I’ve seen this sort of thing a lot in the past few months. I get the impression that it is currently legal to sell these products to minors.
But isn’t nicotine a controlled substance? I thought it’s not just cigars and cigarettes and chewing tobacco etc that are illegal to sell to minors, but ANY sort of nicotine. So what is the problem? What are the politicians trying to ban that isn’t ALREADY banned?
Here’s my guess: I am correct that the sale of vaping stuff to minors is already illegal, but the kids are getting it anyway, so the politicians are trying to ban it entirely, as a way of preventing the kids from getting any. Am I close?
Vaping devices and products illegal to sell to minors, yes, by federal law as of January, 2018, similar to tobacco and alcohol. And, yeah, the law is probably getting flouted a lot, as did sales of tobacco to minors at one time. “Controlled substance” in terms of the DEA drug schedules, no. Tobacco / nicotine are not scheduled. There have been moves to list nicotine as a schedule II substance, which would ban it except for medical use. Probably not going to fly, whether you think it should or not.
I believe that the federal laws on vaping, like those for tobacco and alcohol, work by incentivizing states to pass their own laws prohibiting sale to those under a certain age. The details of the state laws probably vary from state to state, but I’m pretty sure that, under most of them, selling vapes to minors was already illegal at the time vaping appeared on the scene, even before the federal law was updated.
Correct. And the argument goes that these flavored liquids (cotton candy, strawberry, and the like) are more attractive to underage people than tobacco flavor, therefore these flavors need to be banned for all adults so that these youngers won’t illegally get them.