Editorial voice from elsewhere
The Federal Drug Administration has recently put a ban on the sale of some flavored products that are used in e-cigarettes and other vaping devices in an effort to dissuade teenagers from continuing or starting the habit.
The ban includes fruit- and mint-flavored products, which reportedly appeal to the younger crowd. It is a ban, according to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, in an effort to “strike the right public health balance” by hopefully preventing children from picking up the habit of vaping or stopping them if they have already begun, but still allowing adults who want to use vaping products to quit smoking.
We find it a good step in preventing harmful substances from getting into the hands of youngsters.
More so, we find it to be somewhat of a confusing effort.
It certainly makes us curious as to why this course of action has come about so swiftly with vaping products, but not other heavily determined and documented harmful habits, such as using tobacco, which in our opinion, is not the same as vaping. It should come as no surprise to anyone that despite a minimum age requirement to purchase cigarettes, they are getting, and have been for years, into the hands of those not yet old enough by law to purchase them.
And haven’t we known for a century that using tobacco has been causing great harm to adults and youths alike? And yet, where tobacco products are concerned, we as a country choose to regulate, but never ban.
Could it be because the tobacco industry is a billion-dollar business in terms of tax revenue for our country? Sure, we put rules into place, the latest being a raise in the age to 21 to be eligible to purchase tobacco products as well as vaping products. But again, in the last hundred years, we as a country haven’t banned anything when it comes to packs of cigarettes. We just let folks know when they are old enough to use them.
Make no mistake in our stance: We support movement in helping people reconsider the use of harmful products. It just seems to us, however, that we were extremely quick to address vaping products and the harmful effects that some say are becoming an epidemic among teenagers, yet we as a country drag our feet on any real changes with the sale of tobacco products even after the decades and decades of research that have proven that its use can kill.
We would hate to think that those billions, even trillions, of dollars and those relationships with tobacco companies and the tax revenue they bring take priority over a nation’s health. We would also hate to think that the motive behind this ban on some flavored e-cigarette products is really the beginning steps in redirecting that revenue back to the tobacco industry.
What we would like to see, instead, is all of us working together to help folks make the decision to forego all harmful habit-forming products and lead healthier lives for generations to come.