Biden's Ban on Menthol Cigarettes

[Senkaku]

Given the numbers on DGU incidents range from many tens of thousands to actual millions annually this seems more like an emotional position than one dictated by the numbers.



Smoking has mostly died off with younger generations it seems tbh. Honestly you probably could just outright ban it at this point and I'm not even sure how many people under 30 it'd impact.

Totalitarianism impacts all of us regardless of our likes and dislikes.

I think mayonnaise is absolutely disgusting and I hate it so much but if the government tried to ban it, I'd still make proverbial molotovs for the riot. Every inch we give to the state gives them more and more momentum.

And while a mayo ban is not likely, I bet we're only two decades away from sugar ration cards or some other form of governments regulating how much junk food you can buy.

Spinning rationing caused by some climate-induced agricultural disaster as a government effort to promote healthy eating does have that certain bleak humor the 21st century seems to so love to cultivate

The bans in the EU and other countries are nothing to do with the American obsession with skin colour. It is because young people who smoke menthol cigarettes are more likely to become lifelong smokers than those that smoke non-menthol cigarettes. The menthol inhibits the metabolisation of nicotine, meaning that smokers of menthol cigarettes are exposed to more nicotine and develop a stronger nicotine addiction.

Addiction to anything is not freedom.

Next you’ll be telling me we have to ban everything above 60 proof because otherwise the strength of the demon rum just pulls people in too hard

I'd argue the recreational dopamine hit smoking gives you is a lot more "utilitarian" than having a deadly weapon lying around your home that you're unlikely to do anything with besides commit suicide or a felony

Given the numbers on DGU incidents range from many tens of thousands to actual millions annually this seems more like an emotional position than one dictated by the numbers.

Why are cigarettes allowed at all again?

Biden is doing well but I’m not sure it sends a strong enough message that tobacco is unhealthy and tobacco profiteering is a societal problem. He ought to go further.

Smoking has mostly died off with younger generations it seems tbh. Honestly you probably could just outright ban it at this point and I'm not even sure how many people under 30 it'd impact.

That is a TWA I don’t want to look up right now but I assumed it’s like “death gun incident something something”

Anyways no, even if cigarette-related deaths outpaced gun deaths a millionfold, my point remains the same— cigarettes ostensibly at least make people feel good, even if the trade off is six minutes of their life. Privately owned guns just sit there and sometimes throw pieces of metal through people’s bones and organs, and it’s usually not in service of the cause of righteousness lol

[Debussy]

They should ban vaps from advertising on TV.

[Senkaku]

Totalitarianism impacts all of us regardless of our likes and dislikes.

I think mayonnaise is absolutely disgusting and I hate it so much but if the government tried to ban it, I'd still make proverbial molotovs for the riot. Every inch we give to the state gives them more and more momentum.

And while a mayo ban is not likely, I bet we're only two decades away from sugar ration cards or some other form of governments regulating how much junk food you can buy.

This is a great point and I'd be against a food ban as well, but you need to draw the line somewhere. If companies sold radon-riddled clothes would banning them be totalitarian? Probably not. Cigs are a chemical disaster, they literally have traces of radioactive components in them that get stuck in the lungs and endlessly bombard the lungs with radiation. And they can infringe on the freedom of others due to the nature of smoke.

Which is why we have designated smoking sections in most public spaces and private establishments are free to forbid it

I’m pretty sure smokers know smoking is bad for them and that nasty shit is getting into their lungs, if someone’s knowingly accepting that tradeoff as worth it in their mind for the nicotine hit then that seems like their business

[New haven america]

Pretty sure vapes can also turn into tiny grenades occasionally. I’d rather get cancer than have my mouth blown off. Not that I do smoke or vape, but I’m just adding my two cents.

No. Vapes don't explode. Lithium batteries that power the vapes explode. There is a huge difference. None of these accidents happen because of defects in the device, they happen because of defects in the batteries, the same batteries that power many, many other things.

Basic battery safety almost completely eliminates the potential for accidents. If there is a tear in your battery, you throw it away and replace it with a new one. It's painfully easy to teach battery safety, I could teach anyone all they need to know in literally 5 minutes.

So the Vapes can explode, is what you're saying. Are the batteries not a component of the device?

