You can smoke all the pot you want, but flavored tobacco or nicotine is soon to be illegal.
When it comes to drugs, Portland, Oregon, is one of the most liberal cities in the United States.
Weed shops abound since the state legalized cannabis in 2015. The state decriminalized possession of nearly all drugs in 2020. Come January, Oregon will be the first state to allow therapeutic use of psilocybin. Even the liquor laws have been recently liberalized, with the state permanently legalizing the sale of to-go cocktails in June of 2021.
But even Portland must draw the line somewhere, and it draws it at flavored tobacco and nicotine products. Next week, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners will vote on an ordinance that will make it illegal to sell any tobacco or nicotine products with a characterizing flavor other than tobacco. This includes e-cigarettes, oral tobacco, and shisha. The sale of conventional cigarettes, the extremely addictive and highly lethal kind that kills more than 400,000 Americans every year and around 7 million people worldwide, will remain completely legal in Multnomah County so long as they do not commit the sin of bearing flavor.
The illogic of this ordinance is almost too obvious to be worth explaining, but here it goes anyway: Regulating products solely by their flavor and with zero regard for their capacity for harm is a terrible way to legislate public health. It leaves the deadliest products widely available on the shelves of every convenience store while banning far safer alternatives that do substantially less harm to users and have a proven record of helping smokers quit.
Jacob Grier – Reason – 2022-12-09.
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