Tobacco Regulation New Fda, State, And Local Powers: Fill & Download for Free

A discussion of all my policy ideas would take a couple of books to explain, so I’ll write a relatively short summary here.Disclaimer: I am a small r republican. Essentially, I believe in liberty and not statism.Domestic Policy changes at the Federal Level:Repeal the 16th amendment to the Constitution: The federal government should not have the power to directly collect taxes on income. This amendment is one of the root causes of fiscal profligacy and a total disrespect for taxpayers.Repeal the 17th amendment to the Constitution: The Senate was meant to be a body that was different from the House of Representatives. Senators were representatives of State governments, not the residents of the state. Senators should be selected by State Legislatures, so that they are focused on representing the interests of State governments and not direct election constituents. The 16th and 17th amendments being repealed would defang the federal government of so much of their unconstitutional power and it would disallow state legislators from outsourcing outrage over government decisions to the federal government.Clarify the 2nd amendment to the Constitution: “A well armed citizenry being necessary for the security of a free state; the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”.Needless to say all unconstitutional gun control will be eliminated. Handguns can be purchased at 18.Eliminate the vast majority of government agencies: IRS, EPA, ATF, Labor, Education, FDA, CFPB, and several others will be shutdown and their employees will be fired. These agencies are unconstitutional, a waste of taxpayer funds, and are only designed to enrich beltway insiders with money and power.Eliminate public unions: There shouldn't be any unions in government. They exist only to screw the taxpayer and pump up their own salaries and benefits. Is it any wonder that the vast majority of federal employees support Democrats.Reform salaries and benefits for current and retired government employees: Bring down government salaries in line with private sector wages. Plush benefits will be phased out and pensions will be replaced with defined contribution plans. This will trim spending and improve fiscal responsibility.Phase out federal entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the drivers of the constantly expanding federal deficit and will possibly lead to a Greek style fiscal collapse in America. I’m not going to get into the semantics, but I will reform the programs to phase them out over 2–3 decades so that they are no longer a burden to businesses and workers. Social Security will be replaced with a private retirement accounts with a required savings percentage.Phase out federal welfare programs: I will phase out all federal welfare. State and local governments can design any kind of welfare programs they wish as long as they spend money that they raise through taxation at their level of government. Federal welfare is unconstitutional, largely ineffective, and a waste of taxpayer funds.Reform the healthcare sector: Enough government interference in healthcare. It is time for free market healthcare. Federal overregulation, entitlement programs, and HHS will disappear to allow true free market healthcare. State and local governments can design custom solutions as they see fit. The federal government’s involvement in healthcare will essentially be nil.Reform the banking sector: The financial services industry in the United States is not free market and the main reason for the financial crisis was not “excessive or unregulated” capitalism. The government directly and indirectly controls around 60-70% of the financial sector.The federal government should repeal the vast majority of non-structural financial regulations including Dodd-Frank, the Community Reinvestment Act, etc. because those regulations haven't actually made the financial system safer in any measurable way.The real results of those regulations were enlarging the big banks and protecting them from competition due to the inability of smaller banks to spend as much on regulatory compliance.The financial system is fundamentally screwed up because these government mechanisms:Federal Deposit InsuranceFannie Mae, Freddie Mac, & Ginnie MaeThe Community Reinvestment ActDodd-FrankThe House & Urban Development Department’s Affordable Housing PoliciesAll the mechanisms listed above should be eliminated and a new banking reform bill should be passed which includes the following features:Require major banking institutions to maintain 20–30% as equity capital buffer to cover losses in case of a crisis.Require banks to band together in a