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Vaping is a substitute for smoking. If you ban vaping, you get more smokers and overall worse health outcomes. Using just US statistics, you get the following

by ggreer 7y ago

Vaping is a substitute for smoking. If you ban vaping, you get more smokers and overall worse health outcomes. Using just US statistics, you get the following result[1]: > ...if a public e-cigarette ban reduces the number of smokers who switch to e-cigarettes by 2%, you’ve just killed an extra 9000 people per year – about three 9-11 attacks, or twice the number of US soldiers who died in the Iraq War. 1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/28/thank-you-for-doing-something-ambiguously-between-smoking-and-not-smoking/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/28/thank-you-for-doing-so...

gpm 7y ago
Vaping can be a substitute for smoking, but a lot of people are now vaping who weren't previously smokers, especially young people. Maybe it should be offered as a prescription drug to quit smoking...
- EpicEng 7y ago
  Kids drink a lot of alcohol too. Want to compare the numbers to alcohol related deaths for those under 21?
- ggreer 7y ago
  You are assuming that vaping is comparable to smoking in terms of danger. It isn't. Vaping is incredibly safe. The only people who have gotten sick or died have been using black market THC cartridges. Smoking kills around 400,000 Americans per year. If you make vapes harder to acquire than cigarettes, you will cause mass death. Cigarettes are available without a prescription. You can get them at any gas station, corner store, or supermarket. If vaping isn't as convenient or as available, you will get more smokers and worse health outcomes. Again, a 2% increase in the number of smokers in the US is 9,000 deaths per year. I understand where you're coming from. It certainly doesn't feel good to let a bunch of teenagers get hooked on vapes. But you are weighing a hypothetical, unlikely harm against a concrete ongoing harm that is several thousand times larger in magnitude. One's intuitions simply can't be trusted in these cases.

by ggreer 7y ago

gpm 7y ago

Vaping can be a substitute for smoking, but a lot of people are now vaping who weren't previously smokers, especially young people. Maybe it should be offered as a prescription drug to quit smoking...

EpicEng 7y ago
Kids drink a lot of alcohol too. Want to compare the numbers to alcohol related deaths for those under 21?
ggreer 7y ago
You are assuming that vaping is comparable to smoking in terms of danger. It isn't. Vaping is incredibly safe. The only people who have gotten sick or died have been using black market THC cartridges. Smoking kills around 400,000 Americans per year. If you make vapes harder to acquire than cigarettes, you will cause mass death. Cigarettes are available without a prescription. You can get them at any gas station, corner store, or supermarket. If vaping isn't as convenient or as available, you will get more smokers and worse health outcomes. Again, a 2% increase in the number of smokers in the US is 9,000 deaths per year. I understand where you're coming from. It certainly doesn't feel good to let a bunch of teenagers get hooked on vapes. But you are weighing a hypothetical, unlikely harm against a concrete ongoing harm that is several thousand times larger in magnitude. One's intuitions simply can't be trusted in these cases.