Is this another case of people either not being taught history or forgetting its lessons. In the early 1900s the United States government decided it could solve the drinking problem by banning alcohol and it worked about as well as the proverbial screen doors on a submarine. The government even poisoned some of the whiskey supply and thousands of Americans died an agonizing death. Prohibition, more than anything else, helped begin and then finance the so-called Mob. The blackmarket ran rampant with moonshiners making a handsome living smuggling illegal booze. It was an unmitigated disaster and finally was repealed but it cost lots of lives and cost us more than just money. Nobody these days thinks that was a good idea. But we're trying it again with another legal--up until now--product. It has to be frustrating to the anti-smoking crowd who worked so hard to get America to quit smoking and now to see the alternative of vaping taking off like (to use my grandmother's favorite expression) "Moody's Goose." Now to this day I still don't know how fast that goose actually was but when my grandmother used it it meant something like Warp Factor 5.
I'm not hear to argue about the health advantages or disadvantages of vaping. However, it points out again our misplaced priorities and putting the blame on the wrong places. Banning guns, Walmart dropping sales of ammunition, Dick's not selling firearms to anyone 18 to 20, disbanding the NRA and suing gun manufacturers, Kroger, Walmart (again) and Publix asking customers not to bring firearms into their stores.. isn't going to stop mass shootings. Mass shootings almost always take place in Gun Free Zones. When was the last time you heard about a mass shooting in a police station or a gun show? I see the signs going into malls and schools all the time with a pistol inside a circle with a line through it and saying, "No weapons allowed." Magic! If those worked we should put 'em up everywhere but only law-abiding citizens obey those warnings and many have died because they obeyed it and the CRIMINAL didn't! The warning on cigarette packages has been there since I was a sophomore in high school--and believe me that's been awhile! But people still smoke and still somehow win whopping lawsuits when they get cancer. Never saw anyone light up a "smoke" with a gun to their head.
So now people, especially kids, seem to be getting hooked on and their health is being threatened by vaping. But God forbid the media get a story right for a refreshing change. Vaping liquids have the option of being nicotine free. Even the nicotine infested liquids of high quality sold in responsible vaping stores don't have any "extra" stuff that might be found in cheaper brands sold elsewhere. According to a September 8th story in a pro-vaping website tearsofcrimson.com noted that, "Nicotine Vaping is NOT the culprit behing recent lung issues according to the CDC and the FDA." In their findings the two groups found that "vaping illnesses: consumers can help protect themselves by avoiding tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing vaping products. Quoting further: "...many of the samples tested by the states or by the FDA as part of this ongoing investigation have been identified as vaping products containing tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC, the psychactive component of the marijuana plant)....to date, none of the cases of lung illness are being linked to legal, commercially available nicotine vapor product."
What's amazing is that the Trump Administration is jumping on a prohibition-type bandwagon banning a legal product and causing many vaping stores to go bankrupt putting a lot of people out of business. Yet we're going full speed ahead trying to legalize marijuana a product we already know is far worse then tobacco and probably vaping liquids. Our production manager here was once a two or three pack a day smoker and was coughing constantly. Since he switched to vaping five years ago he's hardly coughed since and he says food tastes so much better..and the stuff he smokes smells great--something we couldn't say about his cigarettes.
Here's a video that's on the market about this. What do you think? The media is trying to scare us with these vaping stories focusing on a few folks getting sick and telling us that six people have died. Yes, that's six too many but the opioid crisis they tell us are killing 400 a day and what are we doing? Something else that won't solve the problem, suing the manufacturers who make the products LEGALLY. It's not Johnson & Johnson's fault people are misusing their product any more than those who make AR-type rifles are responsible for someone misusing their product. How 'bout we start protecting our southern boarder where most of the illegal stuff is coming in and working with Mexico to crack down on the drug cartels who are shipping this stuff in by the truckload? Let's try something that WORKS for a change!