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Tobacco firm calls for tougher rules on vapes
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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How does anyone ever regulate what "flavors marketed to kids" entails? Plenty of adults like sweet, fruity flavors. What about vanilla? Very generic yet it'd attract kids. I do think nicotine is a scourge, and smoking is waaaaaaaay worse than vaping, just wanting to know how this would work
That's a fair question. My POV is that not being able to buy sweet fruity flavors might be inconvenient to some adults, but it's hardly something that could be argued to cause an undue burden on vape users.
It would probably be straightforward to commission a study (or leverage existing study data) to identify the flavors that underage users are most likely to use and start there. If data shows that removing or restricting those flavors is not an impediment to underage vaping, then at that point reconsider the regulations.
Even if some manufacturers choose to skirt the regulations (no this isn't "grape", it's "purple berry"!), larger companies with the biggest market share are probably not going to want to get tangled up in high visibility lawsuits, and so the likely outcome is that availability goes down, and therefore so does the access and use rate.
Let's start with alcohol, my child won't be dead tomorrow from a vape. They might from a grape flavored bottle of Smirnoff.
Yeah, underage drinking is also a big problem, but it's also not one I expect vape or cigarette manufacturers to have much sway over.
I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a gotcha? Can we not look at one problem without simultaneously solving all problems?
Its a gotcha because your 50 flavors of vodka isnt considered child centric marketing, and anyone who claimed otherwise would correctly be called a moron.
But you are doing the exact same dance with vapes.
I vape bc it's supposedly a little better for my health but when I'm in NYC I just smoke cigarettes bc flavored vapes are banned and tobacco/nonflavored vapes taste worse than cigs somehow lmao.
I feel like moving smokers from a less harmful alternative bc "think of the kids" is stupid. Like yeah I started smoking as a teenager too and I do regret having started, but the fruity flavors didn't make it enticing, it was the fact that I was a teenager and I wasn't supposed to be doing it. But disregarding my anecdotal experience, it still seems like a move that would shift people back to inhaling burning plant matter, rat poison, and tar into their lungs instead of vegetable oil and nicotine salts.
It's less a "think of the kids" issue and more that the vast majority of smokers and vapers start as teens / young adults so there is a huge incentive to get them started and hooked early. It would just be naiive to think cig and vape makers don't know this and take advantage.
Just as a thought experiment, imagine a strawberry flavored cigarette was released tomorrow. It would be so transparent the maker would be absolutely crucified the moment it hit shelves.
All that said, legislation should be based on data and solid studies, not just gut feeling and common sense. I could be wrong here, but the profit motive to get people hooked on addictive products early is just too strong to not look verrrry suspect.
Sweet is a taste not a flavour and vapes are always sweet because PG and VG is. If anything you could argue brussel sprouts vs. apples but last I checked, adults eat apples.
Also to be consistent you need to outlaw like 98% of liqueurs out there as them containing fruit obviously means they're targeted towards children.
I don't vape, except occasional cannabis-based products which I understand use a different solvent, so I'll have to take your word on that. But there's a difference between the presence of sweetness vs sweet flavors that typically (or more to the point are designed to) appeal more to younger people. Whether or not those flavors still appeal to adults is kinda moot--as it's been pointed out already, lots of things that appeal greatly to kids still appeal to adults.
The crux of it is if vape makers are generating flavored vapes to try and appeal to younger buyers (which carries a massive financial incentive), I think most people would agree that's not ok. Whether banning those flavors is the right answer I guess would be a matter for study and debate.
This is just a weird feeling thread to be honest, since Lemmy tends to skew massively cynical about being marketed to, especially by billion dollar corps, but the vibe I'm getting here is skepticism that those billion dollar vape manufacturers might be exploiting some simple psychology to get kids hooked early.
And for what it's worth, I'm sure liquor manufacturers do the same thing to some degree, but it's kind of a different ball game since you don't need to get people addicted to alcohol young in order to have them continue to drink as an adult, and most adults who drink are not physically addicted, as with nicotine. Maybe coffee would be a better comparison...
It was not companies who started the whole thing. People have been vaping fruity and dessert aromas back in the days where you still had to build your own vape (usually from torches, hence the term "mod" for the battery holder/control unit: They're modded torches. Literally).
And that btw is also what would happen again if you were to outlaw those flavours: People would again buy bog-standard PG-based food aroma to mix their juice. It's a good thing that companies are actually selling vape aroma as vape aroma because it means that you can expect it to not contain some problematic stuff.
Or are you, on your crusade, going to outlaw food aroma in general?
Nicotine on its own is roughly as addictive as caffeine, look at any recent study. Don't confuse it with the MAOIs in cigarettes, or indeed the MAOI/nicotine synergy. The "nicotine is more addictive than heroin" and shit line is actually a Tobacco industry thing to sell light cigarettes. Still of course contain the full brunt of MAOIs.
As to "don't advertise to kids": Yeah no shit. If companies would be using cartoon characters and whatnot we should outlaw it. There's no issue with outlawing it even if they don't. But to lash onto fruits as "evidence" that they're targeting kids is inane, you should rather look into things like disposable vapes, everything that lowers the barriers to entry away from the "screw atomiser on mod, squeeze in juice" baseline.