Posted on 05/07/2016 5:21:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Food and Drug Administration this week came out with regulations that will force e-cigarette and vaping manufacturers to go through the same onerous process to qualify what they sell as "tobacco products" - despite not having one iota of tobacco involved.
There's only one conclusion to draw here: the FDA doesn't care about public health.
"Vaping" is seen by government health nannies as yet another sinful behavior that irresponsible Americans are participating in when they could be eating kale salads instead. But that takes a fundamentally misguided point of view on the subject. What vaping really constitutes is a tobacco alternative that has enabled millions of smokers to wean themselves off of a harmful habit.
The new FDA regulations will require vaping companies to complete application requirements that will take more than 5,000 hours to complete and will cost over $300,000 for each product, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is incredibly onerous for smaller vaping companies – the exact ones that have pioneered the radical innovation and competition and allowed the industry to flourish – while giving the huge tobacco companies a leg up for their own vape products. (Not to mention that smaller numbers of vapers likely means larger numbers of smokers of traditional tobacco products.)
The right way to think of vaping is as a quitting mechanism. Yes, in a vacuum, vaping is more harmful than complete abstinence. But studies have shown - over and over again - that it's much less harmful than smoking traditional tobacco products. Many have been able to make the transition away from smoking tobacco to vaping, and to good results.
Indeed, the new FDA regulations fly in the face of a report out of the U.K. Last week. The study suggested, explicitly, that tobacco users switch to vaping products in order to reduce the harm to themselves.
The Royal College of Physicians reviewed the literature on the potential costs and benefits of vaping, and came to a conclusion that the FDA would have been wise to heed. “The RCP believes that e-cigarettes could lead to significant falls in the prevalence of smoking.. prevent many deaths and episodes of serious illness, and help to reduce the social inequalities in health that tobacco smoking currently exacerbates.”
Anecdotally, I've seen this to be the case. I know friends who tried to quit smoking for years, using all different kinds of methods – therapy, patches, gum, everything available – but were only able to succeed at quitting when they were able to make the switch to e-cigarettes.
What the nannies and the neo-prohibitionists at the FDA are concerned about is people picking up vaping out of the blue. That perhaps there's a teenager who doesn't smoke and would never smoke who picks up vaping, which is on net potentially more unhealthy than doing nothing. Indeed, vaping is on the rise among teenagers, even among those who don't smoke.
The only problem with this concern is that there's no data to support it. As the New York Times wrote, “worries about [vaping] – including that using them will lead young people to eventually start smoking traditional cigarettes — have not come to pass.”
The FDA as an organization has consistently erred on the side of caution and a harmful status quo. From slow-rolling drug approval to the urge to regulate first, the FDA sees itself not as merely an
The FDA's alarmism is unfortunately going to push more people into smoking rather than letting this encouraging trend to continue. Unfortunately for Americans, the health nannies at the FDA take a regulate-first ask-questions-later approach, specifically refusing to focus on the good of harm reduction that the vaping habit has enabled. The FDA thinks that the choice is between vaping and nothing, when what's actually happening is that the FDA is choosing smoking over vaping.
So are coffee cups.
So are coffee cups and beer mugs.
Isn’t there a line in some movie or book where he talks about his cigar being “hand-rolled on the sweaty thighs of a beautiful Mullato woman.”
Undoubtedly, the inner thighs.
he finest cigars are rolled on the thighs of sultry mulatto women.
This is perhaps the most beautiful and the most widespread of all the cigar myths. Despite the legend, cigar rolling was traditionally a man’s work. Rolling a cigar to the proper degree of tightness requires very strong wrists, which few women have. In Cuba, rolling was always done by men, and the first woman roller to work at the La Africana factory only started at the end of the 18th century. But apart from this, rolling requires a firm, even surface, and the thighs of a shapely mulatto woman have a completely different configuration. The originator of this myth is thought to be Prosper Merimee. When he began writing Carmen, Merimee travelled to Spain to learn more about the Spanish and their way of life. Being a handsome and imposing man, Merimee began an affair with a young Spanish girl. At the time, in the 19th century, Spain was a deeply religious country, and severe punishments could be meted out for attachments out of wedlock, so the lovers were forced to hide their affections. Merimee rented a small flat for assignations with his ladylove, and they would arrive there at different times and depart at different times.
