Once Vape Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Vape

Will bacon double cheeseburgers be next? Maybe skiing? How about those deadly in-ground swimming pools? 

Last week, President Trump Tweeted his support for a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, aka vaping  - the popular alternative to smoking - saying “We can’t allow people to get sick. And we can’t have our youth so affected.”

Well, how about fast-food-eating politicians?

The president - who regularly enjoys McDonald’s and soda to wash it down would probably object if someone tried to tell him he’s no longer allowed to eat fast food because “we can’t allow people to get sick.” I would agree with him. 

His love of McDonald's hasn't harmed him - despite the "concerns" of people who think it might. He's more vigorous at 73 than most men 30 years his junior.

This is still America - not a nursery - although many of the president’s political opponents are determined to make it into one. 

Not, incidentally, because they are “concerned,” either. Rather, because it’s another means to more power - their real “concern.”

How can we rip the gun, plastic-straw and Big Gulp grabbers with one hand and grab people's vape with our other hand? How do we pause the war on the incandescent lightbulb only to open a new war against vaping? 

It’s disappointing to see any politician buy into this totalitarian nanny state logic - especially when they're opposed to it when it comes to medical and even recreational marijuana. He firedhis adamantly drug-warrioring Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who couldn’t take a hint and continued to publicly oppose the president’s laissez-faire (and 10th Amendment friendly) policies with regard to pot. The AG threatened to release the hounds on states that legalized or at least decriminalized marijuana - and legal (in those states) businesses, including medical clinics.

The Feds - under Sessions - also threatened banks and other financial institutions that made loans to, accepted deposits from, handled payroll accounts or otherwise did legal business with legal marijuana operations - causing them to refuse to do business, which drove the money from these legal businesses underground.

And off the books.

It didn’t stop people from growing or selling pot anymore than Prohibition back in the 1920s kept people from drinking - and selling - alcohol. Believe me, I have distant family members who were involved. 

Bootlegging just cut the government out of the loop - and the profits - those profits (in the case of Prohibition) going to fund guys like Arnold Rothstein and Al Capone. It took 13 years for the country to realize the mistake it had made. Which in a way it never really did realize.

While the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, it didn’t repeal the principle behind Prohibition that runs contrary to every principle enshrined in the Constitution - a document that created a government empowered to prevent people from harming one another but not from harming themselves.

And not even that.

Eating bacon cheeseburgers and drinking soda might increase the chances you’ll end up with diabetes or clogged arteries - but not necessarily. Some people never exercise - and live to be 90 - while others exercise regularly and drop dead at 50.

Skiing is riskier than walking - but you can be killed doing the latter as well as the former.

If the potential for “harm” is to be the basis for government not allowing us to make decisions for ourselves, then there is literally nothing the government could not, in theory, prohibit us from doing - including the eating of cheeseburgers.

Interestingly, what’s good for the goose apparently isn’t good for the gander.

Air bags have killed more people than vaping has been accused of killing - six claimed deaths (supposedly caused by vaping) vs. at least 16 who’ve been killed so far by known-to-be-defective Takata air bags, which the government has recalled - but won’t allow people to disable, notwithstanding they have resulted in something much more permanent than people “getting sick.”

Medical malpractice is credited with killing as many as a quarter-million people each year - but no one's proposing a doctor ban.

Yet.

While vaping isn’t healthy, obviously, neither are many other things. Banning vaping will only push people back into smoking - which remains legal and is medically worse than vaping.

And not just to those doing it.

One of the net positives of vaping is that whatever “harm” it does is confined to the person actually vaping. There’s no second hand vapor. Those in the vicinity of the person vaping aren’t “at risk” of anything - except perhaps being triggered by the sight of someone doing something they don’t approve of.

Hilariously - or depressingly, depending on how you look at it - is the argument peddled by something called the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids that banning vaping is “an extraordinary step in the face of a real crisis.”

Which it is - in the wrong direction.

The ban, if it comes to that, will not only encourage more smoking, it will almost certainly encourage more vaping - especially by kids - who (being kids) will be more tempted to vape precisely because it’s illegal. Yes, there is bubble gum flavored vape, but have you seen the flavors or Hard Cider, Iced Tea and Lemonade? All things that kids love. 

For the same reason that young people frequented Speak Easies almost 100 years ago, when the government told them they weren't allowed to drink.

All that did was make it more cool to drink.

A law against vaping will do the same thing.