[Page]

No. Vapes don't explode. Lithium batteries that power the vapes explode. There is a huge difference. None of these accidents happen because of defects in the device, they happen because of defects in the batteries, the same batteries that power many, many other things.

Basic battery safety almost completely eliminates the potential for accidents. If there is a tear in your battery, you throw it away and replace it with a new one. It's painfully easy to teach battery safety, I could teach anyone all they need to know in literally 5 minutes.

So the Vapes can explode, is what you're saying. Are the batteries not a component of the device?

They are components of the device in the same way triple A batteries are components of your TV remote.

[New haven america]

So the Vapes can explode, is what you're saying. Are the batteries not a component of the device?

They are components of the device in the same way triple A batteries are components of your TV remote.

So yes.

Hence vapes can explode.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

The bans in the EU and other countries are nothing to do with the American obsession with skin colour. It is because young people who smoke menthol cigarettes are more likely to become lifelong smokers than those that smoke non-menthol cigarettes. The menthol inhibits the metabolisation of nicotine, meaning that smokers of menthol cigarettes are exposed to more nicotine and develop a stronger nicotine addiction.

Addiction to anything is not freedom.

Addiction isn't caused by increased nicotine exposure in single doses, it's caused by repeated nicotine exposure in separate doses.

A lot of people smoke shisha recreationally. Some once a week, some once a month. A single bowl smoked over the course of an hour is equivalent in nicotine to 4 or 5 cigarettes. Yet many of those people never get addicted.

On the other hand, every smoker you have ever known was at one point smoking a few cigarettes a day, one in the morning, afternoon, night, breakfast, lunch, dinner. And most early smokers don't even finish their cigarettes. They get tiny little doses of nicotine, but they get addicted.

Frequency of consumption, not amount.

Indeed, if menthol in cigarettes means you get more nicotine at once, it would be smarter to ban regulars and make everyone smoke menthols, because then people would be inhaling less smoke and tar overall to get the nicotine hit, and they would die a few months or years later!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3720998/

"One of the more significant scientific suggestions is that menthol can alter the metabolism of nicotine in the body. This effect of menthol is shown to provide smokers an enhanced exposure to systemic nicotine and its metabolites (Benowitz, 2008). In accordance with this idea, menthol cigarette smokers on the whole are known to exhibit different smoking habits from other smokers. For example, they tend to smoke fewer cigarettes per day, and find it more difficult to quit (Oliver et al., 2013). Relapse rates are also considerably higher in menthol cigarette smokers suggesting that menthol may contribute more than just flavor."

[Page]

Addiction isn't caused by increased nicotine exposure in single doses, it's caused by repeated nicotine exposure in separate doses.

A lot of people smoke shisha recreationally. Some once a week, some once a month. A single bowl smoked over the course of an hour is equivalent in nicotine to 4 or 5 cigarettes. Yet many of those people never get addicted.

On the other hand, every smoker you have ever known was at one point smoking a few cigarettes a day, one in the morning, afternoon, night, breakfast, lunch, dinner. And most early smokers don't even finish their cigarettes. They get tiny little doses of nicotine, but they get addicted.

Frequency of consumption, not amount.

Indeed, if menthol in cigarettes means you get more nicotine at once, it would be smarter to ban regulars and make everyone smoke menthols, because then people would be inhaling less smoke and tar overall to get the nicotine hit, and they would die a few months or years later!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3720998/

"One of the more significant scientific suggestions is that menthol can alter the metabolism of nicotine in the body. This effect of menthol is shown to provide smokers an enhanced exposure to systemic nicotine and its metabolites (Benowitz, 2008). In accordance with this idea, menthol cigarette smokers on the whole are known to exhibit different smoking habits from other smokers. For example, they tend to smoke fewer cigarettes per day, and find it more difficult to quit (Oliver et al., 2013). Relapse rates are also considerably higher in menthol cigarette smokers suggesting that menthol may contribute more than just flavor."

Thank you for providing a source that validates the very point I was making.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3720998/

"One of the more significant scientific suggestions is that menthol can alter the metabolism of nicotine in the body. This effect of menthol is shown to provide smokers an enhanced exposure to systemic nicotine and its metabolites (Benowitz, 2008). In accordance with this idea, menthol cigarette smokers on the whole are known to exhibit different smoking habits from other smokers. For example, they tend to smoke fewer cigarettes per day, and find it more difficult to quit (Oliver et al., 2013). Relapse rates are also considerably higher in menthol cigarette smokers suggesting that menthol may contribute more than just flavor."

