Why Prohibition Only Makes Things Worse
Many politicians seem to be jumping on the "ban vaping" bandwagon due to a series of respiratory illnesses potentially associated with vaping that are still being investigated. Politicians absolutely love to ban sh*t during public panics like this irrespective of logic and unintended consequences, especially in an election cycle.
I think most thinking human beings understand that banning vaping could hurt those trying to give up cigarette smoking (which is at least an order of magnitude more dangerous than vaping) even if they don't think this outweighs the risk of vaping. OK, all except this knucklehead.
But here is another unintended consequence. Start with this:
Media outlets, following the lead of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), continue to blame recent cases of severe respiratory illnesses among vapers on "vaping" and "e-cigarettes" in general, falsely implying a link to legal nicotine products. This misinformation is fostering public confusion that may lead to more disease and death, both from smoking and from the black-market products that have been implicated in the lung disease cases.
Based on the available information, the overwhelming majority of patients with respiratory illnesses had used black-market cannabis products. While a small percentage of patients say they vaped only nicotine, they may be reluctant to admit illegal drug use, and they may not know what they actually vaped if they purchased cartridges on the black market. If nicotine products are involved in any of these cases, it is almost certainly because of additives or contaminants in counterfeit cartridges or e-fluid, since legal e-cigarettes have been in wide use for years without reports like these.
So if vaping is banned (or at least flavored vaping is banned), won't that take these dangerous street black market products from a tiny percentage of the market to 100%? If you want to vape in the future under these bans, the only product available to you will be exactly the dangerous street products that led to the ban in the first place. Effectively the ban will cover all safe products and effectively exempt all unsafe products.
