Why Juul and Republican Lawmakers Want To Raise the Minimum Vaping Age To 21 (theverge.com) 198
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced a new bill today that would block all tobacco and vape purchases for Americans under 21 years old, citing widespread public health risks. Surprisingly, vaping companies don't appear to be too concerned, as Juul's CEO Kevin Burns issued this statement supporting the measure: "JUUL Labs is committed to eliminating combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in the world and to accomplish that goal, we must restrict youth usage of vapor products. Tobacco 21 laws fight one of the largest contributors to this problem -- sharing by legal-age peers -- and they have been shown to dramatically reduce youth usage rates." The Verge says it all has to do with Big Vape's image: Over the past year, Juul has come under the FDA's fire for its massive popularity among young people. So supporting a higher minimum age could help its image and take some of the regulatory pressure off. From an industry perspective, the move is fairly low risk since the product is already embedded in the population, and people under age 21 may already be addicted, says Kathleen Hoke, a law professor at the University of Maryland. "We can change this age to 21 but we're going to have to work extraordinarily hard at the state and local level to actually get cigarettes or vape products or chew out of the hands of the 18 to 20 year olds," she says.
[T]he bill's success will depend on how it's crafted. Rob Crane, professor of family medicine at The Ohio State University and president of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, is skeptical that it will really hold tobacco retailers responsible for selling to people who are underage. From the more than 450 cities and counties that have passed Tobacco 21 laws, "what we have found that does work is when you make local health departments under civil law do the enforcement," he says. "For a rogue retailer that keeps on selling, there's a risk of license suspension." But if the law winds up penalizing convenience store clerks who sell vapes and tobacco products to kids, the retailer who's profiting gets off scot-free, he says. In the end, Crane is skeptical of the motivations behind the bill, no matter what form it takes. "This is all a PR move to keep Juul out of the hot seat from the FDA."
[T]he bill's success will depend on how it's crafted. Rob Crane, professor of family medicine at The Ohio State University and president of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation, is skeptical that it will really hold tobacco retailers responsible for selling to people who are underage. From the more than 450 cities and counties that have passed Tobacco 21 laws, "what we have found that does work is when you make local health departments under civil law do the enforcement," he says. "For a rogue retailer that keeps on selling, there's a risk of license suspension." But if the law winds up penalizing convenience store clerks who sell vapes and tobacco products to kids, the retailer who's profiting gets off scot-free, he says. In the end, Crane is skeptical of the motivations behind the bill, no matter what form it takes. "This is all a PR move to keep Juul out of the hot seat from the FDA."
TL;DR (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I hate smoking in general, and that goes for vaping. We wast vast swaths of prime farm land while people go hungry or even starve. Yeah, yeah, I know that's a distribution and social problem, but it doesn't change the fact that the land could be put to better use.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Informative)
Vast swaths of prime farm land?
It is literally the smallest category on the map [bloomberg.com]
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite. If you look down near the Georgia/Florida border, you'll see that Christmas Trees are a slightly smaller piece of the agricultural pie.
That said, your point is quite valid - tobacco growing takes an inconsequential part of our land away from growing food. And no, people aren't starving because we grow tobacco....
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Informative)
I live in tobacco HQ practically. When the handwriting was on the wall the state moved to be the first to re-authorize hemp farming again. The bulk of CBD on the market is now coming from the kentucky hemp project. It is at least better for the soil, tobacco was hard on the soil whereas hemp does not have to rotate plots in order for the soil to recover. Hemp is much more environmentally friendly with its surroundings. The byproducts are not bad either. The fabrics are even nicer that flax (linen).
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Interesting)
Nicotine could never compete with THC/CBD and neither can alchohol. I suppose the vapour companies can trade in both nicotine and THC/CBD so no skin off their nose (the bigger market is coming). Nicotine is doomed, not fun and addictive as all fuck, 4 tries to finally kick that shitty habit, grr (locked in place by work stresses, when they went so went the addiction). The green just involves a couple of sleepless nights and then it's like you never did. Unless you are treating a condition of course, then it is like taking a medication away from people who need it for medical reasons, a really disgusting thing to do that to those people. Control freaks should be ashamed, you had to destroy peoples lives in prison to save them from having a non-addictive good time, that is a sick as fuck, enjoy the silent scream in the dark for the people whose lives you destroyed and it was an awful lot of people harmed.
