Four months after President Trump announced he would take a “very, very strong” stance against the vaping epidemic, the administration has announced a ban on most flavored e-cigarettes. However, a policy analyst from libertarian think tank Reason Foundation tells Cheddar an education push would be an important component of this effort to teach young people about the dangers of vaping.
The new ban will stop the sale of fruit, candy, mint, and dessert flavored vapes, but menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will remain on the market.
Only vaping cartridges are targeted by the ban, as they are believed to be more popular among young people. Tank-based vaping systems will not be affected.
Jacob Rich, a policy analyst from Reason Foundation, which advocates for individual liberty and free markets, said the ban is “not quite effective.”
“The industry is against it, the people who want to prohibit nicotine products in general, are against it,” he told Cheddar. “It’s basically just a middle move that’s politically palatable that the Trump administration thinks it can take.”
In anticipation of yesterday’s announcement, Juul already announced it would not sell flavored cartridges.
With potential governmental restrictions on the horizon, vape shops around the country launched a “We Vape, We Vote” social media campaign and ran a television ad directed at the president to not implement a vaping ban.
Although the administration did go through with a ban, albeit potentially weaker than anti-vaping groups had hoped for, Rich said the administration should focus on education because the dangers of vaping have not been clearly delineated to young people. He noted a 2017 Truth Initiative study that found 63 percent of teens surveyed did not know Juul products have nicotine.
“When people understand products are more dangerous, they tend not to use them,” he said. “With Juul being so new to the market, being introduced around 2016, it seems like there’s an information problem and teens need to be educated about the dangers.”
“Teens, in general, seem to acquire the vices they desire,” he said, recalling how education about the dangers of smoking helped decrease use. The Centers for Disease Control called school programs designed to prevent tobacco use an “effective means of preventing tobacco use among youth,” during the 1990s.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