Thank you for providing a source that validates the very point I was making.

You are reading it wrongly then.

[Washington Resistance Army]

That is a TWA I don’t want to look up right now but I assumed it’s like “death gun incident something something”

Anyways no, even if cigarette-related deaths outpaced gun deaths a millionfold, my point remains the same— cigarettes ostensibly at least make people feel good, even if the trade off is six minutes of their life. Privately owned guns just sit there and sometimes throw pieces of metal through people’s bones and organs, and it’s usually not in service of the cause of righteousness lol

Defensive gun usage. Even at the lowest end estimates they outpace all gun killings and at the highest end estimates they reach into the millions and outpace literally all forms of firearms crime period. So, yeah, you're just kinda wrong on this one.

So the Vapes can explode, is what you're saying. Are the batteries not a component of the device?

They are components of the device in the same way triple A batteries are components of your TV remote.

I feel like this is a bad comparison because I'm not sure I've ever heard of a TV remote overheating to such a degree that it literally explodes and causes severe injures.

[Page]

That is a TWA I don’t want to look up right now but I assumed it’s like “death gun incident something something”

Anyways no, even if cigarette-related deaths outpaced gun deaths a millionfold, my point remains the same— cigarettes ostensibly at least make people feel good, even if the trade off is six minutes of their life. Privately owned guns just sit there and sometimes throw pieces of metal through people’s bones and organs, and it’s usually not in service of the cause of righteousness lol

Defensive gun usage. Even at the lowest end estimates they outpace all gun killings and at the highest end estimates they reach into the millions and outpace literally all forms of firearms crime period. So, yeah, you're just kinda wrong on this one.

They are components of the device in the same way triple A batteries are components of your TV remote.

I feel like this is a bad comparison because I'm not sure I've ever heard of a TV remote overheating to such a degree that it literally explodes and causes severe injures.

And I haven't heard of a responsible vaper who practices battery safety dealing with an explosion. If there are such cases, then that is a quality control problem on the part of manufacturers and they should have to pay out damages.

There are accidents that happen with any device involving electronics and heating. But when those Samsung Galaxies exploded, no one suggested banning cell phones, they recalled them and replaced them.

[Ostroeuropa]

Black people love white people treating them like helpless children who can't make their own decisions, everyone knows that! Right?

This is just another step in a long line of moronic tobacco/nicotine policies in the United States. First you have the fiasco of cities, states, and the feds killing vaping, one of the greatest harm reduction advancements in human history! It especially ramped up after this "EVALI" garbage. For those of you who don't know, there was one specific type of illicit THC cartridge laced with Vitamin E acetate which is very, very poisonous and made people sick, so the government responded by... banning flavored nicotine products?

Let's put this into perspective: Imagine that a single farmer sold black market milk poisoned with cyanide and the government's response was to ban coffee nationwide.

Then with cigarettes, you have the FDA GIVING PEOPLE MORE CANCER by limiting the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. Lower nicotine content doesn't stop addiction! In fact, nicotine addiction has almost nothing to do with the amount in a single dose and everything to do with the frequency of consumption. A person consuming 10 very low nicotine cigarettes throughout the day will get addicted much, much faster than a person inhaling a metric fuckton of nicotine once or twice a day. But what's worse is that nicotine limits will cause smokers to smoke more. We KNOW THIS, because this is what happened with lights. When lights came out, smokers started covering the perforated filters to compensate for the reduction.

If smokers aren't getting an adequate nicotine hit, they will inhale deeper, longer, more frequently, and smoke more cigarettes.

And by the way, all over the country, they're doing the same moronic thing with medicinal cannabis. Banning high THC bud, the dumbest thing you could do. Don't take one little puff of this high THC product to get what you're looking for, no, smoke 4 whole joints of government approved weak-ass shit. Your lungs don't have enough tar in them!

I'm unconvinced this is a racial policy given that tobacco policy tends to be advanced internationally, and other nations without a substantial black population have banned menthol cigs. (Much like the "Ban indoors" thing spread internationally).

It might be being sold as a racial justice policy because Biden and his team didn't get the memo on how that is a way to sink your popularity, but in itself is probably just the usual anti-smoking legislative spread.

