Democrats Introduce Bill to ‘Protect Children’ From Electronic Cigarettes

FreeBeacon ^ | February 26, 2014 | Elizabeth Harrington

[Cheerio]

Senate Democrats introduced legislation on Wednesday that would ban marketing electronic cigarettes to teens.

Despite their admission that the health implications of electronic cigarettes “are not yet clear,” Senators Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), and Edward Markey (D., Mass.) introduced the bill to “protect children” from the smoking simulators.

[Farmer Dean]

Parents with their poor or non-existant parenting skills enable these control freaks.

[skeeter]

What is it about cigarettes/pseudo cigarettes and liberals?

Is it just an insane control thing?

[xzins]

See the irony?

Sure. The bad thing about cigarettes is the residue and smoke in the lungs.

When smoking joints, marijuana does not give off smoke and residue that goes into the lungs. It actually turns to pixie dust and helps to reverse global warming.

[cripplecreek]

When smoking joints, marijuana does not give off smoke and residue that goes into the lungs. It actually turns to pixie dust and helps to reverse global warming.

A spoonful of pixie dust helps the fascism go down.

[Ignatz]

1. ECigs don’t have a filter. I question whether you know anything about them at all.

2. Nicotine occurs naturally on a host of tasty, healthy, vegetables like spinach, broccoli, etc. We don’t see thousands of children sneaking a bite of broccoli behind the gym during recess.

3. Have you considered that eCigs might prevent a child from smoking actual, harmful, cigarettes?

4. Please cite for me the paragraph/section of the U.S. Constitution where the Federal Government is granted authority over eCigs?

[jjsheridan5]

Nicotine is an addictive drug.

Cite, just once, an actual study showing this. You can't, because there isn't any. There are no clinical trials showing this. There is no proof, whatsoever, that nicotine is addictive. (NOTE: nicotine is not the same as the cocktail of thousands of chemicals in tobacco, plus those added during the curing process). We know of six trials of never-smoked given nicotine over an extended period (the trials were concerning the effect of nicotine on other conditions -- autoimmune disorders, cognitive issues). First, there is no way they would be testing an addictive substance for its therapeutic value if they knew it to be addictive (the researchers know full well that nicotine is not substantively addictive) -- they would be opening themselves up to endless lawsuits. But, of course, they knew there was no issue since nicotine is not, by itself, addictive. Second, after all six trials, where people had there serum levels of nicotine up to that of a smoker, for months at a time, none reported ANY withdrawal symptoms, and none went back onto nicotine.

If you are going to post pure BS, then back it up, or go back to DU.

[jjsheridan5]

3. Have you considered that eCigs might prevent a child from smoking actual, harmful, cigarettes?

Regarding this question, we don't really have to wonder. eCigs are similar to Snus, in that they have little in the way of health risks, and are nicotine-based products. When the EU prevented the sale of Snus in Europe, it was on the basis that Snus would serve as a gateway to cigarettes. Sweden (and Norway) continued to allow Snus. In direct contradiction to the predictions of the EU, the smoking rate in Europe did not materially decline, but the smoking rate in Sweden declined to where it is significantly lower than the rest of Europe (except for Norway, which also allows Snus). 13 and 16 percent, respectively, versus roughly 28 percent for the rest of Europe.

Ignatz is right, and Drago is dead-wrong (pun very much intended, since this type of error directly results in many people losing their lives). The "gateway" to smoking is not only not happening, but the reverse is happening. Kids aren't moving onto the deadly cigarettes, because they don't have a need to. Drago, and others like him, want to give them that reason.

[manic4organic]

The ignorant should neither comment on e-cigs nor legislate them. It emits water vapor, and you can choose the level of nicotine in the liquid or NONE at all.

[Earthdweller]

"ECigs don’t have a filter"

They don't have a filter like the ones in regular cigarettes...it's a filter-like paper or absorbent material in the "filter area" of the e-cig that holds the liquid that is being vaporized. Anything liquid can be injected into this absorbent like material...anything.

In the hands of a child...especially a teen who is being taught that huffing is cool...these items can be deadly. Even the wrong concentration of nicotine can be deadly.

Please do your research before advocating that these be on the market for the under aged.

[Earthdweller]

Please see post #29.

[jjsheridan5]

Please do your research before advocating that these be on the market for the under aged.

Maybe you should do your research. On what basis should they be made unavailable? You insist that they are "dangerous". How so? There are only four possible reasons, that I can see: toxicity, the "gateway" effect, addiction, and harm (there is a fifth, having to do with what kids might do with them -- but I cannot imagine any rational person banning something to teenagers on the basis of what they might do with them; such logic would result in the banning of just about everything).

