Founded by two Stanford University graduate students who were former smokers, Juul is the top-selling e-cigarette in the United States. According to the Juul website:
JUUL is a vaporizer, also known as an electronic cigarette or e-cigarette, unlike any other — designed to be convenient, easy-to-use, and familiarly enjoyable for adult smokers. Our proprietary nicotine-containing e-liquid formulation is the first of its kind, making innovative vapor technology a truly satisfying alternative.
The mission of Juul Labs is to transition the world’s billion adult smokers away from combustible cigarettes, eliminate their use, and combat underage usage of our products.
The Fatal Conceit: The...
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Juul has been demonized for years as being responsible for the supposed epidemic of teen vaping. For several years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried to ban Juul products from the market. But now, the FDA has given Juul authorization to sell its products after determining that Juul products provide less exposure to deadly chemicals than traditional cigarettes.
The FDA actually maintains a list of e-cigarettes that it has authorized to be sold in the United States. In May of this year, the FDA, along with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), seized nearly two million units of unauthorized e-cigarette products in Chicago.
“Today’s FDA authorization of JUUL products marks an important step toward making the cigarette obsolete,” said K.C. Crosthwaite, Juul Labs’s CEO. “Americans who use nicotine deserve an orderly, reliable market in which they can confidently choose from a wide array of smokefree nicotine products that are high-quality, innovative, backed by rigorous research, made in FDA-inspected manufacturing facilities, and marketed and sold responsibly,” he added.
However, Yolonda Richardson, president and CEO of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, had a different opinion: “It is a big step in the wrong direction to authorize sales of the product that was responsible for this public health crisis in the first place.” And so did Ranjana Caple, senior manager of federal advocacy for the American Lung Association (ALA): “Juul is responsible for the youth vaping epidemic, and its products have hooked a generation of kids on nicotine. Authorizing these products signal a stunning failure to protect public health.”
Juul products may be unhealthy, they may be addictive, and they may be harmful, but the vindication of Juul is good for individual liberty.
It is not the job of the government to prevent anyone from vaping, smoking, or ingesting dangerous, destructive, or even deadly products. This is because it is simply not the job of government to keep people from harming themselves with any substance.
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It is the job of parents to keep their kids from vaping just like it is the job of parents to keep their kids from drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, becoming a couch potato, chewing tobacco, viewing pornography, reading raunchy literature, seeing bad movies, having premarital sex, eating junk food, surfing the Internet, taking drugs, watching too much television, staying on their phone too long, and hanging out with bad people. It is never the job of the government.
The Family Smoking and Tobacco Control, which gave the FDA authority to regulate the manufacture, marketing, sale, and distribution of tobacco products, should be repealed.
The FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) should be abolished, as should the FDA itself. All warning labels on tobacco and vaping products should be voluntary. All taxes on tobacco products should be eliminated. All bans and regulations regarding tobacco advertising should be ended. All government smoking bans in private businesses should be ended.
I don’t smoke or vape, and consider both to be unhealthy and harmful, but I much prefer to live in a free society than a nanny state.