national, state, or regional associations to fund deposit insurance. Deposit insurance should be paid for by depositors, not the taxpayer.The government should have no role in housing finance, “affordable housing”, or student loans. The government shouldn't be able to force banks to make loans as they did starting in the 1970s and most egregiously in the 1990s.Reform the education sector: Eliminate all federal involvement in K-12, higher education, and student loans.Enact spending reform: Federal spending will be cut to 10% of GDP with a balanced budget amendment that can only be broken during a major war where conscription will be required.Immigration:Immigration is a net positive for the economy but we need to modify our immigration system to emphasize attracting highly skilled and/or entrepreneurial immigrants.Family reunification is fine, but that isn't what we need for the economy. The focus should be on these considerations: national security, skills, education, ability to integrate, and entrepreneurship.I have written a more detailed answer about my ideas for a new immigration policy here: Adi Chhabra's answer to What is the ideal immigration system for the USA?Border Security: I would build a wall and send the Army to the border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.Drugs, Alcohol, and Tobacco: I would decriminalize all drugs and bring down the tobacco and alcohol use age to 18.Foreign Policy Changes:Defense: Defense spending will increase as a percentage of federal spending.Short-term planning will include adding personnel, more training, and better maintenance.Medium-term planning will include building more ships, improving our artillery capabilities, possibly buying more F-22’s, and building up Poland.Long-term investments will include Global Missile Defense, anti-Ship missiles, “Rods from God”, Space based energy, and Anti-Satellite weaponry.The Armed Forces need to be used very sparingly and power games should dominate.End the Global War on Terror and transition to a 2 front Cold War posture against China and Russia. The focus should be on maintaining regional balances of power to ensure that a new hegemonic power doesn't emerge with strength and directly challenge America’s core interests.Many post-WWII institutions are nearing obsolescence. That includes the UN, NATO, IMF, and World Bank among others. We need a more focused approach on small groups of nations that can be curated to serve as regional powers with American support.The U.S. needs to stop subsidizing lazy Europeans who don't want to spend money for the collective defense.Turkey, Poland, the Baltic States, and possibly the Netherlands needs to be beefed up to deal with Russia.The Russo-German detente needs to be nipped in the bud.Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Gulf Partners need to be beefed up to challenge Iran. We should welcome Turkey as a regional hegemonic power.Japan, South Korea, and Australia need to beefed up to challenge China and to a smaller extent Russia and North Korea.We need to add India, Vietnam, and Indonesia as formal partners.

First of all, there is NO Federal law that raises the age to purchase tobacco and e-cigs/vaping equipment to 21. There is a line-item requirement in the 2020 budget involving the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) that forces States to pass local legislation to raise that age to 21, and they have until September 1, 2020 to do so.Neither Congress, nor any other government branch or agency, has the authority to dictate laws that are not already covered in the U.S. Constitution. That is the purpose of the 10th Amendment granting power of passing such laws to the individual States. At the present time, there are 19 States that have already raised the age to 21.Just like every other age-based bill (or law), there is always a “grandfather clause”. In this case, anyone born on or before August 31, 2001 (when the “law” was signed) will still be permitted to purchase such items. It’s built into the budget language. Anybody who was legally able to purchase at 18 under the old law will be able to purchase under the new law.Age-based laws are not and cannot be “ex-post facto” laws. It’s the same with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1985. Those old enough when alcohol purchase was raised to 21 were still able to purchase as long as they were legal under the old law(s).That doesn’t mean that a retailer MUST do so. A retailer is penalized for selling to anyone under 21 under the new FDA regulations, except for those grandfathered in, but the retailer is not required to “grandfather” anybody in at less than 21 years of age. There is no penalty for restricting ALL sales to 21 or older.

