The vape ban is crap.
New York’s wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am outlawing of flavored vaping liquids is an assault on what life in a free country is supposed to be about.
It is an example not of a compassionate government trying to protect its children, but of an oppressive government showing no regard for its citizens.
Vaping is the core of an industry built around selling nicotine liquid to addicts. Initially pitched as a way for smokers to get off cigarettes, it quickly showed itself as a means for children to get hooked on nicotine.
And they did.
In school bathrooms across the country, kids secretly vaped, some with tootie-fruity flavors sold by actual companies, and others with black-market marijuana liquids made by the same people who put fentanyl in heroin.
And some died.
Apparently the brown acid actually is bad.
Several were sickened across the country and a few died when illegal marijuana-vaping liquids crashed their lungs. The best understanding so far is that an adulterating Vitamin E oil used in the concoctions shut down the alveoli in users’ lungs.
Further proof that drug dealers are not actual pharmacists, and that America has a problem with the vaporizing of illegal drugs.
A problem which any number of politicians set about exploiting. In an effort to fight the real scourge of adolescents getting hooked on nicotine through the misuse of legal vaping liquids, politicians from The Donald Trump to Andy Cuomo cited the deaths from illegal liquids as a reason to outlaw legal liquids.
And, eager to be first at something for once in his life, Andy threw his bureaucracy into the task of doing now what Donald Trump said he would do in six months.
And so it was that, in some lame video hookup, a group of nobodies elected by no one effectively outlawed all flavored vaping liquids effective immediately.
Enforcement doesn’t begin for two weeks, but going forward in New York every vape liquid that isn’t tobacco or menthol flavored is illegal.
Next year they’ll legalize marijuana gummies, but his year they’re outlawing cotton candy vape.
And that’s crap.
There was no public discussion, there was no legislation, there is no electoral accountability -- there was a dictate. Some underflunkies of the Cuomo Administration voted just the way the puppet master said and something north of a million New Yorkers took it in the shorts.
And, quite likely, something near 700 New York businesses were shut down.
All without due process or rational justification.
Because legal vapes didn’t kill anybody. And because the problem of kids getting ahold of vaping liquids is a failure to enforce the laws that already exist.
And because vaping actually does much good, and undoubtedly will save many lives.
Because while we don’t know what vaping does to the human body, we do know what smoking does.
It kills it. And the initial purpose of vaping is still valid and useful. And there are large numbers of adults who use vaping to reduce or eliminate their cigarette smoking, with its physical woes. In the world of the lesser of two evils, a cloud of cherry vape is king.
And that has been lost because Andy wanted to be first.
Or because Andy wants more money.
Because an interesting aspect of this ban is that it shuts down a low-tax item which was taking customers away from a high-tax item. And the same day Andy lost the revenue he thought was going to come from replacement license plates, he found a whole bunch of revenue in returning cigarette smokers.
Huh. What a coincidence.
Another thing Fredo’s brother likes to do is extort people by smashing them, and then piling taxes on them in exchange for regulatory relief. Ask the Senecas about that. And the mixed martial artists, and the fantasy league people, and the Uber drivers.
Could the overnight banning of flavored vapes be the first step in a “regulatory process” that will in a few months let them back on the market carrying New York-sized taxes? Will the governor hear the raspy cries of his vaping constituents, claim that he wants to protect children from nicotine with new programs, and tax vapers to pay for them?
That way he gets to pretend he was responsive and compassionate, when all he actually did was find a way to shift tobacco taxes over onto nicotine sales.
That’s my guess: This is all a money grab.
But even if it’s not, this much is certain: This isn’t how America is supposed to be.
Because America is supposed to be free. And if you’re not free to vape, you’re not free. It’s your life, your health, your pursuit of happiness – and none of the government’s business.