Opinion: Sweeney is Coming for Your Vapes

When vaping came along, I saw it as a good thing. Many people have used vapes to still get their nicotine but avoid the known carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes. At the time it seemed like a positive.

Now I’m not sure what to think. Lately reports are coming out of severe lung damage in young people and even a number of deaths apparently linked to excessive vaping. One problem, unlike cigarettes where you know when you’ve smoked a full one, you don’t really know how much you’re ingesting when you vape. Some vapers tend to just keep hitting it, and without the harshness to the throat cigarettes bring there’s no warning signal of overdoing it. Another problem is nicotine levels can be manipulated.

I think more studies need to be done. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusions Senate President Steve Sweeney has. He announced this week he wants to phase-in a complete and total ban on all electronic smoking products. There’s already some legislative appetite for going after vapes, such as Shirley Turner’s bill tackling flavored vapes.

Sweeney wants more. He wants all of it.

In a statement on njsendems.org Sweeney said, “There is an urgency here with the health and safety – and even the lives – of young people at risk. That is why I will propose a complete ban on all vaping products.”

According to the CDC there are 450 cases of vape-related lung problems under investigation and six confirmed vaping related deaths. Yet it’s a well established fact that 480,000 people die in this country every year from cigarette smoking and no one is talking about banning cigarettes. If it’s all about health how are politicians like Sweeney not proposing bans on cigarettes?

New Jersey would be first in the nation to ban all vaping products. It seems too soon with too little data to implement a ban. Do you have an opinion? Let us know in our poll below.