Thank you for the A2A, Ann.Taken as a whole, the FDA proposals, the EU regulations and the ECJ decision are the greatest boost to cigarette sales that has probably ever been seen.There are not many ways to guarantee the survival of the cigarette trade in the West for 10 to 20 years, at similar volumes to today's numbers, and these deals, taken together as a way to protect smoking in the West from any market-based threats, are a unique approach forced on the power structure by market developments. Previous and similar deals I can think of are (1) the MSA funding agreement, which guaranteed a future for the US cigarette trade at low cost, and (2) the backroom agreement between government, tobacco and pharma in the late 90s to allow cigarette sales to continue unmolested as long as the trade agreed to dial back the protests about taxes and other impositions (you can call this the 'free trade' deal), in return for a guaranteed future. (Everybody needs smoking as it generates such enormous revenues for government at local and national levels, the pharmaceutical industry, and all the lobbying groups; and saves government a fortune, in socialised states.)However, these deals were private affairs (the 'free trade' agreement) and only part-USA applicable (the MSA deal), and what we are talking about here is a deal that covers the USA and EU. This pan USA-EU arrangement covers a significant chunk of the global cigarette volume; and it is specifically designed to protect cigarette sales from any threat. This is a new approach, and tells us very clearly how power views smoking: of huge fiscal importance. What other trade deals cover this quite large market area? None I can think of. That alone tells us how important it is to protect cigarette sales.You will note the comparative silence from the cigarette trade on the squeeze that has been applied to them over the last couple of decades; imagine any other industry subjected to the same restrictions... This is even more obvious in the UK where tobacco is completely invisible, but not a word is heard from the cigarette trade. In the UK, all tobacco adverts are banned, along with any other kind of promotion, and the products are hidden behind screens in stores - so young people today go through their whole lives without ever seeing any cigarette-related materials anywhere - probably hard for Americans to comprehend.You will probably realise that there is no way an industry will put up with this situation without a squeak, unless some kind of deal has been done. The deal was simple: silence, and keep taking the brickbats, in return for a guaranteed future.Just look at cigarette industry share prices and performance: easily the best performing shares, so pension funds and everyone else puts their money in these shares. Why wouldn't they? Smoking has a guaranteed future, and its shares will always outperform other investments of that type. There really is no need to look at any other measure of performance, because this is how success is measured in traded companies and markets. Even alcohol and cannabis shares when traded freely over the long term are unlikely to reach this level of performance and reliability, and there is an excellent reason for this: there are no tangible threats to smoking.It means that the market is absolutely certain that nothing will be allowed to challenge cigarette sales, and clearly they are right...............Anyway: the EU regulations were introduced first, so let's consider that factor.Part 1: The EU TPDThe EU governs tobacco sales in its 28 countries by means of the Tobacco Product Directive or TPD. This has recently been rewritten, and is sometimes referred to as 'TPD2'.First - let's call it Plan A - an outright ban on vaping products was tried by the EU (medical licensing: a de facto total ban), but this failed due to a massive mobilisation by European vapers, who badgered their reps so much that the poor, overworked politicians decided they had to do something or face some bad publicity about the C word.Nobody is allowed to mention the C word in politics as it is completely taboo. No matter that everything related to consumer health goods, energy, arms, medicals, and so on is governed almost entirely by the C word, and any other pressures (such as genuine policy) are pretty much insignificant. Anything that takes place in the area of consumer goods such as tobacco or anything related, or medical goods including pharmaceuticals, is governed by C - you can forget about any other influences as they are strictly minor in comparison. The sums of money are so incredibly vast that the last thing anyone is going to do is let some idiot politicians decide policy based on the phase of the moon or however they do it in other areas that have little financial implication; they are told what to do and what to say. (C = corruption, but we must not talk of this.)Plan B was to classify vaping as smoking, so that it could be cut by around 50% in Year 1 due to strict provisions of the regulations and associated costs, then gradually strangled by huge, increasing costs, massive taxes, and no advertising. This worked, because (a) it was lumped in with some tobacco control provisions concerning cigarettes, and (b) everybody who mattered wanted it and it was easy to pass off as 'progress' to the dumb, conflicted and often corrupt