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Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. From talk about regulating the size of big

Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane. We still live in a country where illegal drugs are prevalent in all settings of life. All of the moral legislation doesn't change the underlying narrative that the people we task with serving this country are not doing their jobs right, and simply voting does not fix that because of the deep seated agendas of non-tax-paying corporations and individuals influencing our political systems. It's not about Juul products, it's a hostile bid to take their market share... There are literally 20+ other vape product companies, and many other non-legal suppliers that will step in regardless of what laws are passed, many adding harmful chemicals to products as well, while the FDA is not focused on making vape products better and safer. It's meant to be simple nicotine, that's been around since America was inhabited by native cultures. What's next for elimination? Brands of Alcohol? Are we going to limit blood alcohol content to 2 sips per outing? Who is driving all of this? Name the specific people pushing these rules, and then follow the paper trails, and you'll find that in a country where health care companies give major contributions to legislators to keep the market deregulated that it's all about money, not our best interests, and we fund it all every year, mandatorily, when we pay taxes... Everyone is getting prodded and pushed around by the legislators we're mandatorily funding. I'm not advocating protest or overthrow of government and corporations at all, but the ones we have in place are not helping us by any means right now, and they're overreaching into our privacy and lives and driving policy based on agendas and profit at our expense. People smoke mostly because they are stressed and burdened within their lives, reduce public financial and emotional stress factors first, then they'll have no excuses left for smoking. We need to be more vocal about the harm in moral legislation, even if smoking is eliminated, we still don't have free health care for being citizens, and we pay an extraordinary amount in taxes every year with cost of living that threatens to kill most well before smoking ever could.