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Control freaks should be ashamed, you had to destroy peoples lives in prison to save them from having a non-addictive good time, that is a sick as fuck, enjoy the silent scream in the dark for the people whose lives you destroyed and it was an awful lot of people harmed.
This, to me, has always been the most absurd aspect to the war on drugs. Drugs are bad for you, and we don't want you to use them. So, if you do we will put you in prison and ruin your life! You can just see how much they care about people's well being!
I know that the war on drugs was really about political control. But the public rationale just never made any sense to me.
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The prison sentences were only theoretical when the intent was to use them as a deterrent. A more visible ruining of your life than the intangible form that comes from actually using drugs so you could more easily avoid the wrong decision.
Reality, of course, saw mostly just mass incarceration. Whether that was actually intended from the beginning is hard to say. Good intentions backfire spectacularly all the time. And nobody wants to just say it was a bad idea and roll it back.
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which is why we switched to hemp so they can get CBD to help with that. ;-)
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"Not to mention that the land is not good for growing many food crops. Just tobacco and cotton."
Cotton is often grown in the south because it is the most fertile soil on the earth. You can grow almost anything in the delta region. Think of the thousands of years the Mississippi River and its tributaries have flooded and receded, leaving several feet of silt. Cotton and tobacco are favored there because they bring in the most $$$/acre.
That pictograph is misleading (Score:2)
Also, tobacco destroys land. There are documents that detail how over farming in the 1800s had turned West Virginia into a dust bowl. Tobacco also poison's the land. The Nicotine seeps into the soil. It takes ages to reclaim the land for anything else. If you just switch to tomatoes you get tomatoes with tobacco in them, which, unlike the Simpsons, doesn't make for addictive tomatoe
I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Juul is indicative of the statistically likely outcome of most attempts to quit smoking: the substitution of one nicotine delivery device for another.
There almost completely negating any further risk of cancer.
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Re:I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Juul is indicative of the statistically likely outcome of most attempts to quit smoking: the substitution of one nicotine delivery device for another.
There almost completely negating any further risk of cancer.
It's probably likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise that vaping correlates with an increase in the incidence of another cancer in laboratory mice.
Re:I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:5, Informative)
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Nicotine causes dozens of diseases, putting it on "no cancer" is not really helpful.
E.g. smoker's leg.
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Nicotine causes dozens of diseases, putting it on "no cancer" is not really helpful. E.g. smoker's leg.
Has smoker's leg been shown to be caused by the nicotine? Or is it all the other terrible crap in cigarettes?
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Polonium is a myth or at least wildly exaggerated. It's a trace mineral in phosphate fertilizers that are used on all sorts of food plants. Your average banana likely has far more radioactive material from potassium than what you'd find in cigarettes. More of those are not burned, but still ingested. I imagine that any commercial cannabis crop would be grown using similar fertilizers.
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Are you smoking other food plants? Just happened to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:5, Interesting)
my wife works at Markey Cancer Center. The surgical oncologists were optimistic about vaping for their patients. But the statistics have not been encouraging. It isnt that vaping is worse, its that it isnt helpful in quitting smoking. The number of patients that took up actual smoking again were staggering high. So it didnt turn out to be the tool people were hoping for to get them to ween themselves off nicotine, or the Alpha particles they inhaled when combusting the cigarette
Re:I'll just chew tobacco instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Vaping isn't going to do anything about nicotine. On the other hand, smoke of any sort is very harmful (whether or not it's psychoactive) and reducing the amonut of smoke people inhale is likely to be a good thing.
