Vaping!
Vaping is killing and maiming everyone who even thinks about vaping! That’s what politicians and the media would have you believe. But is it true? Is it a correct representation of issues?
The Centers for Disease control, in 2015, stated that more than 9 million American adults vape regularly. In 2018 Reuters reported that the number of vapers had risen to almost 11 million in the USA. That would be almost one in twenty American adults are vaping.
Flash forward to the hysteria of 2019 where NBC News just reported that vaping illnesses in America have topped 1,000 cases with 18 deaths! Several of these are underage (18) minors, but is this a reason for hysteria?
Time magazine says that vaping is an “epidemic” amongst youth in America. They stated this without defining just what an epidemic is. I suppose it is anything that can instill fear in people that want to be afraid.
But fear not! Your government hears your panic and wants to panic along side of you. Several states, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Illinois, New Jersey and Delaware have enacted, or are considering enacting laws against vaping, or at least flavored vaping. Michigan, like these other states, has declared vaping a health emergency and wants a ban on the online and retail sale of nicotine of vaping products in any flavor except tobacco.
In the last sentence there is a hint where this column is heading, can you see it, or maybe smell it?
The CDC website states the following regarding cigarette use in America:
16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking.
Worldwide tobacco use causes 7 million deaths per year.
Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 American deaths every year.
41,000 Americans died yearly from second-hand smoke.
If the current trends continue, 5.6 million Americans who today are under age 18, will die prematurely in adulthood. That is 1 in 13 of American children alive today.
How strange that so much news coverage and political pandering is being spent on 1,000 illnesses and 18 deaths, yet cigarette smoking is killing almost half a million Americans every year. Why are the politicians shouting these facts and doing something about tobacco use?
The reason is as green as that first puff made you years ago, money. In 2017 the tobacco industry spent $9.36 billion on advertising and promoting tobacco use. That is money for the media, who certainly doesn’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.
In the past twenty years the tobacco industry has yearly spent approximately $20 million on lobbying at the federal level. This doesn’t include what is spent at the state and local government level. (opensecrets.org).
What is the bigger issue? Eighteen deaths from vaping, or 480,000 deaths from tobacco use?
It’s all just a scare tactic because we are so easily manipulated. Maybe someday we will see through the smoky haze, but until then smoke them if you got them. So long as you are an adult.