The bad policies you outline don't tend to spread but are part of the experimentation countries the world over are engaged in to eliminate smoking as a habit. They're put into place, measured for impact, and then if the impact is less smokers, they're copied elsewhere. They don't tend to be repealed because governments are insecure whiny little bitches who can't admit a mistake, but that's why they don't tend to spread.

The menthol one seems to have produced less smokers for some reason (I'd argue that it's probably net-neutral as a policy, but that the act of passing it is yet another sign to smokers that the government is going to increasingly make shit difficult for them, and every time that happens, another bunch of people decide "Fuck it, it's not worth it.".).

The question of whether people should be allowed to smoke is a tricky one. I personally lean towards the idea that they should be taxed enough to offset the cost smokers pose to society, but even then i'm hesitant as it involves the concentration of wealth and influence into a company with a vested interest in killing people, though that may be a "capitalism bad" conclusion.

[Page]

If there is a bright side to this whole thing it's that the FDA might be so busy with their menthol ban that they will leave kratom the hell alone for a few years. Another instance of a paternalistic government agency telling adults they don't know what's good for them.

[Engadine Mcdonalds 1997]

Given the numbers on DGU incidents range from many tens of thousands to actual millions annually this seems more like an emotional position than one dictated by the numbers.



Smoking has mostly died off with younger generations it seems tbh. Honestly you probably could just outright ban it at this point and I'm not even sure how many people under 30 it'd impact.

Totalitarianism impacts all of us regardless of our likes and dislikes.

I think mayonnaise is absolutely disgusting and I hate it so much but if the government tried to ban it, I'd still make proverbial molotovs for the riot. Every inch we give to the state gives them more and more momentum.

And while a mayo ban is not likely, I bet we're only two decades away from sugar ration cards or some other form of governments regulating how much junk food you can buy.

Last I heard you couldn't get 'addicted' to mayonnaise and get lung cancer from it at the same time

[Roblox Crossroads]

I need to see if my grandad still has cigar plantations, probably get a hand-rolled cigar from him

[The Nihilistic view]

I'm a funny person, I hate mint so if I did smoke menthol would be the way to get me to quit.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

I'm a funny person, I hate mint so if I did smoke menthol would be the way to get me to quit.

It must be hard finding a toothpaste.

[The New California Republic]

I occasionally had a menthol many years ago. But the context was different as this was in the UK, so there is less of a race-associated element to it. And it's just as well that I haven't smoked them in years, as their sale was banned here last year. Tbh I actually suspect that I have an unfinished pack of them stashed away forgotten in a drawer or cupboard somewhere.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

I'm a little surprised Biden is doing this considering all the money the tobacco industry has to lobby with.

[The New California Republic]

I'm a little surprised Biden is doing this considering all the money the tobacco industry has to lobby with.

Smoking rates in the US are generally going down, and their power with it. In 2005 about 20% of people smoked, and in 2019 that had dropped to 14%.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

I'm a little surprised Biden is doing this considering all the money the tobacco industry has to lobby with.

Smoking rates in the US are generally going down, and their power with it. In 2005 about 20% of people smoked, and in 2019 that had dropped to 14%.

I would guess the covid pandemic has pushed that even lower.

[The New California Republic]

Smoking rates in the US are generally going down, and their power with it. In 2005 about 20% of people smoked, and in 2019 that had dropped to 14%.

I would guess the covid pandemic has pushed that even lower.

It'll be interesting to see how it has affected the numbers, as in a way you may even see the numbers go up because people turn to things like that when stressed. On the other hand the reports that smokers are more vulnerable to coronavirus might have spooked people into quitting.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

I would guess the covid pandemic has pushed that even lower.

It'll be interesting to see how it has affected the numbers, as in a way you may even see the numbers go up because people turn to things like that when stressed. On the other hand the reports that smokers are more vulnerable to coronavirus might have spooked people into quitting.

I certainly noticed a massive decline in the number of people I see smoking cigarettes over the last year. Vaping seems to have been steady, but I almost never see anyone smoking a cigarette anymore.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Damn so actually big tobacco really isn't that big anymore.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Damn so actually big tobacco really isn't that big anymore.

They are just passing the time until they can turn into Big Weed.