San Francisco Had Another Attack Of Genius
Hey, SF kids -- you can't vape, but you can get somebody to buy you cigarettes at the deli!
Joshua Sabatini writes at the SF Examiner:
San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to ban the sale of e-cigarettes Tuesday despite opposition from corner store owners and local vaping manufacturer Juul.The Board of Supervisors voted 11-0 to approve the legislation introduced by Supervisor Shamann Walton, which is intended to prevent youth from vaping.
"We spent the '90s battling Big Tobacco. And now we see its new form through e-cigarettes," Walton said. "I am not going to put profits of Big Tobacco over the health of our children and our young people."
...The Small Business Commission advised against the ban. The Office of Small Business said in an email to board members prior to the vote that the ban would cost the 738 businesses in The City with licenses to sell tobacco and e-cigarettes about $70 million in sales, or $95,355 per store. This comes after these businesses suffered a $50 million loss in sales from the flavored tobacco ban that went into effect last year, which breaks down to $67,750 per store.
..."The prohibition of vapor products for all adults in San Francisco will not effectively address underage use and will leave cigarettes on shelves as the only choice for adult smokers, even though they kill 40,000 Californians every year," said a Juul Labs spokesperson in a statement. "We will continue to work with local policymakers, small businesses, community leaders and adult smokers who have switched to vapor products to enact stronger regulation and enforcement rather than complete prohibition."
Kitty puts it well:
The thing that helps people quit smoking is banned but cigarettes are still fine. Is this why people hate the government? https://t.co/dAkYr7l09b
— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) June 20, 2019
Meanwhile, picture the rush of kids going out to get alternate forms of payment or to bribe 21-year-olds to buy them vape goods online.
It's so cute when legislators think they're doing something meaningful to help one party, and they don't manage that -- yet manage to screw over a whole bunch of people along the way (in this case, the shopkeepers).
Smoke those dudes right out of business!
I've had several friends and family members quit smoking. And do you know how they did it? They just quit - no candies, no vaping, no nicotine gum, no hypnosis, no shock bracelets - they just said "enough" and stopped.
They all had various reasons for quitting, but only one method, quit. I still have one elderly aunt who smokes; but at 84, who's gonna argue it will shorten her life?
Let's stop pretending vaping is virtuous because it is "smoking light" or, somehow, a gateway to quitting. And let's stop pretending it's dangerous because it's a gateway to cigarettes for children. Joe Camel did not lead a generation of children to smoke and neither will Juul bubble-gum flavored steam.
Vaping is inherently unhealthy, as is smoking, and some people are gonna do it just because they want to. Banning a device or product won't make people stop. And "do it for the children" is nothing more than a self-righteous justification for authoritarian heavy-handedness.
Conan the Grammarian at June 22, 2019 6:16 AM
We'll file this under "we pretty much know what's gonna happen if we do this but we're gonna do it anyway 'cos we gotta look like we're doing something."
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at June 22, 2019 6:39 AM
Neo-puritans gotta Puritan.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 22, 2019 7:06 AM
I've also had friends quit smoking, some of whom used the patch and some of whom vaped their way into stopping.
Amy Alkon at June 22, 2019 7:14 AM
Good for them. Seriously.
I suspect, that absent the patch and vaping, once they'd made a firm decision to quit, they would have anyway.
Conan the Grammarian at June 22, 2019 11:51 AM
Vaping is fucking weird anyway. You walk past a group of badasses outside a bar and they all smell like strawberry muffins.
Patrick at June 22, 2019 1:39 PM
Maybe the nargila will catch on.
Ben david at June 22, 2019 2:18 PM
And when three large men finally have had enough and successfully drag one of these loony council members out into the street for a sound thrashing, the media will profess shock that people seem unwilling to obey their benevolent overlords.
mpetrie98 at June 22, 2019 6:25 PM
Twitter points out that San Francisco has its priorities straight: San Francisco just became the first city in America to ban e-cigarettes...luckily it's still totally fine to take a shit in the streets there.
Conan the Grammarian at June 25, 2019 3:10 PM
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