Extreme caution had to be shown, since the handsome Frenchman was the cynosure of all eyes. Merimee spent many hours in the tiny little room waiting for his inamorata to arrive and for an opportunity to leave after her departure. This would not have been a problem – the hours of waiting were well worth it for the time spent in amorous dalliance with the passionate Spanish girl – had Merimee not been an ardent smoker. He loved cigars and usually bought them every day. But spending so much time in the secret room, he was unable to supplement his stock. A solution to the problem was found by the resourceful Spanish girl. She bought tobacco leaves and, resting on the bed after their heated lovemaking, she would roll cigars for the tired Merimee on her thighs. This was a task at which she proved to be very talented – and the cigars were simply magnificent. Merimee would smoke a cigar that had just been rolled, and then be ready once more for the labours of love... This experience made such an impression on the writer that when he returned to Paris, he told all his friends about it. A few weeks later, it was the talk of the town that the finest cigars were those rolled on the beautiful bare thighs of sultry mulatto women. And it wasn’t long before all reference to Merimee and his amorous adventures in Spain had been completely forgotten. But the myth remained.
Nevertheless, another practice at the cigar factories has only served to encourage this myth. One of the sections at the factory, called the despala, is the place where the main stem of the tobacco leaf is ripped out. At the base of the leaf, these stems can reach a thickness of several millimeters and under no circumstance may they be allowed to get into the cigar filler tobacco: the stem would prevent proper drawing and spoil the taste. As a rule it is women, called despalilladores, who work here. They straighten out the tobacco leaf on their knees and with one quick movement rip out the stem. Hence, perhaps, the myth that the cigars are rolled on the bare thighs of the women. But, sorry to say, they do not roll the cigars, but only tear out the stem. Nor do they do it on their bare thighs, since the tobacco leaves would absorb the sweat and do nothing to improve the aroma of the future cigar. The incident with Merimee must be considered an exception – a cigar, rolled on the thighs of the woman, he had just made love to, would for him have been an especially pleasant experience.
Run with that...the American people will believe coffee cups and beer mugs are the same type of drug delivery system as an e-cig. You've stumbled on a winning issue.
They're more likely to believe that anonymous bureaucrats in Washington can ban anything the want, any time they want to, and they need to be disabused of that notion at every opportunity.
Article I, section 8 of the U. S. Constitution grants Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States."
The notion that "provide for the general Welfare is a grant of power has been debunked so thoroughly and so often here I'm surprised you even tried that.
...and the commerce clause, since very few products are produced and consumed within a single state and no other.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
James Madison had this to say about the Commerce Clause:
"For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged."
Given that, if this is a valid exercise of the Commerce Power within it's intended purpose there should be some manner of injustice that the existence of e-cigarettes has or will cause to be visited on one state by another, which banning them will remedy or prevent.
If any such injustice exists, I'm at a loss to see what it is.
James Madison was our Pericles but where is he when we truly need him????????????????
Where ever you find him. But you have to go looking first, he's not going to come to you.
If you lift the little finger of your right hand, the question marks will stop.
And James Madison is still dead, bless his heart.
If Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution has, in fact, been debunked, I am not aware of it. The general welfare clause is, in fact, a recognition of the duty of the government to protect its citizens against those who would do them harm.
Given that, if this is a valid exercise of the Commerce Power within it's intended purpose there should be some manner of injustice that the existence of e-cigarettes has or will cause to be visited on one state by another, which banning them will remedy or prevent.
Regulating is not banning. Regulating means that manufacturers have to comply with health, quality, and safety standards. People buying e-cigs should not be subjected to, for example, the devices exploding and blinding them because they were badly engineered and made with poor-quality components.
E-cigs are sold across state and international borders, which places regulating them in the purview of the federal government, rather than state governments.
