than nonsmokers on average: they tend to die right around retirement age before social security and expensive healthcare is needed. See e.g. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1210319
Re: San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
#110So all these people hooked on juul are gonna switch to real cigs. Nice.
Sure but... it's sort of crazy that juul has been allowed to get a whole new generation of folks hooked on tobacco. There's been a myth spread around that e-cigs exist solely as a more healthy alternative to traditional cigs - they are more healthy but those candy flavours have resulted in my office now having more smokers in it than ever before... and they're all under 23.
Smokers, as in cigarette smokers, or as in e-cigarette smokers? I thought all the candy flavored tobacco cigs (minus menthols) were blown out of the water back in 2011 or whenever the new tobacco act was passed. Interestingly enough, the law led to clove cigarettes being relabeled to cigarillos in order to get around the law.