From the point of view of a nonsmoker, cigarette smokers are on the whole littering arseholes who just chuck disgarded fag ends everywhere and getting stuck behind one is really bloody nasty. Vaping solves those two problems really well.
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I can complete agree with that one. Been told you can use different liquid with different concentrations with vaping
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From the point of view of a nonsmoker, cigarette smokers are on the whole littering arseholes who just chuck disgarded fag ends everywhere and getting stuck behind one is really bloody nasty. Vaping solves those two problems really well.
Um, no. Juul pods are worse and get thrown on the ground just like the cigarette butts. They're all over the place and will be here for centuries.
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"There almost completely negating any further risk of cancer."
Except you don't really know because there aren't literally millions of people who have smoked using Juul type devices for decades. They may not cause cancer, or they could cause 10x as much but it just takes a few decades to determine.
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Sure, just Popcorn Lung and other medical problems. And probably cancer too after a long enough sample size. Saying it doesn't cause cancer seems premature.
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they ran the numbers and the bulk of their customers are over 21 while the bulk of cigarette smokers start up before 21. It hurts their competition and doesn't do them any harm, so why not?
Don't get me wrong, I hate smoking in general, and that goes for vaping. We wast vast swaths of prime farm land while people go hungry or even starve. Yeah, yeah, I know that's a distribution and social problem, but it doesn't change the fact that the land could be put to better use.
You are right, but growing tobacco is the most profitable with the least risk for many southern farmers whose farmland is so poor quality that the only viable alternative is growing corn used for livestock.
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Whats the point of vaping again?
That it is less harmful than cigarettes, and avoids having to kick the nicotine habit.
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The first point is debatable - the solvents used in the "vape oils" may not be so innocuous as you think, especially when their combustion products are inhaled deeply into the lungs.
The second point is correct but fails to note that the upsurge in vaping among teens and pre-teens is actually forming new nicotine habits while they are led to believe that it's safe (or safer than tobacco).
You can fight and die for your country (Score:4, Insightful)
You can fight and die for your country before your 21st.
But you canâ(TM)t vape as it has possible health consequences!
Oh America; is there ever a day that your hypocrisy is not making me laugh?
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those that enlist dont have those restrictions while on deployment.. so i guess its win-win for them??
Re:You can fight and die for your country (Score:4, Informative)
The name of the weapon class derives from the literal translation of the name given to the first weapon of the class the StG44. The SturmGewehr model 1944. Sturm meaning Assault, as in SturmTruppen meaning assault troops, and Gewehr translates to rifle or gun.
It must also be noted that only one Assault rifle has been used in a mass shooting in the US to-date, and that was by a police officer who snapped and turned his government issued M-16 on his fellow officers.
At 18 you can purchase a long gun which by definition does include the modern sporting rifles such as the civilian models of the AK variants or an Armalite Rifle style rifle commonly known as an AR-15. The AR in AR-15 stands for Armalite Rifles inc. The company that brought the AR-15 to market as a civilian weapon years 60 ago. They stopped selling them after the patent expired and other manufacturers started making their own variants. Yet they all tend to get labeled as AR-15's. These civilian rifles are not Assault rifles, they are not military grade and other than one early test with a small SF deployment to Vietnam the AR-15 has never been used by any military force. It is a Semi-automatic only weapon and does not have the select fire capability. Which is the definitive identifying feature of an Assault Weapon.
FRI despite the recent trend Handguns are still the historical weapon of choice by mass shooters. And long guns (rifles and shotguns) of all types account for less than 300 homicides a year, that's out of the roughly 11,000 homicides each year. Scary black rifles are not the problem.
Please don't try to talk about subjects you have no clue about. It really undercuts your hyperbolic arguments when you make totally false claims to support them.
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No you can't buy an assault rifle (intermediate caliber military grade rifle with select fire capability) at age 18. An assault rifle (M-16, AK-47 or 74 etc) is a military grade weapon that can fire in a full auto or burst mode in addition to Semi-automatic fire. ... At 18 you can purchase a long gun which by definition does include the modern sporting rifles such as the civilian models of the AK variants or an Armalite Rifle style rifle commonly known as an AR-15. The AR in AR-15 stands for Armalite Rifles inc ...