cowards otherwise called reps (MEPs here).The cunning part of the plan was (1) to first introduce a medically-based ban that was bound to fail, then classify ecigs as tobacco and introduce a few 'light-touch' regs that appeared reasonable in comparison and that many reps could support; and (2) package these new regs along with populist anti-cigarette wibbling that reps could not be seen to be voting against, being essentially party hacks and cowards when not paid by industry. Plan A was a win-win tactic: if it worked, then vaping could be banned overnight. If it didn't work, then vaping could be easily classified as a 'tobacco product ' (!) in camera (in a private committee), and this would lead to significant advantages: it could be 90% removed very quickly, and the remaining 10% could be taxed at tobacco rates. ('Quickly' in political terms means over a few short years.)The two things vital to the EU are (1) to progressively remove all democratic process in order to protect profitable laws, and (2) to protect revenue streams for government and its large-scale partners. You can probably see the two things are connected.The intra-EU factors devolve to what giant industry or government / gov dept needs what laws, in order to keep making money.What the individual EU governments need is for tobacco tax revenues to continue at their current levels. In many cases this money is of significant importance to them. For example, the UK is very similar to China in this regard: the government *is* tobacco. Gov UK has a greater than 90% stakeholding in cigarette revenues, due to the enormous taxes, and the equally enormous savings on end-of-life costs in a socialised state when a significant percentage of the population can be made to die 8 years early or 10 years early or whatever it is. (Everyone gets a state pension, everyone gets the extraordinarily costly healthcare for the elderly free, and everyone gets all the other costly social support benefits for the elderly, free. Not if they can be made to smoke and die several years early, though.)What the pharmaceutical industry needs is for the gravy train to keep on running: huge profits from chemotherapy drugs, COPD drugs, cardiac drugs, high blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, high cholesterol drugs, and all the rest - plus a bit of chump change from NRTs and psychotropic meds for smoking cessation (smoking-related morbidity generates a vast amount more revenue than smoking cessation; just one course of chemotherapy averages $26,000 apparently, according to the reported US cost.) As one pharma CEO famously put it, "We're not in the business of curing people, we're in the business of generating profits for shareholders". Cancer is a good business: one of the best, because it has a guaranteed future, protected by government.What the cigarette trade needs is for people to keep smoking. They don't care about anything else: smoking works for them and it costs them peanuts for R&D and absolutely zero for marketing in some countries (the UK for example). What other industry has 20% or 25% of the population as fixed customers and does not have to do any marketing at all as it's prohibited? What other industry has a 100-year old product that makes more money today than it did a century ago and needs little research? What other industry has ultra-low costs, a guaranteed future, and no need to do anything except sit down and count the money? They don't need any harm reduction products except as window dressing. They don't need to find new product lines because the last thing government is going to do is shut them down - see #1.What the large lobbying, pressure group and charity industry that has grown up on the back of smoking needs is for smoking to continue just as it is. Nobody votes themselves out of a million-dollar job, and that's what the CEO of one of these fake charities, pharma front groups and cancer promotion societies earns (in the USA - in Europe divide by 5 or 10 as is normal). You knew that, of course? Absolutely the last thing they want is, for example, a big push to make Snus and vaping the acceptable face of consumer nicotine, and smoking disease and death to disappear as a result, just as it is doing in Sweden. No one gets paid, then. No drug sales, no early deaths, no job.Those are the main groupings in the EU who benefit from smoking. They are listed in order of profits from smoking. You might notice that the tobacco industry is only at #3 - because gov and pharma earn more than they do out of smoking. In the UK, the pharmaceutical industry earns around 1.5x to 2x what the tobacco industry does from smoking. Globally, pharma earns at least 10% of its gross from smoking, probably more in the West, and this revenue channel is very important to them. It is not as important as the pharmaceutical industry's core operating principle, though:All laws related to health in any way are owned by pharmaWithout exception, they all need smoking to continue as it is. They don't want any threat to smoking that might spread the Swedish scenario, which would be a disaster for them. Sweden has unique national health statistics because most tobacco users there are snusers not smokers. Snus consumption in Sweden has no statistically-identifiable health impact, and the enormous data resource has allowed multiple clinical