There are many problems with the libertarian view that the FDA should be abolished. One of them is the belief that the market can somehow guarantee product safety through the actions of injured customers suing manufacturers of faulty products. Why wait until injuries occur? Why not make sure the product conforms to standards so that people do *not* get hurt? Another is the implied belief that doing away with the FDA would stop product regulations. It would not. The states would take over that function, and then regulations would be all over the place, ranging from so strict that almost nothing can meet the standards, to so lax that they almost don't exist. Or the standards in one state could contradict the standards in another. The burden on manufacturers to make products that comply with 50 different regulatory standards would be huge, and many manufacturers could decide not to sell in certain states because of the costs associated with conforming to their standards.
In case you missed it: Regulation is not banning. Regulation is about making sure products meet certain safety and quality standards.
James Madison, from Federalist 83
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion in to their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county, and parish and pay them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor . . . Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America."
It doesn't go unnoticed the ingenuous tactic of changing debunking the notion of the general Welfare clause being a grant of power to debunking Article I Section 8 in it's entirety.
As far as it being a regulation rather than a ban, it's effectively the same thing if it puts all of the manufacturers out of business.
Excusing this is just going to invite more of the same until they exercise absolute control over every single facet of your life.
Hmm, let's take another look at that Article I, Section 8:
Article I, section 8 of the U. S. Constitution grants Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States."
It looks to me like "common defense" and "general Welfare" have equal weight in that clause. So, you really cannot ignore part of the clause without ignoring the whole of it. It's kind of like that Second Amendment, where liberals are always trying to argue that the right to bear arms part of it doesn't really count--but in reality, it does.
James Madison, from Federalist 83
The Federalist papers are not the Constitution.
As far as it being a regulation rather than a ban, it's effectively the same thing if it puts all of the manufacturers out of business.
It occurs to me that you may not be aware that just about every product sold is regulated. You know, like the food you buy at the grocery store (regulated at every step from planting seeds in the field to final point of sale), the plastic bins you buy to store that food in (manufacturers are limited to a very few plastics that the FDA has determined to be food-safe), the detergents you use to wash those bins, the cosmetics, creams, soaps, shampoos, etc., you use to keep yourself clean, etc., etc.
Vaping is relatively new. It does have the potential of being a safer way to use nicotine than cigarettes. But the fact is that there is no way for a customer to know how much nicotine is in them, whether it is a trace amount, or a potentially lethal amount--or to know about the purity of the other ingredients used--or to know if the other ingredients are food or drug quality--and so on. Nor can the customer know whether the delivery components--the heater and battery--are made from cheap materials likely to fail catastrophically under use, or are high-grade components that would only fail under extreme circumstances.
E-cigs have already failed catastrophically, causing serious injury. Of course the government is going to take an interest in that, because it is the government's job to protect its citizens. The very purpose of regulating e-cigs is to ensure that they meet a standardized set of specifications and are safe to use.
Being against regulatory standards because it will put small businesses out of business is somewhat hyperbolic, IMO. Whatever the cost of regulation, it can't be nearly as business killing as the cost of litigation, which can run millions for a single serious injury. Are you aware that if you decide to make jams and jellies in your kitchen and sell them at flea markets, the FDA regulates that? They want to inspect your kitchen, they want to examine and approve your recipes. And despite that, every time you go to a flea market, farmer's market, or any other venue where crafters sell their goods, you see people selling homemade jams and jellies. Gee, it doesn't look like regulation has been an unbearable burden on them, does it?
Excusing this is just going to invite more of the same until they exercise absolute control over every single facet of your life.
No. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We will never have a perfect, corruption-free system. The fact that some self-serving politicians use legitimate government functions for their own aggrandizement does not mean that the function should be abolished. What it means is that we should be very careful about who we elect to oversee those functions.
No one is ignoring it. The power granted in that clause is "to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises". Paying debts and providing for the common defense and general welfare are stated objectives toward which that power is limited. There is no mention of regulating manufactures and imposing fees.
The Constitution was intended to create a national government of strictly limited and enumerated powers. As Madison explains, the interpretation of that clause you have chosen to embrace makes a mockery of that intent. It will come to no good, and before it's over with it will be doing it at gunpoint.
Okay. Let's look at an old definition of "general welfare": The definition of General Welfare from just 40 years after the ratification of the Constitution:
Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government (Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828).
It is exactly this definition of "general welfare"--exemption from any unusual evil or calamity--that gives the government the authority to require manufacturers to adhere to basic product safety and quality standards, aka regulate them.
