San Francisco breaks its e-cigarette habit

But e-cigarette users can still smoke weed. :partying_face::partying_face:

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Disagree, it’s fucking rad!

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I can only speculate as to why they’ve chosen vapes in particular. I assume it’s mostly to do with marketing an addictive product that’s consumed in a very noticeable way to minors – no-one really wants to see kids huffing and puffing on anything in the streets. The vape companies haven’t exactly been good corporate citizens in regard to their marketing, so perhaps this is a little pushback.

An age restriction on sales to minors might make more sense, but perhaps when they saw how difficult that’s been to enforce with tobacco and alcohol historically they decided to just ban sales outright with a new product and and see how that went (spoiler: it won’t work well).

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While simultaneously relieving one of short term nicotine withdrawal symptoms you mean.

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Are vapes not age-restricted in the US?

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You can’t stop them from ordering something online and having it shipped to them. Theoretically those shippers have it set up to not send to certain addresses. Certainly that is the case for things that have a STATE WIDE ban. I’ve seen sites where certain kinds of knives can’t be shipped to certain states, for an example. I highly doubt online sellers are going to attempt to honor a CITY WIDE ban.


As for my reply to the article - yes, banning something one deems undesirable has always worked. Especially when it is seen as both cool and fun, as well as being addictive. There is no way 18 year olds won’t take a trip to the city limits and stock up on supplies for the just created lucrative black market. LOL.

Seriously, I get the point of wanting to reduce the use of these things especially among minors - but this is stupid.

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It’s the cities business. They certainly have the ability to regulate what business happens within the limits.

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Yeah, no.

I’m honestly curious as to how much this decision was affected by having Juul headquartered in SF and the huge investment made in them by the big cig companies. SF has a history of pushing back on corporate intrusion and this feels like a middle finger to Philip Morris.

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Yes, by federal law. Like I said, this may be San Francisco trying a new tack since age restrictions are notoriously difficult to enforce. My sense is it’ll only create a black market for these signifiers of idiocy.

Well, Juul positions itself as a cool, cutting-edge Bay Area tech company rather than just another scumbag nicotine delivery racket like Philip Morris. Perhaps this push is San Francisco saying “we know what you really are. Take your headquarters somewhere else.”

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@Entity447B

Not supported by the weight of the evidence. Usual disclaimers about anectodes vs data, along with heterogeneity of effects here. :slight_smile:

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Right?

Same with any addictive substance (caffeine, for instance).

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But others haven’t identified the same overall uptick, but instead the same switching behavior as has been identified in adults.

And the overall features of this thing closely match the moral panic over cloves and flavored cigarettes in the 90’s and 00’ (and before that bidis). Flavors were attracting and marketing to children! Its basically smokable candy! Toddlers were eating them and dying! None of it very confirmable and cloves were pegged as driving the same sort of reversal in teen smoking rates. Despite that never really materializing.

At the time Cloves specifically were pulling market share from major American cigarette brands, and the major clove brands were not owned by major American tobacco companies. Which responded initially with their own clove brands, and then a host of flavored cigarettes and heavy marketing pushes.

But when a ban on flavored cigarettes came down. Curiously menthol was excepted. Despite the majority of underaged smokers preferring and starting on menthol cigarettes, not cloves and other flavors. Major clove cigarette brands lost their market toe hold. Temperarily disappearing from the market, and stopped taking market share from major American menthol cigarette brands.

Its not for nothing that most of this panic has focused on a single brand of vape. An independent company that wasn’t owned by a major tobacco company. And its not for nothing that at the peak of the press panic that company was bought out by Altria/Philip Morris.

San Francisco’s is gonna go and ban vape sales due to teen smoking fears, but as expected they aren’t touching regular cigarettes. This happens every time a nicotine product starts cribbing sales from Marlboro and Camel.

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Why’d you @ me in that? I… don’t know what you’re referring to?

Well, it’s a shame that your evidence doesn’t support my actual, real-life friends (who are not numbers on a spreadsheet) quitting smoking by using lower-nicotine (and zero-nicotine) vapes to step down their intake. But thank you.

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SF is also home to one of the global epicenters of tobacco control: the Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education, and the legacy Truth Tobacco Documents Archive.

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Because you wrote

and my link directly addresses that? (Unless I have misunderstood you. :slight_smile: Totally possible.)

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I expect this will be every bit as successful as the soda taxes in Chicago and Philly.

The vape shop owners of Daly City and Oakland are chortling with delight.

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I quit smoking cigarettes by using vapes for a few years, then quitting those. So thank you, vaping! But if a JUUL-type thing was available from a doctor by prescription, I might have gone that route, vs. buying at retail.

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And a boon to black markets and criminals, since we are talking about an addictive product. I’m a non-smoker without a pony in this show, but I think a ban is a mistake and ultimately ineffective. Especially one that’s only at a city level.

I guess they could be the start of a huge wave of other cities following suit, but demand attracts suppliers.

Much like the drug war hasn’t eliminated drugs, prohibition didn’t eliminate alcohol, and middle schools didn’t eliminate Pokemon.

There are some cities where you can’t buy dildos. (and it doesn’t stop people from buying dildos; it just makes it more difficult. Luckily many were designed for ease of smuggling.)

Or when their law is for sale.

And yeah, I agree the marketing needs to be regulated better. What 12-year-old kid doesn’t want to blow smoke like a dragon?

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