Oh, for Pete's sake, you are hair splitting. I am well aware of the history of assault rifles but if you take an ArmaLite AR-15 Assault Rifle, remove the automatic fire option and call it an AR-15 is's basically a downgraded assault rifle just like a tank that has had it's guns removed stays a tank, it has not suddenly become a family car. The AR-15 is a semi automatic assault rife, the only real difference between it and the M-4 is the lack of an ability to select automatic fire. All that does is take you
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Definitions are important. Assault rifles have select fire capability. The analogy is closer to taking a tank putting wheels on instead of tracks. It's still got a gun, but it's not a tank. It's an APC now. An M16 with no select fire is no longer an assault rifle. It's a semi-auto rifle.
And you're going on and on about anecdotes. Check the FBI hate crime statistics for the real answer, sans the garbage people parrot back and forth on social media. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime... [fbi.gov] Just browse through, and do be mindful of demographic breakdown. For instance: There were 864 victims of anti-white hate crimes in 2017 and 2,458 black victims. This makes sense because whites are 74% of the population and blacks 13%. The actuality is that only 50% of the perpetrators of hate crime were white, and 24% black. So the actuality of the situation is whites are less likely to commit hate crimes than blacks on a per capita basis. This difference is mostly due to the prevalence of drug gang activity in poor black communities. Also keep in mind these are all crimes and are mostly various forms of harassment and battery. Murder constitutes less than 1% of hate crime. Really nobody in the US should be particularly worried about being targeted for a racially or religiously motivated hate crime, especially nobody should be worried about being killed over their skin color or sky dad beliefs. You should be worried about getting shot with a handgun by a gang member if you're black, wearing nice clothes, and walking around some parts of Chicago, since black on black murder in these areas absolutely dominates the overall murder statistics. But please, keep worrying about scary rifles instead of the real problems. That kind of thinking has gotten us this far!
An M16 with a detachable 30 round magazine is considerably easier to use for a mass shooting than a semi auto sporting rifle with a 5 round built in, strip fed magazine. Walk into a church with one of those and try to commit a mass shooting because the parishioners had the temerity to have brown skin and you will be knocked out after 5 shots by a couple of burly parishioners whith a particularly beefy copy of the King James bible while struggling to reload the thing. It is not semi auto rifles that are the
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It is a Semi-automatic only weapon and does not have the select fire capability. Which is the definitive identifying feature of an Assault Weapon.
You're both right and wrong. The normies think anything that looks like a military-derived semi-auto rifle is an "assault rifle". That's what I find comical about all this talk about "assault rifle" definitions. A semi-auto rifle with military features such as pistol grip, black plastic furniture, bayonet lug, and muzzle brake is somehow more dangerous than a R
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Its as legal to vape on US soil at the age of 5 as it is to "buy an assault rifle at 18, walk into a church and mow down a bunch of worshippers".
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Real Reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Their buddies in the private prison industry asked for yet more profit. It's therefore necessary to criminalize a few million more people.
(No, 18 year old smokers won't be sent directly to jail -- but they'll be encouraged onto the path by getting them used to be considered criminals. More importantly, the way it'll grow the black market will also help crime rates in general, like prohibition.)
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Their buddies in the private prison industry asked for yet more profit. It's therefore necessary to criminalize a few million more people.
Maw? We're out of tin foil again... Maw?
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Their buddies in the private prison industry asked for yet more profit. It's therefore necessary to criminalize a few million more people.
Maw? We're out of tin foil again... Maw?
Press release from ALCOA: "Just because you think they're out to get you, doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
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Their buddies in the private prison industry asked for yet more profit. It's therefore necessary to criminalize a few million more people.
Maw? We're out of tin foil again... Maw?
