In a groundbreaking and increasingly negative ruling by a federal judge in the US on Friday, July 12th, vape manufacturers in the states now have 10 months to submit applications in order to keep vapes on the market.
This entire thing came about after a court case featuring public health and anti-tobacco groups in the US claimed teen vaping had become an epidemic, and that the FDA should step in to regulate or eradicate the manufacturing and sales of said devices. Does this extend to Canada? How can anti-tobacco groups possibly be lobbying for the removal of vapes? Is there something else going on behind the scenes?
Let me answer these questions for you!
Does this extend to Canada?
In short, no. The ruling was exclusively applied to US regulators, by a federal judge in the US. That being said, should the FDA find, in ten months, that the costs of teens vaping entirely outweigh the benefits of helping the some 34 million smokers to quit, Canada will quickly follow suit.
To be clear, this is not an immediate concern in Canada. In fact, the ruling was primarily targeting companies right out of the US, like JUUL Labs, just as an example (yes, I’m about to go off about JUUL again, you just wait hunny).
Canada has a tendency to follow the US in a lot of their rulings, especially when it comes to kids being in trouble. Of course, unless the US is actively putting little brown kids in concentration camps, then we surely won’t do that, or anything to help those kids, but that’s a blog for another day.
Anti- what now?
Yeah, you read that right. Anti-tobacco groups have been attempting to get vapes off of the market entirely.
“That makes sense, they just don’t want kids smoking!” You say, enthusiastically.
“It does not, and I will tell you why.” I retort solemnly.
There isn’t even one drop of tobacco in vape juice. Even in JUUL pods (Sam’s standing up for JUUL??? What’s happening???) there isn’t any tobacco. The only harmful product in e-liquid is nicotine, and even then you can get juices with no nicotine in them. The concern here is that they don’t want kids getting addicted to nicotine using vapes, which is understandable and easily preventable.
The confusing part is that anti-tobacco groups should be promoting vapes being on the market, as it takes away from smoking. What happens if they succeed in their mission to denounce all vapes? All of those adults that used vaping to quit smoking, and those who are going to, are immediately going to go back to smoking cigarettes, furthering once again the tobacco industry.
The Reasoning
For sure there’s something going on behind the scenes, and you’ll quickly notice the pattern between articles about this. JUUL Labs opened in San Fran, explicitly marketed their vapes to teens with bright, flashy ads with young people vaping, and now they’re under fire. In fact, a recent study found that teens are 16 times more likely to use JUUL than people older than them, or even than other vape devices!
No, JUUL isn’t 100% to blame for teens having so much access to vapes. It’s the gas stations, convenience stores, and their own reps that should be blamed for even going into those stores — which provide way easier access and are much more lax about carding (or ID’ing) young people. Why do you think it’s so rare to see JUUL products in specialty vape stores? Nobody wants anything to do with their dirty money, and dirty morals.
As always, thanks for reading, and leave me a comment!
Should vapes stay on the market? Is the US government taking the right steps forward?
