Good on state Attorney General Tish James for filing suit against 13 companies that make, distribute or sell vaping products for their part in getting more and more kids hooked on nicotine.
In its earliest days, vaping was broadly pitched as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes, one that could help people break a habit that everyone knows is horrible for human lungs and hearts. Indeed, it still functions that way for plenty of people trying to quit cancer sticks.
But addictive products being what they are and profit-seeking companies being what they are, vaping has simultaneously exploded as a gateway addiction of its own. It’s against federal law to sell tobacco products to anyone under 21. But according to the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey, some 1.6 million middle and high school students nationwide — 6% of all students in that age range — reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. While some data show vaping rates falling in recent years, that’s an unacceptably huge number.
James filed suit, basing her claims on an extensive investigation finding that companies deviously targeted vapes to adolescents, misleading kids about the safety and legality of their products along the way.
What does that mean in practice?
It means they wrapped or still wrap their wares in colorful packaging with cartoonish lettering and imagery. Came up with fruit and candy flavors and names like “Strawberry Cereal Donut Milk” and “Unicorn Cake.” Used, and use, social media and influencer campaigns. Ensured that vapes are on the shelves within walking distance of schools. And, to the extent it convinced anyone, claimed that their products were safe alternatives to cigarettes.
According to the AG, “One company, Puff Bar, ran a social media advertisement during the early days of the pandemic lockdown that billed their vapes as ‘the perfect escape from back-to-back zoom calls [and] parental texts.’ ”
While logic tells us vaping is probably safer than literally sucking in the smoke of burning tobacco leaves, it isn’t safe. Evidence shows that e-cigarette use is associated with higher incidence of asthma, respiratory disease and wheezing; increased risk of cardiovascular disease; and more pernicious health consequences. And given that nobody’s been using this stuff for that many years yet, the long-term health consequences are wholly unknown.
It’s not just about nicotine. Research shows that adolescents who’ve used e-cigs were 7 or 20 times likelier to start using cannabis, which is also now commonly vaped, than those who never picked up the e-cigarette in the first place. (They’re also much likelier to go on to smoke old-style cigarettes and binge drink.)
There’s plenty of hell-in-a-handbasket rhetoric about young people today. Everywhere you turn, you can find people convinced that we’re producing a social-media-addicted, educationally stinted, psychologically confused, emotionally fragile generation. Throw in concerns about youth crime, and the hand-wringing becomes positively deafening.
Not so. Though we haven’t done independent research, when we look around, we see plenty of healthy, driven, confident and pretty well-educated kids who, with their parents’ and guardians’ help, are trying hard to live well-balanced lives.
But to give those kids and those who are genuinely troubled a fighting chance at a bright future, people in positions of power have to ensure that powerful forces can’t illegally prey on them. To return to where we started, good on AG Tish James.
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