Advisers say the president pulled back from proposed restrictions intended to curb teenage vaping after he was warned of the political fallout among voters.
This is being described as merely a political decision, and maybe it is. But I believe it is the correct decision.
Harms from nicotine vaping are minimal, and for many years it has helped people stop smoking. No, it's not great that kids are getting addicted to nicotine, but the alternate universe without vaping isn't one where kids are all nicotine-free. It's one where kids are smoking. Meanwhile the very serious health issues that have recently been identified are connected to THC vaping, not nicotine vaping. To people familiar with the products, it's kind of like seeing a heroin addict and saying "hey, we'd better not get vaccinated." Not everything that goes into a needle, or a vape cartridge, is the same.
I'm not okay with using the harms from one type of vaping to smear a different type of vaping. All with the tobacco companies laughing through their sleeves and waiting for their business to come back - thanks to panicked overreaction.
As for Juul suspending sales of flavoured vapes and signing a settlement to stop marketing to youth, what you're seeing here, is a company being strong-armed into abandoning its most successful products and they're doing that because the alternative could easily be worse — a full federal ban on all vaping, anywhere.