vdnkh 4y ago
I never want to breathe in cigarette smoke on the sidewalk because of the damage to my health. Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I don't disagree, but this position commits you to removing all petrol cars from cities, too.
  - eneumann 4y ago
    Eliminating petrol cars from cities would be an objectively good thing for the air quality.
    - winternett 4y ago
      No offense personally, but the alternative to fuel burning cars is only cars with more toxic batteries that will pollute drinking water. There are no honestly viable solutions currently on the market to our environmental crisis in place, it's just marketing to shift profit to another harmful money making industry. Hauling a family of four on a bicycle to the hospital in a crisis in 2 feet of snow (for example) only goes further to highlight the small-mindedness our future is up against.
      - azth 4y ago
        What do you think about hydrogen cars?
        winternett 4y ago
        Don't smoke a cigarette anywhere near them... :/ They have a huge problem with unexpected detonations. One of the best things about vaping has been that I'm pretty sure that there are less unintentional home fires than in past decades, because when they are dropped on a mattress, they usually do not burn... Another aspect that no one really considers.
        0des 4y ago
        Hydride cells can be punctured, smoked near, smoked on, it's fine, it's also old technology. Just about any vehicle can be retrofitted for this, and can sequester the hydrogen overnight from the air.
mywittyname 4y ago
> it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. It's totally sane when looked at through one lens, and asinine when viewed through the other. From a societal point of view, banning these products makes sense. They don't add value to the world, but they cause a lot of damage. The people who feel they are flipping the bill for the damaged caused don't see a reason that they have to pay it. The costs can be abstract, like increased medical costs, but they can also be direct, say, your child gets hooked on one of these and suffers some sort of medical complication. From an individual perspective, then banning these products seems ridiculous. It's pretty common for people to believe that they aren't impacting others with their choices (which is wrong), or they acknowledge the negative impacts, but they just don't care. Generally speaking, if you want to maintain a freedom, it is advisable to not bother other people with your activity.
- throwaquestion5 4y ago
  Your first view is sane only on an individual, isolated basis. If you step back and see that a particular e-cig is banned while the original (and the causes for this type of product) is still legal, then any sane argument gets throw out of the window. If legislators wanted to remove causes of societal damage, they would ban the use of nicotine on cigarettes, that have the biggest share of nicotine consumption.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  So why not ban actual cigarettes? Why only Juul?
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    Because millions of people were smokers and that necessitated a long-term strategy for dealing with cigarettes. And that strategy is basically, increase taxes on them a little bit every year until they become so damn expensive that people quit using them and they are de facto banned. Juul is new enough that the blunt approach will work. Plus, it's not a plant that grows all over, making a black market for them less likely to spring up.
taurath 4y ago
> Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. Are these ways random though, really? Or do they reflect that we have vastly divergent ideas of what society should be from the “my home is my castle” folks to the “we live in a society” folks. For the former it’s an abrogation of their sacred right to do whatever they want. For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible For the former it's not wanting to be subjected to powerful politicians doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.
rglover 4y ago
chadash 4y ago
> From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane. Smoking marijuana and big gulps are very different from paper straws. Rules around smoking and soda sizes are the government legislating freedoms. I personally don't mind regulations here, but I agree it's taking away your liberty to some extent. Paper straws are mandated for a completely different reason: because they impose an externality that the user doesn't adequately pay for. Philosophically these bans are for the same reason we don't allow you to leave garbage on a public bench or dump toxic waste in a river. Again, you can debate the merits of single-use plastic legislation, but I wouldn't lump it together with smoking and soda bans at all.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  But why ban paper straws and not plastic wrapped plastic bottles with plastic stickers on a pallet wrapped in plastic? Just eliminating the "sixpack" part of the packaging of sodas would save more plastics than the straws bans do.
  - chadash 4y ago
    Sure, but my point is more that legislation on e-cigarettes and soda is an issue of civil liberty, plain and simple, and legislation on plastics has little to do with them (unless you think that it's your right to pollute the environment). You might not think that it's effective, but it's not a case of the government telling you you can't do something for your own good.
mberning 4y ago
In some parts of the country you can easily get and use hard drugs in public and mutilate your genitals as a minor, but no big gulps or juuls.
IAmWorried 4y ago
People will always find ways to screw themselves up. Trying to ban this or ban that is like playing whack a mole. It ends up being a contest of who can shout the loudest to gain the government's attention, which isn't fair and also hurts the economy. The only answer in my opinion is deregulation + strong family values to help raise kids right.
unphased 4y ago
Great post. Now you got me thinking about one thing in particular. Suppose we will have quite soon portable and discreet technology that can, through monitoring your BAC, or what have you, warn you that you're about to be overly drunk. It would stand to reason that for many folks out there who have An Alcohol Problem that technology like this could materially enhance their lives. Now that I think of this, something like this could even become the first practical widespread form of cybernetic enhancement, not that we don't already have plenty of awesome ones in the form of prostheses. Just makes me wonder what kind of hurdles a company developing such a product would face.
wnolens 4y ago
Free healthcare (i.e. paid for by taxes) would certainly make me vote to eliminate known harmful things. I don't want to pay for your choices. It's more than moral legislation then.
binarymax 4y ago
Just note that this isn’t anything new. I highly recommend the book “How to become a Federal Criminal” that shows 200 years of code and statute for all kinds of odd rules. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Become-a-Federal-Criminal/Mike-Chase/9781982112516 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Become-a-Feder...
glitcher 4y ago
I had similar thoughts when they banned flavored vapes. "For the sake of the children" means that me, as an adult, am not allowed to choose fruit flavors for an adult product when that is what I prefer. Seems hypocritical that I can buy blueberry vodka but not blueberry vape.
- tarentel 4y ago
  Except they didn't ban them they kept some weird loophole that allows disposable vapes to still be sold in any range of flavors so now people are just throwing away tons of batteries and for some reason Juul is getting banned who actually complied with the laws and took significant losses doing so. I don't think the people who are/were running juul are saints but if this is really about the kids they're really missing the target because all those teens moved onto other products. Flavored ecig sales increased after the ban. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/National-E-CigaretteSales-DataBrief-2021-June21?inline https://www.cdcfoundation.org/National-E-CigaretteSales-Data...
  - julienb_sea 4y ago
    This is the true absurdity. You can actively buy high percentage nicotine in any flavor you want online, delivered to your door with minimal age checks.
    - winternett 4y ago
      Lawmakers are activist on the matter because they believe it will somehow protect their own children from vaping... Truth is it's too late to prevent their own children from vaping, they've already caught them vaping. Because of social media and populism, too many bad/harmful decisions are being made now in government. Most of it is driven by people seeking re-election or social media popularity more than by people who truly want to create positive change.

