Looks like a lot of nicotine addicts are going to need a new source for their fix:
Somewhere out there at this very moment, people are stocking up to be shady back-alley vape pen dealers, the picked-on nerds of the illicit drug world.
I’m puzzled why the FDA is going after Juul in particular, when it seems there’s plenty of blame to go around the vaping industry when it comes to “creating the youth vaping epidemic”. Maybe it’s because they’re the biggest target when it comes to profiting off hooking a new generation on nicotine?
From the FDA’s news release:
“As the FDA has stated in the past, unauthorized electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products for which no application is pending, including for example, those with an MDO (Marketing Denial Order), are among our highest enforcement priorities. Therefore, the FDA encourages retailers to discuss products in their inventory with their suppliers including the current status of any particular tobacco product’s marketing application or marketing authorization. Manufacturers will be the best source of that information and retailers should rely on manufacturers directly to inform decisions about which products to continue selling.”
Riiight…surely vape makers (including their shadier colleagues) are prime sources of accurate information about compliance with regulations. Hey, how about having retailers contact the FDA to see who’s following the rules?
That market already exists. You can (at least last time I checked, which was a while ago) see listings for standard vape pens/e-cigs with standard e-juice in the dark web.
In fact, there’s listings there for quite a few legal things that, I assume, are only there because of restrictions that prevent a certain group of people (ie minors, people in certain states etc).
I was wondering the same thing.
According to this, the FDA’s reason is that they failed to show that it’s safe for users. The whole “youth vaping epidemic” part seems to come from other groups aimed at stopping the youth vaping epidemic.
FDA orders Juul e-cigarettes off the market over safety concerns - The Washington Post
FDA orders Juul to pull its vaping products from U.S. market : NPR
No vaping-device manufacturer has shown that it’s safe for users, because it’s not. We all knew that already.
Sounds like a good thing to me. That shit be nasty!
Other stories about this have seemed to imply that former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb kind of had a personal vendetta against Juul.
From the Washington Post article linked above:
Juul’s problems with the agency began in 2018, when data showed a huge increase in teenage vaping, fueling a backlash from regulators. Scott Gottlieb, who was then FDA commissioner, publicly blamed Juul for setting off a youth vaping epidemic. He was infuriated when the tobacco giant Altria bought a 35 percent stake in Juul at the end of that year.
Why haven’t we banned cigarettes from the US market, using this logic? (The real reason: Because all the cigarette users would revolt, and a lot of them have guns.)
And Prohibition worked SO well for alcohol in the 20s, drugs in the present…
During the push to ban smoking in public spaces, I recall smoking advocates griping that governments should just ban cigarettes to get what they wanted, bringing up the downside of Prohibition.
Strangely enough, we’ve weathered public smoking bans, restaurants and bars haven’t disappeared from the landscape, and health benefits have been achieved. All without “Prohibition”.
“Denial of Juul” is rumored to be the next movie in the Star Trek series.
Funny. My brain went to Ghostbusters. Now they have to deal with the sister.
Sure, it’s bad for you in the same way caffeine is bad for you. It’s nowhere near as bad as smoking though.
Channelling Ghostbusters:
In Wisconsin we banned indoor smoking over a decade ago. Last week I found myself in one of the very, very few bars that’s never enforced it and still allows smoking inside. I knew I’d get hit in the face with a wall of smoke as soon as I opened the door, but I was utterly unprepared for how strong, and how gross, it would be. Even as a smoker (though I don’t smoke in my house/car) I find it odd that it was just accepted, without a second thought, that a bar ‘just smells like that’. It felt almost nostalgic. Like being able to smell gas every time you drove past a gas station before they had to install vapor recovery nozzles.
one of the bars I went to when I was young had a Halloween smoke/fog machine because people liked their dive bars smoky dammit!
Now you go on the smoking porch its all pot smokers sneaking tokes or sharing joints and things