studies to report that lifetime consumption has a life expectancy reduction averaging 6 weeks. This is about zero in the grand scheme of things. Tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in Sweden reflects the number of smokers, not snusers, and is falling in parallel with the fall in smoking prevalence, as smoking gradually disappears there: a disastrous situation for all (except the consumers, and they don't count).They all just need to protect the status quo: smoking is good. Correction: smoking is wonderful.In case it is not obvious, the existence of the gravy train, and the astronomically vast sums of money it generates, is based entirely on the harm that smoking does. It's the disease and death (whether exaggerated or not) that allows the vast revenues to be collected. A type of 'smoking' that as far as can be seen has no significant potential for harm, and certainly not for mortality, is needed about as much as a hole in the head.It is impossible for anyone to make any real money out of an essentially harmless type of 'smoking', and that is why vaping is so hated by those in the incumbent industries, their partners in power, and their lobbyist / front groups.Part 2: The legal challenge to TPD2A UK e-liquid company (e-liquid is the slang term for the refill liquids used in vaping) challenged the legality of the new TPD's ecig product-related provisions.This challenge was heard by the European Court of Justice, aka the ECJ (although it goes through name changes every now and then, like a very bad car manufacturer such as Leyland, in order that the negative brand association can be jettisoned; so it may not actually be called the ECJ when you read this).They, rather predictably, rejected the challenge and upheld the TPD2. As that happened this week (w/e Fri May 7th, 2016) - the same week the FDA published their ecig deeming regs - it was a particularly bad week for public health.In fact, it seems likely that no other week was as bad for public health apart from the week the Black Death got started.Part 3: the FDA Deeming Regulation proposalAnd now we get to the FDA's share of the cake.The proposal for a deeming regulation, to 'deem' vaping products as tobacco products and treat them accordingly, was finally published by the FDA this week. The draft had been available for a month.In both of these regulatory moves, EU and FDA , nothing really happens for a couple of years. By 2018, or possibly 2019, we will see exactly what the score is. At first glance the FDA regulations will be stricter than the the EU equivalent, and appear to amount to a de facto* ban, as against the EU's initial 50%-90% ban (we don’t yet know how strictly it will be enforced, country by country). The EU have been careful, this time round, to ensure that they cannot be said to have created a ban: some products can still be sold (basically, mini ecigs of a couple of flavours, mainly sold by the cigarette trade, in main street stores only; measures will be gradually introduced to restrict or remove web sales).* A de facto ban is a law that appears to permit sales, but the conditions are so onerous/expensive/impossible to comply with, that in practice it is a ban.There are some commonalities between the EU and FDA approach:The basic idea is to kill vaping. Nothing must be allowed to threaten the gravy train.As it cannot be done by an outright ban, various ways of creating a 99% ban are going to be used. As long as the products remaining on the market are useless, and sold by the cigarette trade, and just on the high street (main street), and very expensive, they will probably be allowed. This also helps them claim there is no ban. No one will buy this stuff as the cost will be ridiculously high compared to today's prices (and the emerging black market prices), especially considering how useless the products are compared to real vaping technology.Because almost all of what is left is sold by the cigarette industry, it will be much easier to criticise it, tax it, malign it and so on. Remember: the cigarette industry does not fight abuse - this would contradict the deal. In any case, the tobacco industry does not care a jot if vaping fails - in fact, the sooner the better. They will help gov find and eliminate black market products (they do this already for cigarettes).How the FDA regs will differ from the EU regsIt appears that they are going for an all-out ban, and an equivalent to their 2010 import ban, by another route:The grandfather date for products means that nothing sold now is equivalent. Pre-2007, all that was on sale were 3-piece minis, and none of that technology exists today: it was all dumped years ago as it doesn't work. Or, it works like stone age flint tools do for CNC machining. No one can even remember the model series numbers for those old products, which predate even the 510 atomiser, and predate cartomisers. If anyone is going to try and claim product equivalence for modern gear when the comparator is something that existed long before cartomisers (cartos are the business end of the 2-piece mini ecig, but in 2007 no such thing existed: it was all 3-piece neolithic gear), then good luck to them. Their legal team will be taking on a project about the same as claiming a nuclear reactor is equivalent to a wood bow and spindle firelighter from 5,000 BC.Enormous licensing and