vdnkh 4y ago

I never want to breathe in cigarette smoke on the sidewalk because of the damage to my health. Why does the individual freedom to do whatever you want overrule my individual freedom not to be affected by the externalities of your choices? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you focus almost exclusively on individual right to the detriment of public good.

vehemenz 4y ago
I don't disagree, but this position commits you to removing all petrol cars from cities, too.
- eneumann 4y ago
  Eliminating petrol cars from cities would be an objectively good thing for the air quality.
  - winternett 4y ago
    No offense personally, but the alternative to fuel burning cars is only cars with more toxic batteries that will pollute drinking water. There are no honestly viable solutions currently on the market to our environmental crisis in place, it's just marketing to shift profit to another harmful money making industry. Hauling a family of four on a bicycle to the hospital in a crisis in 2 feet of snow (for example) only goes further to highlight the small-mindedness our future is up against.
    - azth 4y ago
      What do you think about hydrogen cars?
      - winternett 4y ago
        Don't smoke a cigarette anywhere near them... :/ They have a huge problem with unexpected detonations. One of the best things about vaping has been that I'm pretty sure that there are less unintentional home fires than in past decades, because when they are dropped on a mattress, they usually do not burn... Another aspect that no one really considers.
        0des 4y ago
        Hydride cells can be punctured, smoked near, smoked on, it's fine, it's also old technology. Just about any vehicle can be retrofitted for this, and can sequester the hydrogen overnight from the air.

mywittyname 4y ago

> it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. It's totally sane when looked at through one lens, and asinine when viewed through the other. From a societal point of view, banning these products makes sense. They don't add value to the world, but they cause a lot of damage. The people who feel they are flipping the bill for the damaged caused don't see a reason that they have to pay it. The costs can be abstract, like increased medical costs, but they can also be direct, say, your child gets hooked on one of these and suffers some sort of medical complication. From an individual perspective, then banning these products seems ridiculous. It's pretty common for people to believe that they aren't impacting others with their choices (which is wrong), or they acknowledge the negative impacts, but they just don't care. Generally speaking, if you want to maintain a freedom, it is advisable to not bother other people with your activity.

throwaquestion5 4y ago
Your first view is sane only on an individual, isolated basis. If you step back and see that a particular e-cig is banned while the original (and the causes for this type of product) is still legal, then any sane argument gets throw out of the window. If legislators wanted to remove causes of societal damage, they would ban the use of nicotine on cigarettes, that have the biggest share of nicotine consumption.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
So why not ban actual cigarettes? Why only Juul?
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Because millions of people were smokers and that necessitated a long-term strategy for dealing with cigarettes. And that strategy is basically, increase taxes on them a little bit every year until they become so damn expensive that people quit using them and they are de facto banned. Juul is new enough that the blunt approach will work. Plus, it's not a plant that grows all over, making a black market for them less likely to spring up.

taurath 4y ago

> Now we're being told what we can and can't do in random ways in America and it's a really strange form of hypocrisy. Are these ways random though, really? Or do they reflect that we have vastly divergent ideas of what society should be from the “my home is my castle” folks to the “we live in a society” folks. For the former it’s an abrogation of their sacred right to do whatever they want. For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.

happyopossum 4y ago
> For the latter it’s not wanting to be subjected to powerful corporations doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible For the former it's not wanting to be subjected to powerful politicians doing sociopathic things to make as much money as possible.

