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FDA Seeks Ban On Menthol Cigarettes To Fight Teen Smoking (npr.org)
The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it will seek a ban on the sale of menthol-flavored cigarettes. From a report: The announcement came as the agency officially released a detailed plan to also restrict the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes. It also wants to ban flavored cigars. In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says the moves are aimed at fighting smoking among young people. Flavored e-cigarettes, menthol-flavored tobacco cigarettes and flavored cigars are all popular among teenagers. "Today, I'm pursuing actions aimed at addressing the disturbing trend of youth nicotine use and continuing to advance the historic declines we've achieved in recent years in the rates of combustible cigarette use among kids," Gottlieb says.
While cigarette smoking has hit a record low in the United States, vaping has been skyrocketing. That trend has raised concerns that a new generation of young people will become addicted to nicotine. Gottlieb says the moves were prompted by new data showing a 78 percent increase in e-cigarette use among high school students and a 48 percent increase among middle school students, from 2017 to 2018. "These data shock my conscience," Gottlieb says.
While cigarette smoking has hit a record low in the United States, vaping has been skyrocketing. That trend has raised concerns that a new generation of young people will become addicted to nicotine. Gottlieb says the moves were prompted by new data showing a 78 percent increase in e-cigarette use among high school students and a 48 percent increase among middle school students, from 2017 to 2018. "These data shock my conscience," Gottlieb says.
The argument against smoking is that it pollutes the air of non-smokers and affects their health. What's the issue now? I don't want ass flavored vapes, I moved away from smoking for a reason. Nicotine is so bad and yet you let people drink and push way more addicting medications. If I wanted a nanny, I would have hired one.
Really? I suspect it has nothing to do with teens smoking. Also, teenagers usually go for the taboo stuff first, if only to show off a sense of independence to their peers. If it isn't smoking, it'd likely be something else. Besides, teenagers have been smoking weed for nearly a century now, and at least on a recreational basis, that stuff is illegal as hell for kids to partake of.
Sometimes I wish that statists would just say outright what they want to do - it's not like eliminating smoking is a bad goal, and for once the honesty would be refreshing.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Fuck you, if they think they will take my Newports they better prepare for a fight. How about the parents you know... BE PARENTS!! Wtf is with people and their need to control what others do.
People say the solution to the tobacco use problem is to ban tobacco.
People say the solution to the illegal drug use problem is to legalize them.
Whenever a solution doesn't work perfectly, there's a knee-jerk reaction among people to suggest that the opposite of the current solution be tried. Such simplistic reasoning almost never works.
The supposed worry is that kids will become addicted to nicotine.
But that was never a health issue, the other aspects of smoking cigarettes are what lead to lung cancer, not the nicotine itself.
If you remove vaping, what will happen is kids will go back to cigarettes. How is that better??
Vaping has been amazingly helping in getting people OFF cigarettes and the FDA wants to un-spool all that benefit...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yep, being hard to make is why you don't find any street drugs anymore. They all went buh-bye with prohibition. Coke, meth, e, etc, all eradicated with your simple plan. We don't have gangs shooting each other over territory at all.
So, a man should not be allowed a steak just because a baby can't chew it?
Since you obviously don't know your history, allow me to enlighten you: prohibition *always* creates black markets, which funnel huge amounts of money and power into the hands of criminals, who use it to do terrible things. Further, it pushes tax dollars to enforcement of the ban, which is futile and robs us of the better uses on which those tax dollars could be spent.
Also, it is morally wrong. Freedom is an inalienable right. This includes the freedom to choose quality over quantity of life, and do things like smoke.
If teens are getting this illegally, the right answer is NOT to take it away from adults, who absolutely should have legal access to it. If the problem is extreme, then require that shops that sell tobacco disallow teens on the premises (even when accompanied by an adult). And STOP THERE. A certain degree of abuse is a price of freedom and it is a price worth paying!.
It really shouldn't be up to the government in the first place...ESPECIALLY the Federal Govt.
I"m still trying to find in my copy of the Constitution one of the few enumerated powers and responsibilities of the federal govt to regulate what I ingest voluntarily.
They don't need to be telling people, grown adults what they can or cannot eat, smoke, snort, inject or rub into their bellies........
The government was not established to be your conscience or nanny....and I cannot fathom why we continue to go further down that rabbits hole of having the government rule your life rather than let you do as you wish with your body and live with the consequences.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't smoke but fuck off with your Puritanism.
First, yes, 2nd smoke is nasty and disgusting but people have a right to smoke in private.
Second, if people want to poison their bodies then no one else has the right to dictate how they abuse their bodies.
Third, banning is always a stupid "half-assed" solution (which never works) as opposed to education.