Technology

As a person who uses a vape, most of the "save the children" stuff is FUD. Bluntly, underage tobacco users never went away. The fact that many of those users switched to vaping is unsurprising. The fact that they got their hands on tobacco products before vaping because popular, and got their hands on vape products when they because popular is the point. It's not a matter of what products they get their hands on, it's that they can get their hands on them at all.

So what's the solution? Simple: enforcement. The tobacco enforcement has been so lackluster that shops like gas stations hardly care if they're selling to someone underage. Certainly the owner just wants to see the product leave the store so he can get paid, and the cashier doesn't get paid enough to give a shit either way. With enforcement being so poor, most companies face relatively minor fines if caught.... And that's only if they're caught. Cashier's face no reprocussions. So there's no real motivation to even enforce the rules. Sure it's "illegal" but so is speeding, and you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't gone over the posted speed limit at some point... Many do it almost constantly, like it's a game of "how much can I speed before someone notices" spoiler: a lot.

Flavorings are not the problem. I'm a full assed adult and I like fruity flavors. Underage users still smoked when it was 100% tobacco products, which to many, taste like crap. They still used it. Child resistant packaging, which is a big factor contributing to the whole disposable craze, is also not helping. Sure, have difficult to open packaging on concentrated bottles of the liquid.... Drinking that stuff straight is bad and kids are stupid enough to do it... So that's good, but making it difficult or impossible to make refillable vape products due to child resistant packaging is insanity.

My main vape is very old, it doesn't have any child restraints on it, because I'm an adult and I don't let children near it... Because I'm responsible. Everything about it is reusable, besides three very specific items. 1. Cotton. It's referred to as "wicking material" and gets directly exposed to both the liquid, and the coil that vaporizes it.... So it gets damaged over time. It's cotton. No big deal. 2. The coil. It doesn't need changing nearly as often as the cotton, but eventually, due to the harsh operating conditions, it burns out, like a lightbulb..... Maybe every month or two, it needs replacing. 3. The liquid. This is just obvious.

So for a small pile of cotton, and a single small piece of resistance wire for the coil, plus some liquid, I can happily vape for a few months. My type of vape is referred to as a "squonk RDA". And they're banned because of the child resistant laws. I cannot buy a replacement. I've had several of the same kind of unit, and I like this one the most and it's also lasted the longest. When it fails, either I need to find a way to fix it myself, or I need to go to something more wasteful. The unit uses 18650 removable and rechargable batteries, though, I've had some that use 21700 as well (same thing just slightly larger). I've burned out maybe two 18650 batteries in the ~5 years I've been using this thing. Around one every 2-3 years, which is pretty normal for daily use. I spend maybe 15 minutes a month rebuilding it to replace the cotton (and coil, if required), and that's it.

It's appalling to me that anyone uses disposable vapes. It's actually more environmentally friendly to simply smoke actual cigarettes, compared to what disposables are doing to the environment. Most of the FUD sprouting surrounding vapes is a product of lobbying and infighting with cigarette manufacturers; they want people to keep killing themselves with their products, not move to something less harmful and less costly, chewing into their dwindling profits, so they manufactured a narrative to "save the children" and none of the proposals put forward have actually moved the needle on underage tobacco use. All the laws have done is make it harder for legal users to obtain and use a less harmful alternative to cigarettes, which was the point all along. If it's so difficult to use, people will just keep using the brain-dead simple combustible tobacco products that they always have, putting another nail in the coffin as they do.

And I get it. Underage tobacco use in any form isn't great. So the government should enforce the laws that already exist and make it difficult or impossible for minors to get their hands on tobacco products including vapes. We don't need more laws with vaping, we need enforcement of the laws that already exist. I'm a vaper and I believe that people who are underage should not have access to vape products (or any other tobacco products). Period. I'm in agreement with that entirely, but punishing me and the environment so that it's "harder for underage users" is only making my life more difficult, and doing real damage to the environment.