Right, because it's just so far fetched.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html
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they wont go to jail, anymore than underage drinking. not everything is a conspiracy. The penalties will be lobbied against those that sell or distribute to minors. The drinking age has been 21 for 4 decades now. I dont even want to get into what I was doing in the 80s at age 16 but rest assured at no point was I ever encouraged to be on 'the path to betting me used to be considered criminal'. I still enlisted in the navy after graduating and still went on to have a normal life. The 21 age limit is a good l
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for drinking? well your drunk driving incidents rivals the US even though we have a shit load more people. Thats a tad scary. But yea, I did my share of shit under age. I am still grateful that these restrictions made it less easy. I didnt say it made it impossible. It just slowed me down. At 18 I had less self control than I did later on. I think all of us will admit that if we are being honest. As far as smoking, I dont remember when it wasnt 18. I dont smoke but it was 18 most of my life.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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In my mind, "cannabis" has more negative connotations than "marijuana". I tend to just say "ganja", "weed" or "herb" though. But I don't even smoke it, I just talk shit about it. Still should decriminalise it everywhere - there are far worse things in the world.
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whats wrong with cannabis? marijuana just sounds stupid. Cannabis is the actual latin name, Cannabis Sativa or Cannabis Indica, etc. Just like Felinus Domesticus. Your not against latin are you? ;-)
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We got the herb from India, and its Indian name is ganja. I'll call it that rather than some Latin name applied to it.
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That must make talking about cannabinoids and trichromes very difficult for you :-)
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Cannabis is an umbrella term, Marijuana is basically the raw plant and Hashish is the resin from the plant, both are Cannabis.
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Cannabis won’t make you a cannibal. But I have known a cereal killer or two
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I prefer to call it dope because you are stupid when smoking it, stupid after, and stupid long term on it.
My advanced career, comfortable lifestyle and solid relationships beg to differ. Stop watching "Up in Smoke" (though it is a funny movie) and realize that many high achieving people smoke pot. Or don't. Either way, I'll be going home tonight, enjoying some bud, and continuing to be a fully functioning adult.
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I never bought into the 'gateway drug' bullshit. Nothing MAKES you take something _else_. It was a bullshit statistic that said a majority of people that did heroin admitted to doing cannabis. They forgot to mention that even more admitted to smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee too. In the world there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The only logical basis for claiming cannabis was a gateway drug, has nothing to do with the drug itself, but the propaganda put up against it. You feed someone a whole l
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The only way I make sense of gateway drugs is that people are told all drugs are really, really bad. They try one drug, usually marijuana, and find out that it's not that bad (because it isn't), and then gain an interest in trying other drugs under the guise that if marijuana wasn't that bad, why would the other ones be so bad? They lied once, they're lying about everything, right?
And the reality is, for many/most people, the first few uses don't produce anything like an addiction, which can lead to a dan
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You forgot caffeine, in the form of pop, kids start it very early, and it is more physically addicting then cannabis.
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i had read 25 but yes, that is more or less why they raised the limit to 21. The rate of growth after 21 is much less, so therefore less damaging than under 21. They know they wont stop this, its just a few speed bumps so that people arent hitting the sauce breakfast lunch and dinner. This way it becomes less frequent. Drinking underage isnt impossible, but drinking underage to the extent that your drinking all day, every day, is.
To protect you! (Score:4, Insightful)
We take your liberty.
Remember that the next time you wonder why there is a law to prevent you from doing something that you think you should be able to do decide for yourself. Each generation is raised with the idea that they cannot be adults or make adult decisions until later and later in life.
Is there any wonder why people think most of you are morons and idiots? I hope you enjoy the nanny state telling you what to do, where to do it, and how you are going to be allowed to get it done.
Government is only interested in one thing, expanding and protecting its own power whenever and where ever possible.
