I have a new op-ed up at the Oregonian. Here’s the opening:
Adults in Oregon can walk into any state-licensed liquor store and buy all kinds of flavored liquor, from cinnamon whiskey to whipped cream vodka. At Oregon grocery stores, they can buy caramel stouts, fruity sour ales and mango hard seltzers. Cannabis is legally sold in the form of milk chocolate bars and pink lemonade jellies. But if a new proposal passes the Multnomah County Commission, it will soon be illegal to sell flavored tobacco or nicotine products to adults.
Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, first tried to ban flavored e-cigarettes in 2019. It was somewhat understandable then: teen use of e-cigarettes was going up and there was a scary outbreak of lung illnesses that sickened thousands and killed nearly 70 people. I testified against the ban and fortunately it didn’t pass. The idea makes even less sense now than it did then. Teen vaping rates have fallen dramatically and the wave of lung illnesses, now definitively attributed to contaminants in cannabis vape products rather than nicotine e-cigarettes, subsided long ago. So why revive the ban?
Jacob Grier – Substack – 2022-09-13.
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