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Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

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Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#101

Post by atlasunshrugged »

cglace wrote: post #70
magashna wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see how well banning red meat and cars would go over. Vapes are an easy target right now. Heart disease and auto accidents are some of the greatest threats to the average American, but you'll never hear a politician going after those.

Cars are an integral part of our culture and economy and are regulated in every conceivable way. E-cigs are a relatively new vice. Hardly comparable.

Not to mention the things we take for granted in cars today that are there due to regulations - bumpers, seatbelts, airbags, minimum safety standards, etc.

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#102

Post by wcarron »

cronix wrote: post #87
alistairSH wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible Not true. Big Tobacco owns (partially or outright) most of the big players in the vaping industry. Vuse is owned by Reynolds, Vype is owned by BAT, and Altria has a massive stake in Juul. It's in Big Tobacco's interest to ensure vaping is easy and viewed as an alternative to cigarettes. It's also in their interest to keep the product i…

> with candy flavors that appeal to younger consumers. Because no adults enjoy candy, or flavors? That's exclusive to "younger consumers" only? The vast majority of people who vape are adults. They also enjoy flavored e-juice. Maybe we should put stuff in alcohol that makes it so disgusting no one wants to drink it as well by that logic. Ban flavored alcohol and mixers... too many kids getting drunk off peach schnapp…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28318902

From this study:

> Current flavored (including menthol) tobacco product use was highest in youth (80%, aged 12-17 years); and young adult tobacco users (73%, aged 18-24 years); and lowest in older adult tobacco users aged ≥65 years (29%). Flavor was a primary reason for using a given tobacco product, particularly among youth. Eighty-one percent of youth and 86% of young adult ever tobacco users reported that their first product was flavored versus 54% of adults aged ≥25 years. In multivariable models, reporting that one's first tobacco product was flavored was associated with a 13% higher prevalence of current tobacco use among youth ever tobacco users and a 32% higher prevalence of current tobacco use among adult ever users.

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#103

Post by freehunter »

giggles_giggles wrote: post #58
freehunter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if I look back at my youth, I wonder how we all survived Many people didn't, which is why so many regulations exist now.

What? There hasn't been significant child mortality in developed countries since the second world war (when there was a spike due to the depression and war). In the 19th century, child mortality wasn't because of lack of regulation, it's because modern medical science was in its infancy. https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

Your own source contradicts what you're saying... looking at US child mortality rates on your own link shows 4% child mortality rate in 1949 down to 0.7% by 2016. That's a pretty damn significant reduction.

But beyond child mortality, here's another example that regulation does impact: traffic deaths [1]. Government regulations surrounding car safety, seatbelt use, airbags, etc have had a massive impact. Looking at the data from 1970 (a time when older HNers would say "when I was young") to today, there were 4.74 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, compared to 1.16 today. And even as the US has added 120 million new Americans to the population since then and vehicle miles traveled has basically tripled, not only have we reduced deaths per mile traveled, we've reduced deaths period, without worrying about normalizing the data to population or VMT.

I hear quite a bit "when I was young we didn't have seatbelts or airbags and we rode on the back dashboard and didn't have child seats and we survived just fine" except a lot of people didn't. A lot of people died, and that's why regulations were created and that's why fewer people are dying now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#104

Post by atlasunshrugged »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #10

I understand that we don't want our kids vaping or smoking, but banning flavored juices is the wrong way to go about it. All it's going to accomplish is deregulation of the flavored juice market. People will buy unflavored juices and add their own (possibly dangerous)flavoring agents at home. Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible. Think about it, all these cities with vape…

I'm not sure I agree that advertising is the most sane course of action here - if you take tobacco as a reference then the intervention that causes the highest decrease in usage is tax (and higher price coincidentally usually leads to lower usage rates especially in younger people because they're more price sensitive). So if banning is too far to go, then a middle ground might be to have a very high tax on the product in order to 1) decrease usage and 2) put money into a fund in case all these users end up getting a new form of cancer in 20 years that we didn't see coming and that we (society/the state) have to collectively pay for

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#105

Post by freehunter »

ryandrake wrote: post #82
freehunter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if I look back at my youth, I wonder how we all survived Many people didn't, which is why so many regulations exist now.

If you simply ban anything that’s even remotely risky, then yes, it will save some lives. Is it worth it? Do you want to live in a world where we are all walking around inside padded plastic bubbles? Some time between my childhood and today, society collectively lost its mind and decided that the only acceptable way to manage risk is to relentlessly drive it towards zero through the force of law. We are going to end…

The slope is never as slippery as people imagine it to be. Why does every safety regulation always have to end in "kids in plastic bubbles" in the minds of alarmists? And why was the best time to grow up always exactly the time when the "back in my day" people were growing up? No matter when I grew up everything was always perfect when I was a kid, right?

