What did you expect of people who say - with a straight face - you didn't build that?

My daughter vapes. Started to kick a smoking habit which we both felt was worse than vaping.

Personally I think the campaign against vaping is at least partially funded, if not totally, by the tobacco industry. Did you know that most cigarette component factories are now in China?

With all the taxes on cigarettes the government is a partner with the traditional tobacco industry. And a dominate one at that. The guys who actually make the stuff don't even need to do anything. Uncle Sam want his money.

If we ban vaping or raise the minimum age in order to protect the children, from where do we think the children are going to get their vaping supplies?

They'll go to "that guy" who makes home-made cartridges, refilling his used ones with stuff he mixes himself. He won't smoke his own stuff, but he'll sell it to your kids.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

Could be, Isab. Makes sense. Only thing that makes me pause is that many tobacco companies have a vape division. I suppose those divisions would be happily sacrificed if the whole market was banned.

Hey...

Whatever happened to, you know, that idea of personal responsibility?

You mock consumer protections, and champion the idea that you should be able to ingest anything you choose, even after I point out that you have zero qualification or ability to determine if such things are poisonous...

So here you go: these people who are harmed now know not to buy from that supplier any more.

Problem solved.

Or, if it isn't (duh), then perhaps new thinking is required after all.

If cannabis is legal in Kookiefornia, Amy, they should be simply charging the usual sales tax (maybe 7 percent plus your local one-penny transportation levy), but lube-erals don't think that way. Sin taxes are overrated.

All the evidence so far points out that the people who draft consumer protection regulations in California also lack any ability to determine what is and what is not harmful. Yes Rad personal responsibility would be great. Nice of you to finally join us.

It is not the job of the government to protect you from yourself

"Nice of you to finally join us."

All that shows is that you haven't read or remembered anything I've said on the issue. Here, I'll repeat some of it, because the stupidity of calling for the abolishment of standards has gone on for too long here:

"Okay, for the umpteenth time: Regulation is not ONLY the inspection of finished product. It includes standards for the production, handling and transportation of materials which can be hazardous to the public, and inherently recognizes that prevention is the key principle in promoting public safety.

This principle is here to stay. Haven't you realized yet that you don't protect people by letting them die first? What the hell are you doing that you would think this?

You are fundamentally unqualified to evaluate the risks from most of the hazards near you."

"The FAA (and its counterparts overseas) regulates the qualification of pilots, the certification of aircraft and the procedures used by air traffic control to route aircraft. For your flight to Paris, there is a minimum equipment list which determines if the plane is operable, there is alternate airport designation and a spare fuel requirement. ATC doesn't let him roll if there won't be a landing slot at the destination - one more way to keep two jets from reaching the numbers at the same time and making outdoor barbecue - or being stranded in the air beyond reserve fuel range of a suitable airport.

Instead, let's just get on a plane and trust the guy knows how to fly, isn't too tired, isn't drunk or on drugs, knows where the airport is and can pick a slot when we get there. He's gotta know he'll be the first to the scene of the crash! I'm sure the mechanic used all the right bolts and calibrated instruments right and in periodicity on his own initiative. If we die, then other people will know not to use that airline!

Irony: air regs have come about because people HAVE died. The object is to keep it from happening again due to the simple and often-displayed tendency to backslide, to relax, to not take things seriously, to believe bad things happen only to others.

Safety measures do work with the carrot AND stick approach: "Here is the right way to do this / here is what happens to you if you are irresponsible and don't do this." Just as manufacturing does not rely on culling for quality control any more, serious people do not wait for a death to put safety measures in place!"

and

"Government inspections are only part of the story. Standards, establishing safe practices, produces the handling methods which provide your consumer protections.

Standards work to produce the safe environment you now enjoy. That's something you can actually see in place today. It is NOT a logical deduction or fantasy!

Proper inspections only determine if the standards are being followed. You are arguing that because some inspections are ineffective, they are worthless. That is blatantly false, and this would be easily apparent if you applied the concept to anything else. How about this one: "Some police are ineffective, so there shouldn't be any police."

