San Francisco Bans Flavored E-Juice: The Kids are NOT Alright

A unanimous decision among city supervisors last Tuesday passed a measure concerning ever so popular flavored electronic vaping juice. Claiming that it markets children, and minorities the most, it would make San Fransico, California first city in the nation to ban them. It will be placed on the board's ballet next week, and it is expected to skate through seamlessly again. The law would take effect in April 2018 if approved.

Advocates for the vaping community including, Gregory Conley, president of the nonprofit organization American Vaping Association, call the city's actions “complete nonsense” which really ignore glaring evidence like recent CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) reports that middle school and high school students are consuming less and less e-cigarettes year after year. Released just last week they found statistics falling to 2.2 million last year, from 3 million just the year before.

“There is a great deal of evidence that flavors are critical to helping adults quit smoking by helping them disconnect from the taste of tobacco,”

-Conley

As a person who quit smoking in 2010, he cites strongly that watermelon flavored “e-liquid” really played a part in kicking his difficult addiction.

Among those in uproar about this are small businesses and “bodega” style corner convenience shops who state that these products get customers in the door. Their competitors include big box drugstores which contain any number of door busting items and deep discounts.

Despite the generally held strong arguments that vaping has helped many quit smoking traditional cigarettes, the city ban is choosing to put the youth of San Francisco first, it seems. The ban only affects flavored products, not ones that taste like tobacco.

In any case, did you know that there vape juice even came in tobacco flavor? Yeah, me neither.