rglover 4y ago

chadash 4y ago

> From talk about regulating the size of big gulps to mandating paper straws to legalization of marijuana and the banning of smoking products, this country is going insane. Smoking marijuana and big gulps are very different from paper straws. Rules around smoking and soda sizes are the government legislating freedoms. I personally don't mind regulations here, but I agree it's taking away your liberty to some extent. Paper straws are mandated for a completely different reason: because they impose an externality that the user doesn't adequately pay for. Philosophically these bans are for the same reason we don't allow you to leave garbage on a public bench or dump toxic waste in a river. Again, you can debate the merits of single-use plastic legislation, but I wouldn't lump it together with smoking and soda bans at all.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
But why ban paper straws and not plastic wrapped plastic bottles with plastic stickers on a pallet wrapped in plastic? Just eliminating the "sixpack" part of the packaging of sodas would save more plastics than the straws bans do.
- chadash 4y ago
  Sure, but my point is more that legislation on e-cigarettes and soda is an issue of civil liberty, plain and simple, and legislation on plastics has little to do with them (unless you think that it's your right to pollute the environment). You might not think that it's effective, but it's not a case of the government telling you you can't do something for your own good.

mberning 4y ago

In some parts of the country you can easily get and use hard drugs in public and mutilate your genitals as a minor, but no big gulps or juuls.

IAmWorried 4y ago

People will always find ways to screw themselves up. Trying to ban this or ban that is like playing whack a mole. It ends up being a contest of who can shout the loudest to gain the government's attention, which isn't fair and also hurts the economy. The only answer in my opinion is deregulation + strong family values to help raise kids right.

unphased 4y ago

Great post. Now you got me thinking about one thing in particular. Suppose we will have quite soon portable and discreet technology that can, through monitoring your BAC, or what have you, warn you that you're about to be overly drunk. It would stand to reason that for many folks out there who have An Alcohol Problem that technology like this could materially enhance their lives. Now that I think of this, something like this could even become the first practical widespread form of cybernetic enhancement, not that we don't already have plenty of awesome ones in the form of prostheses. Just makes me wonder what kind of hurdles a company developing such a product would face.

wnolens 4y ago

Free healthcare (i.e. paid for by taxes) would certainly make me vote to eliminate known harmful things. I don't want to pay for your choices. It's more than moral legislation then.

binarymax 4y ago

Just note that this isn’t anything new. I highly recommend the book “How to become a Federal Criminal” that shows 200 years of code and statute for all kinds of odd rules. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Become-a-Federal-Criminal/Mike-Chase/9781982112516 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Become-a-Feder...

glitcher 4y ago

I had similar thoughts when they banned flavored vapes. "For the sake of the children" means that me, as an adult, am not allowed to choose fruit flavors for an adult product when that is what I prefer. Seems hypocritical that I can buy blueberry vodka but not blueberry vape.

tarentel 4y ago
Except they didn't ban them they kept some weird loophole that allows disposable vapes to still be sold in any range of flavors so now people are just throwing away tons of batteries and for some reason Juul is getting banned who actually complied with the laws and took significant losses doing so. I don't think the people who are/were running juul are saints but if this is really about the kids they're really missing the target because all those teens moved onto other products. Flavored ecig sales increased after the ban. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/National-E-CigaretteSales-DataBrief-2021-June21?inline https://www.cdcfoundation.org/National-E-CigaretteSales-Data...
- julienb_sea 4y ago
  This is the true absurdity. You can actively buy high percentage nicotine in any flavor you want online, delivered to your door with minimal age checks.
  - winternett 4y ago
    Lawmakers are activist on the matter because they believe it will somehow protect their own children from vaping... Truth is it's too late to prevent their own children from vaping, they've already caught them vaping. Because of social media and populism, too many bad/harmful decisions are being made now in government. Most of it is driven by people seeking re-election or social media popularity more than by people who truly want to create positive change.