Carry this further: you should not have to vaccinate your kids (you can't tell if the people around you have communicable viruses). The counter help at McDonald's should not have to wash their hands (you won't know, and you can't tell if their hands are actually clean). Nobody should tell you if their hot sauce has MSG in it (you can't tell unless they disclose that). UL shouldn't check the construction of your microwave - if it shocks you, you'll survive to turn it back in for another one (also without an inspection sticker).

Here's one you'll appreciate: you should just step into the Rapiscan 1000 at the airport, because it obviously isn't harmful.
What? All of a sudden you clamor for testing? Why?"

Everybody enjoys the warm glow of asserting that they know best, that they have control of their surroundings - when it just ain't so, and you should recognize when you actually need help figuring out what to do.

Malfeasance or malingering isn't a call to abolish a practice, it's a call to smack the help back into line.

Here's another thing you may not know: manufacturers have an issue with counterfeit parts, including aircraft parts. Unless a focused group of people work to prevent the installation of these parts, in one scenario, an in-flight engine failure becomes more likely.

Do you want to fly on a plane with an engine bearing built in a Pakistani garage? Of course not, and it's easier to fake packaging for a consumer product than one from Pratt & Whitney.

So, look at the vaping issue, which, oddly, apes the issue with getting weed. How exactly can you tell if what you're smoking is what you think you're smoking?
Hey, look! A commercial venture! Another call for a government solution, which has to happen because the public is being harmed!
Bingo: consumer protection laws get applied. If there's any other way to fix this legally, please let me know. I'd be fascinated to hear it.

The utopian libertarians imagine we can get along with any government at all (see L. Neil Smith's 1979 novel, The Probability Broach) and that if we just get together, we can work things out to the satisfaction of all. Smith kinda glosses over how much vigilantism and hanging that will require.

Smith's theorized libertarian US is an agricultural confederacy full of small self-governing towns, as would be necessary - yet somehow has an advanced industrial infrastructure and highly advanced technology.

Sadly, humans are not built that way. We do need some regulation. The challenge for libertarian theorists is how much government is really needed, how much power to give a government and still be able to keep it in check. That was the challenge for our Founding Fathers as well. I think they did a pretty good job and I don't trust anyone in politics today to do better.

> It's really tempting to flip
> the government the bird and
> go black market.

Of all well-known marijuana advocates, Joe Rogan perhaps stands deepest at the intersection of personal (libertarian) enthusiasm and personal responsibility. He's exactly the kind of guy of whom most of us would say: He's keeping it together— Let him do what he wants.

This kind of interview, and interview subject, is not much to my taste.

But Amy, if you can get through a half-hour or 45 of it, you probably won't be interested in buying weed from that guy on the street corner. (And at some point the guy affirms that California is bearing the brunt, or delivering the sorrow, for most of the United States.)

I'm gad to see your brushes with sanity were short lived Rad.

"How exactly can you tell if what you're smoking is what you think you're smoking?"

Even with regulations you still don't know. As for a different way to fix this, there isn't one. It isn't a problem that can be solved. You will never know exactly what is in the products you consume. Blue Bell got away with selling listeria contaminated ice cream for years. No regulators caught it until after people died. Were there regulations against this? Yes. Didn't matter. This is a non-solvable problem.

Also, this isn't a binary choice. Very few of us are pushing for zero regulations. (Amy appears to be one of them.) But most of us recognize the US is an old nation. It has lots of old nonsensical regulations and laws. Many of which were written not to protect people in general but instead to protect certain politically favored businesses. There is a lot of room to cut regulation before you endanger the public.

"You are fundamentally unqualified to evaluate the risks from most of the hazards near you."

Politicians are also fundamentally unqualified. If instead of writing the regulations themselves, they appoint bureaucrats to write the regulations, it may work better for a while, but ultimately the bureaucracy evolves from a meritocracy to a thuggocracy writing and enforcing regulations for their own benefit.