AP: Regulators cracked down on sweet vapes after use by kids spiked. Now the Supreme Court is wading in

[Dennis Donovan]

AP - Regulators cracked down on sweet vapes after use by kids spiked. Now the Supreme Court is wading in



By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Updated 8:19 AM EST, November 28, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vaping is coming before the Supreme Court next week as federal regulators ask the high court to uphold its block on sweet, flavored products following a spike in youth e-cigarette use.

The Food and Drug Administration has denied more than a million marketing applications for candy- or fruit-flavored products that appeal to kids, part of a wider crackdown that advocates say helped drive down teen vaping after an “epidemic level” surge in 2019.

Vaping companies, though, said the agency unfairly disregarded arguments that their sweet e-liquid products would help adults quit smoking traditional cigarettes without putting kids at greater risk.

Republican Donald Trump’s administration could take a different approach after he vowed in a September social-media post to “save” vaping.

The Supreme Court on Monday is hearing arguments in the FDA’s appeal of a decision from the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. While other courts upheld FDA refusals, the appeals court sided with the Dallas-based company Triton Distribution.

It tossed out a decision blocking the marketing of nicotine-laced liquids like “Jimmy The Juice Man in Peachy Strawberry” that are heated by an e-cigarette to create an inhalable aerosol.

/snip

[S/V Loner]

1. I smoked for fifty years. Haven't had one since 2018...

thanks to vaping.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. I'm vaping as we speak...

...THC. 😎

[taxi]

3. Have you been able to stop vaping?

If so, that's great. For me, it was more difficult to stop vaping than it was to stop smoking.
I used vaping to break the cigarette habit, incrementally reducing the tobacco flavor and the nicotine levels. After many months I was down to the non-tobacco flavors like the ones being debated here and with zero nicotine levels. I soon realized that vaping had become my new habit and decided to stop vaping. The habit, whether it was the smoking of cigarette or inhaling a vape, had been reinforced millions and millions of times; each time bringing one to my lips went from being a decision to an act of feeding the habit. Think about it. Let's say someone takes 20 draws on a cigarette, 20 cigarettes per pack, one pack a day for a year. That's 20x20x365. That's 146,000 times in one year, smoking for 10 years means the decision to smoke has been made a million and a half times - and that's a low-ball figure. A cigarette smoker takes way more than 20 draws on each one.
In summary, to quit either cigarettes or vaping requires breaking a habit mindlessly repeated millions of times, and the producers of these products know full well that the users become victims unable to break the habit.
So, again, if you were able to quit, I congratulate you.

[S/V Loner]

5. No. I still vape and the thing is...

I like it and it keeps me sane. I also don't cough anymore and the fruit flavor I vape doesn't smell like tobacco. It's one of my last vices and at 71 I'm too old to care. Having said that I was lucky. Physically I can still move like I was 30. I had my lungs tested before an operation in 2018 and I asked the tech how I did? He said that if everyone came in with lungs like mine he would be out of a job. Not the response I expected. On the light side I tell people I am doing a public service by chilling out vaping.

[taxi]

6. Yea. I can understand that.

You know, it's like you said. You're going to keep vaping and that's just how it is. We've both been up and down the road and we know how it works. We know what happens in the first year after quitting and everything else that goes along with it. With that being said, and I think you understand me, let's talk about what the USSC should do. What the right thing is.

I like to frame it comparing Jack Kevorkian and his efforts to promote assisted suicide to being allowed to risk one's health a single breath at a time, millions and millions of times, over and over. Would you agree that assisted suicide and smoking are somewhat similar?

[S/V Loner]

7. No I don't.

I am letting nature take its course rather than controlling it. You could use the same argument with what people eat, drink, how adventurous they are and a million other things. I am more the everybody dies but not everybody lives mindset. LOL... nothing would piss me off more that stopping vaping and getting hit by a bus a week later. One thing I have learned over the years is that what you think is going to kill you isn't going to be what actually does. I'm going to enjoy myself with what time I have left.

[taxi]

8. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not suggesting whether anyone should stop or not,

nor am I suggesting a course of action, like some kind of restriction. I am just asking basic questions to see if they make any sense. Let me rephrase it.

Is it the role of the USSC to make a decision about the ability of a business to exploit the public?
What entity should have the authority to protect the public from predatory business practices if not the Supreme Court?

[S/V Loner]

10. Yes. There should be...

oversight when business decisions directly affect the health (both physical and monetary) of the citizens.

[taxi]

12. That's what ate at me for a long time before I finally stopped smoking.

It just kept coming into my mind, how in the hell can they pick the money out of my pocket every time they want to fund something. When I started smoking cigarettes were 40 cents a pack in NY. You know they nickel'd and dime'd their way up, closer and closer to a dollar. Everybody was mad, everybody said when they get up to a dollar a pack they're going to quit. So what did they do? They skipped the dollar mark! The price went from under a dollar to over a dollar. No one made plans for that. We all felt played. The plan was to quit when they got to a dollar - they read the room real good. It was an ah-shit moment and we just accepted it. We were played. We were played on the health end too. You remember all the myths, all the poison is in the filter, smoke non-filters. These cigarettes don't use fillers. Lung disease is related to genetics. It's too late for us, and it's too late for anyone who has already started smoking or vaping. But it's not too late to stand up for those who haven't been exposed yet. If someone at some point in the future wants to smoke, let him grow some tobacco and smoke it. It will be his choice, and right now he doesn't have the choice to grow his own tobacco. Nope. He has to buy it and all else that goes along with it. It just bugged me to no end that these companies were allowed to keep selling me a product that was beyond my ability control. We need to stand up and stop defending our mistakes. We supported an evil industry and it's too late for us. It's not too late for us to stand up for others.

[S/V Loner]

13. I hear you. n/t

[jimfields33]

4. If I were a Supreme Court judge, I'd vote no to this.

It’s the store clerks responsibility to check ID and not sell it. Why should everyone get punished? Doesn’t make sense.

[Jedi Guy]

9. Smoked for nearly 20 years and quit thanks to vaping.

Up here in Canada there have been rumors of a ban on all flavors but for mint and tobacco, justified by the same old "won't someone think of the children" mentality.

Meanwhile, I can meander into the LCBO and find cotton candy flavored vodka, peanut butter flavored whiskey, and all kinds of similar liquors. Interestingly, you can only buy liquor at LCBO here in Ontario, and those stores are owned and operated by the provincial government.

Rather than cracking down on the industry as a whole and banning flavors so that everyone suffers, the government should rigorously inspect vape shops and any caught selling to under-19s should be heavily fined on a first offense and lose their business license on a second offense.

[S/V Loner]

11. Exactly. n/t