Re:To protect you! (Score:4, Insightful)
To be clear here, I'm not going to argue for/against our drug/alcohol laws here. What I'm saying is just a matter of thinking about the issue. There are very real negative effects to drugs, nicotine, and alcohol. Those effects are worse at a younger age. It is in the individuals best interest not to consume them ever, but especially when young. As a compromise, between never and no restriction, we set age laws to restrict when the consumption happens(ideally). In doing this, it'll at least mitigate the negative effects. This limitation does not only affect the person who is making the choice, but the rest of society as well. It's not a direct, but affects things like insurance rates for other people. You could also extrapolate it out to a health concerns, traffic accidents, and other things.
My point is that people that believe there should not be age restrictions are no better than anti-vaxxers. I'm not equating the specific risks or anything, just that the argument is the same. We're talking about restricting the choice of people for the betterment of society as a whole. I'm not trying to make you change your mind on it. I just want you(everyone) to keep an open mind. Not everything you do, or don't do, is about you when you're part of a society.
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as long as the consequences for underage use are more of a PITA than actually punishment sure, I can accept that. We all know people will strill try this stuff when they are underage. Its part of emancipation. You decide for yourself what things are like. These are mostly road blocks so that its not so easy they become problem causing immediately right out of the gate.
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who are you and how did you steal my thoughts?
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Each generation is raised with the idea that they cannot be adults or make adult decisions until later and later in life.
And it's worked out pretty well, and worked out to be pretty true so far. The only problem is defining that arbitrary mark.
But to be clear (because the tone of your post seems to suggest it) are you suggesting there aren't any thought and developmental differences between children / teenagers and adults? Because if you are I hate to say you're not only going against legal opinion, but a myriad of psychological and developmental studies that show there most definitely are.
Government is only interested in one thing, expanding and protecting its own power whenever and where ever possible.
And the crux of the argument. A pers
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Stop over thinking it. McConnell is just paying back his financial supporters. The man has never done anything for the good of the country, only for himself.
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Safety belts and helmets are for pussies!
The thing is, free people have to be responsible. Part of the reason we have to have so many laws in the US is that people don't regulate their own behavior.
I ride a motorcycle. When I travel to states that do not have helmet laws, I still wear my helmet. I don't wear a helmet because it's the law. I wear one because it is the smart thing to do, and I take responsibility for my life and experience.
Big tobacco arbitrage (Score:5, Informative)
In case anyone hasn't noticed Altria brands (AKA Phillip Morris) dumped $12.8 billion (a 35% stake) into JUUL.
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." PT
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"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." PT
One company kills millions, the other company just makes them look funny with their puff of white vapour. Hopefully Altria can dump ALL of their money into JUUL and then the world would be a far better place, regardless if it's still being financed by the old boss.
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I don't think anyone knows what are the long term effects from vaping. The companies that produce those products are former tobacco execs and they know how to bury studies showing their products are dangerous.
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We don't know, but what are the odds that long term effects of vaping turn out to be monstrously catastrophic, on the order of asbestos or PCBs or something?
It seems like we understand the basic ingredients of most vaping solutions, and barring widespread toxic adulteration with known problem chemicals/carcinogens, the risk of vaping turning out to be hugely destructive seems kind of slim.
I think the philosophy of living that starts out with "Nobody knows the long term effects.." is also damaging on its own
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"formaldehyde-laced shitjuice from China "
Nicotine sulfate, glycerine, propylene glycol and "flavoring additives" is the content of what I vaporize. The later being the most questionable. It's significantly much easier to identify the content I inhale than burning organic matter (tobacco). There's a "learning curve" unexpected by "big tobacco", most can't cope and return to their masters.
Great Move (Score:2)
I think this is a great move as it's getting tobacco out of high schools. I can't count the number of times I had friends at the local punk rock venue buy me a pack of smokes and it was all just older kids I knew from school.
What does a 21 year old want to do with a high school student after all.
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What does a 21 year old want to do with a high school student after all.
When I was in HS, many of my friends were in my brother's grade, who was two years younger than me. Since I went to college locally, we remained in contact and continued to be friends. When he was a senior, my brother befriended some freshmen who by association wound up hanging out with me as well.
Now over 20 years later, some of these younger people are still my very close friends. In the case of one woman, our kids are now best friends and we even go on family vacations together.
