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Something I can agree on with the Trump Administration is that flavored e-cigarettes should be banned from the market, or just like Michigan and New York have done so far, people should work toward raising the minimum legal age to obtain nicotine products to 21.
On Wednesday, Sept. 11, President Donald J. Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that new policies would require flavored cigarette companies to take their products off the market, according to CNN.
Vaping skyrocketed in the U.S., especially among middle and high schoolers, just a couple of years ago and has been one of the quickest trends to get picked up by younger generations.
In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report that said 4.9 million high school and middle schoolers used tobacco products, an increase from 3.6 million in 2017. According to the CDC E-cigarettes were the most popular device among children and adolescents.
We constantly see the same pattern: wait until something bad happens and then the government will do something about it. Unfortunately, people have already died from causes related to vaping. There have been more than 450 possible cases of lung illness related to e-cigarettes according to the CDC.
The scariest thing about vaping for me, and probably for many others, is the idea that no one really knows the side effects of these trendy gadgets.
These devices work by heating up a liquid in order to produce an aerosol that users inhale.
The liquid can contain nicotine, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabinoid (CBD) oils and other substances and additives but, since there are hardly any regulations for vaping products, it is hard to know exactly what is killing people.
These types of companies began by selling the idea that vaping was helpful for adults who were trying to quit traditional smoking, but teenagers and young adults started catching onto it.
Small devices, ranging from a wide variety of shapes and colors, were suddenly in schools being used by students who most probably thought that the idea of inhaling bubble gum flavored smoke, or any other kind of the fruity flavors, was cool and better than smoking a traditional cigarette.
I applaud Melania Trump, who is finally talking about this issue. Hopefully, she will stick around to hold the Food and Drug Administration accountable as they investigate regulations for companies that produce these products.
We cannot continue letting these companies abuse of the younger generations and profit from them.
I hope Texas follows the two states that banned flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products and that teenagers realize that vaping does not make them any cooler.