First, the supposed toxicity levels of nicotine are based on a wild-a** guess made about 100 years ago. Not only have they never been confirmed, but a massive amount of anecdotal evidence shows that they are off by an extremely large factor. Nicotine is not the demon you make it out to be. Rather, it is a chemical found in many vegetables, and closely related to the B family of vitamins. Decades of hysteria, brainwashing, poor science, and paranoia can't change that. We don't know what the real toxicity level is (it has never been tested), but we do know that it is dramatically greater than the purported level. We also know that attempts to commit suicide via nicotine, by teenagers, has resulted rather comedically, since the only effect was a bout of nausea. Like all chemicals, they are toxic in sufficient amounts. But nicotine is not particularly toxic, especially in the amounts found in eCigs (a vomit reflex prevents serious harm, by all accounts).

Second, the "gateway" effect. As Sweden/Norway's experience shown, not only is the gateway affect wrong, it has it backwards. I forget the numbers, but I know that youth smoking in Sweden is particularly low (an even greater differential than the differential in the general population -- something like 5-6% for young adults). A young person in Sweden has a dramatically LOWER chance of becoming a smoker (not HIGHER, as the theory predicted), than a young person in any EU country.

To make this perfectly clear. Rather than being a "gateway" to smoking, Snus has demonstrably shown to be the most effective preventative of youth smoking -- far more effective than scary commercials, PSAs, meddling laws, and onerous taxes.

Addiction: I have already explained that nicotine is not addictive, and I defy you to provide a clinical study showing otherwise. While smoking is addictive, and tobacco in other forms is addictive (albeit less so), nicotine, on its own, is not.

Harm: Given that eCigs have been around for quite a few years, we would expect that if there were any significant harm from them, we would have found it. I don't really feel like going into it in detail, but suffice it to say that there is no reason to think that we will ever find any kind of significant health risk (given that everything consumed, or ingested, carries at least a trivial risk).

So you say deny access to minors. Here we have the anti-Gateway product (given its similarities to Snus, we can reasonably conclude that eCigs will have a similar anti-Gateway effect). This provides a youth smoking preventative better than any other, to the best of my knowledge. One which entails no significant health risk, and no risk of addiction, and apparently no risk of a toxic response. If you really did care about the children, you should be advocating its availability, not the opposite.

Personally, I don't really care. The hysteria is such that I am less concerned about preventing youth smoking, than I am about onerous regulations on older people trying to quit (because few health effects of smoking show up until later in life, in the vast majority of cases). But you claim to care about the children so much. So I posit the question: would you like the US to be more like Sweden, where 5.7% of 15 year old boys smoke, or more like the rest of Europe, where 18.7% of 15 year old boys smoke?

[Ignatz]

Do not put words in my mouth, Earthdweller, I said nothing about advocating the marketing of eCigs to children. Your trying to set up a straw man.

To keep on point, yes, it is possible that just about any liquid could be “huffed” in an eCig. But in the same sense that every female is “equipped” to be a prostitute. The vast majority will not turn into prostitutes, just as the vast majority of children will not start huffing dangerous chemicals just because eCigs exist.

It sounds like you’re trying to make the demonstrably false “if it saves the life of even one child” argument. Tell me, Earthdweller, are you willing to advocate keeping a product that could prevent thousands of children from smoking cigarettes from being available just to save a few who MIGHT abuse it?

Also, would you care to address my other points?

[Ignatz]

Bump

[Ignatz]

Bump

[MrB]

“It looks bad” actually makes sense

IF

you have the leftist/humanist mindset that
“people are basically good and it’s their environment that determines their behaviors and choices”.

If you have something that “looks bad”, ie something in the environment that looks like a bad behavior choice, especially if it is being enjoyed by someone, then that will make “basically good” people/kids make that bad behavior choice.

Conversely, they were POSITIVELY STUNED that when they used tax dollars to put more fruits and veggies in “food deserts” that the “basically good people totally affected by their environment” didn’t choose to buy and eat more fruits and veggies.

[Ignatz]

They are kept awake at night by the terrifying thought that someone, somewhere, is happily enjoying life.

[Earthdweller]

"...I said nothing about advocating the marketing of eCigs to children. Your trying to set up a straw man."

It appears you did not read the article. The article was about giving e-cigs to children...the rest of your page long rant is purely tangential and totally unrelated to my point or the general discussion.

If you would like to discuss adult rights ....please refer to someone else who will be happy to argue that subject. Have a nice day.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Greg Gutfeld did an epic rant about the Democrats’ potentially deadly stupidity in this regard on The Five earlier this week.

Nanny State PING!

[Mears]

” The article was about giving e-cigs to children.”

---

No it wasn’t,it was about MARKETING e-cigs to children.

They can’t buy them now anymore than they can buy nicotine gum.

.

[Drango]

So do you think MARKETING a drug delivery system to children is right or wrong? And should the government regulate it if it’s wrong/harmful?