San Francisco's proposal to ban vaping is meaningless.

San Francisco is a bit of a ban party. Last year, it was electric scooters. The city is currently studying a bill to eliminate cashless stores and legislation that could effectively ban vapers. This last bill is based on the idea that we do not know enough about e-cigarettes to allow them. This is not an absolute prohibition; it's a proposal to ban vapes that have not yet been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration. But for the moment, it's all.

The vape ban is supposed to "protect young people from electronic cigarettes," according to a press release issued by city prosecutor Dennis Herrera, who is proposing it with supervisor Shamann Walton. The recent outcry over the "epidemic" of teenage vaping, as described by outgoing FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, described it (he led his agency by restricting the sale of vaping cartridges in flavors such as mango and acid gelatin). The concern raised by e-cigs has grown since last year's research showed an increase in teenage vaping. Juul, the only brand cited in the San Francisco press release, is a teenager phenomenon: the first ads of the product featured young people, and the definition of its urban dictionary indicates that the device is "generally confused with a USB key. it's easy to hide at school.

Reducing vaping in adolescents is a good goal. Like all tobacco products, e-cigarettes can not be sold to anyone under the age of 18 (although some states have increased this number to 21). But calls like this show how much of the moral panic surrounding teens' consumption of electronic cigarettes tends to overshadow their potential as an essential harm reduction tool and a safer alternative to cigarettes. known carcinogen.

The lawmakers behind the San Francisco proposal said they simply wanted the FDA to act more quickly in assessing the role of e-cigarettes in public health. It is true that the FDA has not checked the e-cigarette products, but it has planned to do so by 2022 (a delay it has postponed for a good reason, as Jacob Grier explained in Slate) . Require that vaping be regulated right now or else This also contrasts with the relatively lax requirements for cigarettes: as Herrera pointed out in an e-mail, "the FDA has no legal obligation to conduct this type of examination for traditional cigarettes, which were already in the market in force. "

In the meantime, the US Department of Health and Human Services has already published a general report of nearly 300 pages of surgeons on vaping. After reading, the doctor, Jeremy Samuel Faust, concluded that "the electronic cigarette is far from being as harmful to most people as traditional cigarette or chewing tobacco, two obvious causes of cancer and many other serious medical problems in the long term, "he added. written in slate. And even with the recent increase in teenage vaping, it's interesting to note that teen smoking is about the same as it was in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (He actually dropped and then rose again in this window). But the net situation improved as consumption shifted to a less harmful version of the product.

The problem with the proposed ban is that it would not simply keep the videos within reach of teenagers; this would also avoid them to an essential audience: adult smokers. "Smoking is particularly deadly and the evidence we have so far suggests that nicotine-containing e-cigarettes can help you quit," said a report published in 2018 by the BMJ. The Surgeon General's 2016 report indicates that evidence showing that vows act as a global nicotine cessation tool is "extremely weak", although science is still evolving. Anyway, we know that using a Juul is less harmful than smoking a cigarette. Being able to replace adult smoking is Juul's supposedly current goal and goal.

In the end, the proposal raises the question: why not just add cancer-causing cigarettes to San Francisco's banned list? I think that reveals the flaws of the concept. There are social reasons not to do all tobacco tobacco: it is not a Zeitgeisty issue, and even though cigarettes still affect teenagers, they do not have the same juvenile connotation as Juuls. But a ban on cigarettes would also seem paternalistic and ridiculous, which would be a clear way to unfairly control drug addicts instead of offering them help, resources and the right to handle the flaws as they please. A ban on vaping would do the same thing; it's just sneaky about it.