Extremely important to call out the misuse and misinterpretation of youth vaping data globally. Moral panic over youth vaping/nicotine is really all the tobacco control “mafia” have left to work with. No half-informed person is going to say that vaping is not safer than cigarettes, or that it is the most effective way to quit or it causes harm to bystanders. So they cling to the “what about the kids” argument which is slowly slipping away.
Absolutely! At some point, public health has to choose between protecting institutional positions and protecting people. The longer youth panic is used as cover for policies that entrench smoking, the harder that choice becomes to defend.
The Cancer Society is taking one single jump in vaping from 2017 to 2018 and treating it like proof that legal vaping caused a youth crisis. One year doesn’t show a trend, it shows a moment. That period was when vaping was new, highly visible, and widely talked about. Of course more teens tried it. That doesn’t automatically mean addiction, harm, or a pathway to smoking.
They also claim youth smoking rose at the same time and somehow blame vaping for that too. But that logic doesn’t hold up. If vaping was pushing kids into smoking, smoking rates should have kept rising. They didn’t. In the years after, youth smoking in Canada went back to falling, just like it had been doing for decades.
That’s the part they leave out.
Trying something once or twice is not the same as being addicted, but this statement blurs that line on purpose. It talks about “risk” and “may become addicted” without showing real evidence that vaping caused long-term nicotine dependence or smoking.
Blaming “Big Tobacco” is also misleading. The study doesn’t show that tobacco company products or ads caused youth vaping it just assumes they did. That’s opinion, not proof.
This kind of framing leads to bad policy. Instead of focusing on stopping kids from smoking, it pushes governments to ban safer alternatives for adults, which ends up fueling black markets and keeping cigarettes around longer.
In short: they took a short-term spike, ignored the bigger picture, and turned it into a moral panic.
Calling evidence-based critique “deplorable” doesn’t make it wrong. The question isn’t whether kids matter, it’s whether panic-driven policy improves or worsens their health. The data says worsens.
That study contributed to the moral panic around youth vaping. It is no longer relevant - cigarette smoking among teenagers is barely measurable (outside of some First Nations communities) and vaping has fallen dramatically from 2018. So “what about the kids” is no longer a compelling reason to restrict access to adults. I am totally in favor of age restrictions and truthful education about the risks of vaping (specifically the risk of nicotine dependency) but beyond that we must heavily incentivize vaping over cigarettes.
Extremely important to call out the misuse and misinterpretation of youth vaping data globally. Moral panic over youth vaping/nicotine is really all the tobacco control “mafia” have left to work with. No half-informed person is going to say that vaping is not safer than cigarettes, or that it is the most effective way to quit or it causes harm to bystanders. So they cling to the “what about the kids” argument which is slowly slipping away.
Absolutely! At some point, public health has to choose between protecting institutional positions and protecting people. The longer youth panic is used as cover for policies that entrench smoking, the harder that choice becomes to defend.
The label isn’t the issue. The refusal to engage with inconvenient data is. Also, please don’t call me “dude.” Let’s keep this professional.
The Cancer Society is taking one single jump in vaping from 2017 to 2018 and treating it like proof that legal vaping caused a youth crisis. One year doesn’t show a trend, it shows a moment. That period was when vaping was new, highly visible, and widely talked about. Of course more teens tried it. That doesn’t automatically mean addiction, harm, or a pathway to smoking.
They also claim youth smoking rose at the same time and somehow blame vaping for that too. But that logic doesn’t hold up. If vaping was pushing kids into smoking, smoking rates should have kept rising. They didn’t. In the years after, youth smoking in Canada went back to falling, just like it had been doing for decades.
That’s the part they leave out.
Trying something once or twice is not the same as being addicted, but this statement blurs that line on purpose. It talks about “risk” and “may become addicted” without showing real evidence that vaping caused long-term nicotine dependence or smoking.
Blaming “Big Tobacco” is also misleading. The study doesn’t show that tobacco company products or ads caused youth vaping it just assumes they did. That’s opinion, not proof.
This kind of framing leads to bad policy. Instead of focusing on stopping kids from smoking, it pushes governments to ban safer alternatives for adults, which ends up fueling black markets and keeping cigarettes around longer.
In short: they took a short-term spike, ignored the bigger picture, and turned it into a moral panic.
2017–18 gets cited forever because it’s the only spike that fits the story. If this were a real gateway, 2025 data would show it. It doesn’t.
Calling evidence-based critique “deplorable” doesn’t make it wrong. The question isn’t whether kids matter, it’s whether panic-driven policy improves or worsens their health. The data says worsens.
That study contributed to the moral panic around youth vaping. It is no longer relevant - cigarette smoking among teenagers is barely measurable (outside of some First Nations communities) and vaping has fallen dramatically from 2018. So “what about the kids” is no longer a compelling reason to restrict access to adults. I am totally in favor of age restrictions and truthful education about the risks of vaping (specifically the risk of nicotine dependency) but beyond that we must heavily incentivize vaping over cigarettes.
They also inflate numbers by counting 18-21 as youth.
Of course just redefine “youth” to include legal adults and voilà, instant crisis. Nothing says rigorous science like moving the goalposts.
Awesome. Shows how idiotic albo n bumlet are. No mention of lost excise tax or that be rubbing it in too much 🤔 😅. Best stack yet.