It should go without saying that children dying from preventable causes is not a very good thing to have happen.

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#107

Post by fragmede »

partialrecall wrote: post #48
alistairSH wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible Not true. Big Tobacco owns (partially or outright) most of the big players in the vaping industry. Vuse is owned by Reynolds, Vype is owned by BAT, and Altria has a massive stake in Juul. It's in Big Tobacco's interest to ensure vaping is easy and viewed as an alternative to cigarettes. It's also in their interest to keep the product i…

> It's also in their interest to keep the product in snazzy packaging with candy flavors that appeal to younger consumers. It's also no coincidence that the same industry has been smacked down for the same behavior in the past. Eternal vigilance is required to make these companies behave themselves.

Absolutely. Thus, it's worth reading the restrictions the 1998 accord (the aforementioned "smackdown") that the four biggest tobacco companies entered into for lying to the government, and consumers, about whether cigarettes cause cancer.

https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-toba...

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#108

Post by NeedMoreTea »

alistairSH wrote: post #39
scriptkiddy wrote: post #10

I understand that we don't want our kids vaping or smoking, but banning flavored juices is the wrong way to go about it. All it's going to accomplish is deregulation of the flavored juice market. People will buy unflavored juices and add their own (possibly dangerous)flavoring agents at home. Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible. Think about it, all these cities with vape…

Also, it is in Big Tobacco's best interest to make vaping as difficult as possible Not true. Big Tobacco owns (partially or outright) most of the big players in the vaping industry. Vuse is owned by Reynolds, Vype is owned by BAT, and Altria has a massive stake in Juul. It's in Big Tobacco's interest to ensure vaping is easy and viewed as an alternative to cigarettes. It's also in their interest to keep the product i…

Maybe the US market turned out very different, but the UK market has be pushing 90%+ coming from independent vape shops, stalls and some discount chains selling e-liquids from non-tobacco connected vape specialists. It's where just about everyone seems to get their switch to vaping when they decide to give up smoking.

The big tobacco owned products like Vype are almost always seen in petrol stations, off-licences and small shops that sell, or formerly sold tobacco and cigarettes in addition to their main business. Prices for liquids are 3-4x the price of the vape shops. You still sometimes see these places selling the silly, tiny e-cigarettes that look identical to a king size smoke, with LED where the tobacco used to burn. You won't ever see these anywhere else. I've seen exactly one person using one of these compared to hundreds using regular vape pens and box mods.

Juul was late to the UK party, and I've yet to notice anyone using one of those, though I have seen one or two garages with a few packs of cartridge refills, but they don't seem common.

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#109

Post by atlasunshrugged »

partialrecall wrote: post #94
leetcrew wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not arguing with your main point. at the end of the day, people are certainly not addicted to cotton candy vape flavor. as you say, they are addicted to the nicotine. it would be great if everyone could just quit nicotine all at the same time, but that's not a realistic solution. so for the people who can't quit, what is the best harm reduction strategy that they will actually tolerate? it's certainly not patches, an…

But you said you hate the flavor of cigarettes now, which is not the same as hating flavorless vapes. I would expect you and most others to prefer flavorless vapes to cigarettes, and therefore, to continue vaping after a flavor ban, instead of switching to cigarettes. Am I off the mark there?

I think you're right, however, I still have concerns about the long term unknown effects. Maybe not for vapes specifically, but lets take IQOS which is Philip Morris' heat to burn product which many people says tastes better, doesn't stink, etc. If people switch over to that and it has 9/10ths of the negative effects of smoking but also attracts new people to the market it could easily be a net loss for society.

I'm not a huge fan of banning things in general, I think it'd be more interesting to either tax vapes heavily so people really have to take the cost of externalities into account when they're being used or make them available by prescription.

Re: Michael Bloomberg launches $160M initiative to ban flavored e-cigarettes

#110

Post by robohoe »

kortilla wrote: post #40
magashna wrote: post #7

Adults hate candy, ice cream, fruit, etc. Those are for children. I only vape liver and spinach flavored juice because I'm an adult and I hate sweet things. So when is Bloomberg going to divest from fossil fuels? Need to consider the harm that does to our future's children.

Don’t forget onions. As an adult I also don’t like things that are enjoyable.

He’s a moral crusader
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