In this essay, "Enough Is Enough: Why General Welfare Limits Spending" by John C. Eastman of the Chapman University School of Law, general welfare is described as being of general, i.e. national, benefit, and that Congress decides what is a benefit. Under that definition, too, the power of the FDA to enforce nationally uniform product health, safety, and quality standards is completely constitutional.
Since you seem so against the idea of a national regulatory system, can you please explain to me on what basis you think having 50 separate state regulatory agencies doing the same function is preferable, and how is it preferable? (BTW, do not assume the states won't regulate--they can and do, in fact, regulate local matters.)
The Constitution was intended to create a national government of strictly limited and enumerated powers. As Madison explains, the interpretation of that clause you have chosen to embrace makes a mockery of that intent. It will come to no good, and before it's over with it will be doing it at gunpoint.
Again with the hyperbole! It is a pretty far stretch to claim that enforcing uniform health, safety, and quality standards is an infringement on our rights or freedoms. The FDA was founded in 1906, although its roots extend further back than that. It came about because of public demand following a series of incidents in which people were seriously injured or killed by using faulty products. I have *never* seen any situation in which the public widely demanded that manufacturers should have the freedom to sell them dangerous products. Realistically, it is unlikely, even unthinkable, that the public will take up arms over the practice of regulation.
I think it is instructive to look at the actual FDA guidelines/regulations regarding e-cigs and related products. If you read through it, you will see that the FDA is not banning these products. The page defines vaping products, gives instructions on how to apply for FDA authorization to sell these products, and specifies the legal limits of how businesses can market the products. And, for businesses or manufacturers who are confused by the process of getting their product authorized, the FDA directs them to The Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) Office of Small Business Assistance (OSBA), which will help them through the process. Once again, there is no move to ban these products--the effort is directed at making them safe and standardized--ensuring that you get what you pay for when you buy them, and that they won't poison you or explode.
What the Founders did, and every wound suffered and life lost in defense of it was wasted on you.
I have "ignored" nothing. I have provided ample references and clearly explained my reasoning. I can't help but notice that you cannot refute any of it.
What the Founders did, and every wound suffered and life lost in defense of it was wasted on you.
Thank you. I will keep that in mind the next time I put on my nice dress uniform and go to someone's home to inform them that their son or daughter has died in the line of duty. You see, I take very seriously my oath to support and defend our Constitution.
You were provided with an explanation from the most authoritative source possible - the original author, and dismissed it as "not in the Constitution". For "references" you went running to a dictionary looking for definitions of the words that would yield the result you were looking for.
And this is supposed to mean what? You provided passages in which Madison (rightly) expressed concern about mission creep and government overreach, and those concerns are supposed to negate the fact that both the general welfare and the commerce clauses made it into the Constitution anyway? They don't! Those clauses are there, and regardless of libertarian feelings, they form the basis of much of our federal code of law. And yes, I did use a dictionary reference for the meaning of the phrase "general welfare," because without a standard definition of a word, communication is not possible. I also looked for an old reference, because the definition has altered over time to include the dole--and that was never a founding fathers' intent.
Whatever Madison wrote while wrangling over what should and should not be included in the Constitution, I am sure that he eventually came to the realization that there is absolutely no Constitution, no set of laws, no legal means whatsoever to prevent abuse of power. The best we can do is to endeavor to place people of high character in those positions of power, who will do their best to follow the intent of the original Constitution.
You have not made the case that the government has no business protecting American citizens against unscrupulous salesmen or companies. Nor have you made the case that the American people are somehow more free by allowing profiteering companies to sell them dangerous products with impunity.
I don't know about you, but I appreciate the fact that when I go to buy a product, there are regulations in place ensuring that the product is not going to injure or kill me under normal use. I think most people take product safety for granted, and have no idea about the effort it takes behind the scenes to ensure that safety. Thus, when someone writes an opinion piece about the supposed overreach of the government working to establish a set of standards for a new product, a number of people (predictably) start yelling about infringement of our freedoms. I wonder how many of these people would be quiet and uncomplaining if they bought a box of cookies and found them full of rat hairs and sawdust?
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