As you know, I have a long history of basically fearing the FDA. The federal agency is supposed to help make us safe and make sure people like this guy could keep donating blood for so many years. But the agency has long been in thrall of prohibitionists and pharma types. The FDA essentially blanket calling everything vapor related tobacco, supports their new paranoid fantasy that teen smoking is up when in fact it’s way down.
In support of that theory, the FDA feels justified in making some sweeping moves to battle “teen smoking.: The most recent one was to declare that convenience stores couldn’t be trusted to not sell flavored vapor products to teenagers. Therefore, those types of stores are no longer allowed to sell flavored vaping products.
Your local vape shop is, for now, safe. Online sales seem to be on shaky ground but are also still cool for now. According to reports Juul, who is arguably the driver behind the FDA’s latest crusade, has pulled their flavored products from stores and has gone dark on social media.
Moves like Juul’s and the recent closing of long-time online retailer V2Cigs indicate a shakeup in the vaping industry. Some of you might say it’s no big deal. But, these are the brands that are probably more responsible from turning smokers to vapers than any of the fancy products most of you love.
Granted nobody really knows what it’ll look like in the future, but the vaping market will be radically different in the next couple years, especially as the 2022 deadline rolls around.
So, my first question is, what is this crackdown on entry level brands going to do for the conversion rate of smokers?
But, probably the biggest question is this: If the FDA had the power to stop selling crap at the convenience store level because they suck at carding people, why just vapor products?
If a sketch gas station is going to sell vapor products to kids, wouldn’t they also sell them actual tobacco products? If the FDA is going to wield the giant ban hammer all of a sudden, why not just say that non-age-restricted retailers can’t sell any sort of tobacco.
If that’s the reason why there’s so many kids smoking, surely stopping all tobacco sales would actually stop kids from buying tobacco.
After all the FDA has proven they have zero cares to give when it comes to adult smokers, why would they care if it was suddenly harder to buy cigarettes for adults too?
Oh, right angry huge corporations.
Never mind, I answered my own question.