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Nice unique scenario.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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its why I think anti-gun people are stupid too. There are more firearms in the US than there are people at this point. There is no magic fucking wand that is going to make them all disappear.
What this legislation will do is just make it so there are some road blocks so its not a 24/7 consumption cycle. Just like crackign down on underage drinking. Punish the enablers, not the consumers. People still do it, but they are not doing it ever-single-night of the week. For one the risk got higher, so the markup in
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its why I think anti-gun people are stupid too. There are more firearms in the US than there are people at this point. There is no magic fucking wand that is going to make them all disappear.
That's a false equvalence. I think it's a fair argument that drugs are a fundamental part f the human condition. More so actually, anything with a sufficiently advanced reptillian brain (i.e. many birds and mammals) will go out of their way to get stoned.
guns are not remotely in the same category.
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It’s not a comparison of equality, it’s a comparison of peoples stupidity that thinking that they passed a law everything is just going to magically go away. Murder has been against the law for 250 years yet we have to deal with that problem every day
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It's not a comparison of equality, it's a comparison of peoples stupidity that thinking that they passed a law everything is just going to magically go away. Murder has been against the law for 250 years yet we have to deal with that problem every day
Yesbut. Just because you can't get perfection ever never mind instantly doesn't mean you can't improve things. In countries where guns are heavily restricted, there are far fewer than before teh restrictions. The laws don't make things perfect but if your goal
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More so actually, anything with a sufficiently advanced reptillian brain (i.e. many birds and mammals) will go out of their way to get stoned.
guns are not remotely in the same category.
Side note: In the late fall and spring, the robins in my neighborhood eat various tree berries that have fermented, and get really shit-faced. Stumble around, act goofy, and turn our bird bath and pond into a public swimming pool.
Apparently it helps them get rid of parasites. Regardless it's funny.
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"its why I think anti-gun people are stupid too. There are more firearms in the US than there are people at this point. There is no magic fucking wand that is going to make them all disappear."
Um, yeah. no kidding. Everyone knows that.That's not a good reason at all to not ban guns (and there are good reasons to not). The fact that guns won't go away at the snap of ones fingers doesn't mean the process of getting rid of them can't be started.
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"Sigh.....sigh......
The USA has found that making something illegal always makes it go away."
What a uselessly sarcastic point. Of course it won't make all tobacco for youth go away.
"All this will do is provide more profit for organized crime, which is forever indebted to the WCTU."
Comparing this to the temperance movement that made alcohol illegal for everyone is incredibly inaccurate. A far more accurate comparison would be when the fed tied federal highway money to states making the minimum drinking age 2
Re: (Score:2)
"Sigh.....sigh......
The USA has found that making something illegal always makes it go away."
What a uselessly sarcastic point. Of course it won't make all tobacco for youth go away.
Quick question - given that tobacco is often grown as an ornamental plant, should people under 21 be prosecuted if they have a tobacco plant in their possession? https://www.newhopeseed.com/to... [newhopeseed.com] . If not, why shouldn't a plant that is used to make tobacco producs thst is running up the escalation ladder bde treated the same as marijuana?
If I was foolish enough to use tobacco products, I would simply grow my own. Tobacco is not simply addictive. It is a psychoactive drug of very interesting properties
Re: (Score:2)
"Quick question - given that tobacco is often grown as an ornamental plant..."
Please supply some sort of reference better than a small scale supplier add here. I have never in my entire life seen or even heard of tobacco planted in such a context. I feel like you're bringing up a massively fringe usage. In the end though, yes, obviously if you can't consume the substance you can't grow it just like with any controlled substance of this type. This is not an unusual exception.
"And if we are making it illegal
Re: (Score:2)
"Quick question - given that tobacco is often grown as an ornamental plant..."
Please supply some sort of reference better than a small scale supplier add here. I have never in my entire life seen or even heard of tobacco planted in such a context. I feel like you're bringing up a massively fringe usage.
I understand - because you have never heard of it, it isn't important.
