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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

Regulate the same way the FDA regulates all other products.

As someone outside the US who has to work with the FDA, Americans should be very proud of how thorough FDA inspectors are at auditing and how good they are at identifying non-conformances and just plain criminal lack of due diligence.

There is a database of 'offenders' that are no longer allowed to sell their products it's seriously scary what some companies/people are willing to do for a quick buck.

You could argue that in the US there is a considerable amount of lobbying and influence that defeats the impartiality of some federal bodies but overall they do an amazing job at keep everyone safe.

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Why should the FDA use up government resources to regulate vaping?

Put another way, why do we think the solution for people with no integrity or no clue or both trying to make money out of vaping (Juul included) is to spend taxpayers money helping them behave themselves?

I find this attitude pretty crazy to be frank. Consider that whatever happens from here, however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.

There is that, and then Juul pretending to be a benefit to society while getting children addicted to nicotine and then selling themselves to big tobacco... what exactly is the benefit of vaping? The argument it minimises the harm from smoking is nonsense and unproven. There are well established methods of reducing smoking on a societal level (put up the taxes), which return money to the government to pay for all the negative externalities of smoking which big tobacco isn’t held accountable for.

Anyway, the USA has a funny attitude about these things. Personal choice and optionality are considered paramount. Someone else can pick up the pieces. Applying it everywhere is obviously flawed if you ask me.

With the risk of creating a slippery slope, you could make the same argument for spending federal budget regulating breast implants, they are only fractionally used for breast reconstruction, so for the majority of cases they are elective and used by someone who has made that choice.

The substance is legal and consumed by your citizens. Either make it illegal or regulate it, I am not sure there is much point in making moral judgements.

*Breast not brest

It's very hard to addict anyone to nicotine. Basically, doesn't really happen all that much.

Cigarettes on the other hand are highly addictive. There's lots more in their smoke than just nicotine.

See https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine for more than you ever wanted to know.

I respectfully disagree. I was easily able to switch from cigarettes to vaping, but every time I stop vaping I get withdrawal.

How does the withdrawal look like?

I was quoting the research quoted by Gwern here.

Sweats, nervousness, anxiety.

No matter how much joy people get from driving, it is not worth 37,000 deaths per year. There are proven ways to reduce road fatalities (busses). The government should not be in the business of wasting taxpayer money regulating private pleasure cars.

You could apply this to virtually any product category. Liquor, beer, tobacco, soda, meat, toothpaste, soap, on and on and on.

Well you don’t need soda it’s a vice so we aren’t going to regulate it and make sure products are safe.

Who defines the start and end for what should be regulated? You? Legal products in the US should be safe to purchase. If marijuana is legalized it should be safe to purchase also.

I don’t see your point. I argue vaping should be banned. All those other things you list are already in widespread use, it’s irrelevant.

You actually didn’t argue that.

Alcohol and tobacco are in use but surely we could save money by making them illegal. Why waste money and continue to regulate?

Again, who is deciding? Is it you? It should be illegal because... reasons? Reasons that don’t apply to other vices because... reasons?

> All those other things you list are already in widespread use, it’s irrelevant.

I'm guessing you don't live in a major city or college town? I can't walk two blocks without seeing someone with a Juul.

Why do you hate individual freedom?

> Why should the FDA use up government resources to regulate vaping?

Precisely because people are putting adulterants in black market cartridges.

> however much joy everybody gets from vaping and blowing smoke in the future, it isn’t ever going to be worth 50 dead people.

However much joy everybody gets from swimming in a pool, it isn't ever going to be worth 3,536 dead people.

If you're advocating for banning vaping, you're advocating for the creation of a black market. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol, it's not working for drugs, and it won't work for vaping.

That’s correct, we should ban the ability to profit from selling harmful products. The swimming pool analogy is completely off base.

You are supposing that prohibition won’t work. But it is the easiest and cheapest approach. All the problems with prohibition apply equally to regulation, but with much greater complexity and cost. Eg there will still be a black market for cheap unregulated vape juice, just like there is for cigarettes. So just put a moratorium on sale for 5 years, and if the pros outweigh the cons, ban it permanently. If not then come up with some other solution, regulation, whatever.

> there will still be a black market for cheap unregulated vape juice, just like there is for cigarettes

Is there a sizable black mark for unregulated cigarettes? My guess would be that the black market for vapes has already surpassed it multiple times.

>That’s correct, we should ban the ability to profit from selling harmful products.

Can't tell of this is actually serious or not. There are so many products that can cause harm you might as well just make a whitelist of allowed products at that point.

>You are supposing that prohibition won’t work. But it is the easiest and cheapest approach.

Yet it's never worked and always just created dangerous unregulated black markets that causes more deaths and health issues than regulation and as far as cheapest, I think you're forgetting the cost of enforcement of prohibition.

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