Just because you haven't heard of it does not mean it either doesn't exist, or that you can offhand dismiss the reference.
My Mother in law grew Tobacco plants, (she didn't smoke) my Mother grew it, many relatives grew it. It is rather a pretty ornamental plant. And you can indeed dry the leaves and smoke it. It isn't a fringe use.
Here are some more links for you to summarilly dismiss:
Make tobacco a controlled substance petitio
Re: (Score:2)
"Quick question - given that tobacco is often grown as an ornamental plant, should people under 21 be prosecuted if they have a tobacco plant in their possession? https://www.newhopeseed.com/to [newhopeseed.com]... [newhopeseed.com]"
And now that I properly look at your bullshit all of these plants are being advertised for consumption. Ornamental my ass, you're as dishonest as you are stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
"Quick question - given that tobacco is often grown as an ornamental plant, should people under 21 be prosecuted if they have a tobacco plant in their possession? https://www.newhopeseed.com/to [newhopeseed.com]... [newhopeseed.com]"
And now that I properly look at your bullshit all of these plants are being advertised for consumption. Ornamental my ass, you're as dishonest as you are stupid.
It is still grown as an ornamental plant, both varieties. I think we're done here.
They need to figure out (Score:5, Insightful)
at exactly what point does one become an adult in the US ?
THAT age should be the age where you can:
Smoke
Drink
Join the military
Vote
Buy a firearm
Obtain a Credit Card
Get married
It cracks me up that it's ok to join the military to go and kill people in a foreign country, but it's illegal for that same person to drink :|
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as a veteran I wondered that myself while enlisted. Ironically I could drink overseas when we pulled into a port. Station in the state of Kalifornia, I drank underage at chinese restaurants because they were too polite to card and I figured they couldnt tell how old us non-asians were any better than we were at guessing their ages. Interestingly enough, on base in San Diego they lowered the drinking age for beer, only beer, to 18 to discourage all the trips to Tijuana, where the drinking age was old enough
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We have a lot of other graduated privileges in the US, not just those. They both go below and above 18. They include the ability to drop out of school, drive,a car, pilot a plane, be a congressman/senator/president, etc. There are also ways to overcome the default ages for some things (e.g. being emancipated as a minor or getting an agricultural license to drive).
And, as a technical point, you have no age limit on getting a credit card. You have a limit on entering into a contract, but a parent can help
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thats exactly how they did it. The federal government could not impose a limit because of the 10th amendment so instead they tied it to interstate funding. Ironically we let the Feds decide what the Schedule 1 status of cannabis is and raising the smoking age even though the argument is _Exactly_ the same argument. It simply has never been challenged by SCOTUS.
Re: (Score:2)
Being stupid doesnt have an age limit. Vaping is stupid.
Perhaps, but not a stupid as smoking or joining the military.
Reducing harm! (Score:2)
If we fill the world with bumpers and soft cushions, then we wouldn't need so many regulations to keep everyone safe. Right?
At first, hearing this makes me feel better thinking something is being "done." In reality, most of the action will be surrounding the political issues of smoking, incarceration, enforcement, and fines.
--
Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow. - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
WTF? (Score:2)
Vote to die for your country at 18, but don't expect to blow off steam like an adult until you're 21.
This is not a good sign.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's people's G-d given right to smoke and raise the health care costs for all of us.
Japan (Score:3)
In Japan vape juice must be nicotine free. Still seems popular around Osaka on a Friday night.
The Verge (Score:3)
The Verge has had an irrational hard on against vaping for a very long time. I'd consider anything they editorialize on the subject as propaganda.
Re: (Score:2)
JUUL cannot sell on the black market, not sure you've ever even bought anything on the black market. You sound like your severely speculating here. Yes things are higher on the black market. NO they are not sold by the retailers or suppliers. JUUL gets the same money because their sales are always at the retail level. Those selling on your so called black-market are of-age friends and/or some dude of age looking to turn a quick profit by charging a 50% markup. Just like pharma does not get any more wealthy