documentation costs that in effect mean 99.9% of products are gone, even if there were to be a route to survival.Another theoretical route is the reduced-harm application type, but they have never granted an application of this type, as far as I know - they just bin them. Even Swedish Match could not get a product approval of this type for their Snus, when we know that the health implications are close to zero when compared with cigarettes (in Sweden, genuine Snus consumption has no measurable association with oropharyngeal cancers, lung diseases, heart disease, stroke, or any cancer). In all likelihood, the FDA will take the fee (and the costs to get there are, remember, enormous) and sit on it for a few years, then reject it, and keep the fee. So you'd pay out $1 million or whatever to license your strawberry 12mg e-liquid (and another $1m for each of the 6 or so variants of the same product), be unable to market it until they approved it, then get a refusal after 3 years, and perhaps even lose the X million $$. This sounds like a ban to me.Part 4: But all this is the opposite of what the authorities say, and it's murderous for public healthThat's right.You probably think that governments, and politicians, and giant transnationals, all love you and want to support and nurture you. They have your best interests at heart. They just want to create the perfect world for you.You also mistakenly think, in all probability, that many things could be chosen as the most important thing in the world, and they are all good: things like love, or community, or goodness, or creativity, or an industrious attitude and ethic, or the simple trade model of societies, or something like that. What is it exactly that you feel is the most important thing in the world?Just in case you are a bit naive, the two most important things in the world are:Money (mostly yours, in someone else's pocket)PropagandaThese two things are by far the most important things in the world. Indeed, nothing else is of any significance whatsoever, by comparison. Money and propaganda rule this world.To understand what a politician means when they are speaking of a topic that concerns your money or your health (basically the same thing), all you have to do is reverse the statement in your head. What he is actually saying is the opposite of the words.So, when politico A says something like, "We have dealt a strong blow to tobacco today, and the health of our youth is secure for years to come" - what he is actually saying is: "We took a massive bribe to kill off a significant threat to smoking, that would have removed all measurable amounts of disease and death. Now we can be assured that our youth will start to smoke, pay vast amounts of tax, buy huge amounts of drugs to treat their illnesses, make all of us who count a fortune, and die before they become an expensive burden on the state."Or, when a fake cancer lobby group comes out with, "The FDA will now ensure that tobacco products and their cancer are strictly controlled and perhaps even eradicated eventually", what the millionaire CEO is saying in reality is, "We introduced the FDA guy to our pharma pals who make the chemotherapy drugs, some cash changed hands, and now all our futures are secure - the threat to cigarette sales has been averted and cancer is safe for another 30 years".Or, when a State AG says something like: "We in the State of [X] have dealt a strong blow to tobacco today, and this new vaping threat to our youth has been robustly blocked by our vaping bans / taxes / whatever"; his real meaning is: "The State of [X] would collapse into a financial black hole if the tobacco taxes and MSA funds from cigarette sales were to cease or even fall, and my own multi-million dollar job would vaporise, and some senators would lose their gigantic pharma funding, and others their brown envelopes from an industry that cannot be named - so when we banned vaping / taxed vaping to the limit / did other ridiculous stuff to a fairly harmless substitute for smoking / &c., we made sure cigarette sales stay right up there and those MSA funds keep rolling in and Mr Pharma stays happy and the tobacco boys are smiling all over their faces - all of which is very, very good for our State and our own pockets".Or from a CDC spokesperson: "There has been a big rise in use of tobacco products by teens. It's very troubling." Translation: "Huge drop in smoking by US teens, of the order of 40% or so, but some increase in trial or use of ecigs, and even then in all probability mostly without nicotine." In other words: a massive win for public health. It is, indeed, deeply troubling for them: they may become redundant when people realise what an expensive, useless waste of space they are. To try and make a tremendous gain somehow look like a negative, and cover their pain and incompetence and the anger of their very good friends that licensed drugs were unfortunately not used for this amazing progress, they have had to call ecigs a 'tobacco product' (like pizza is a dairy product and your biro pen is a fuel product, maybe). As this near-miracle makes everyone at the CDC look very stupid, incompetent and utterly useless, better call it a new tobacco problem and hope nobody notices. As the CDC can use millions in taxpayers' money to cover up their incompetence with some great propaganda, and half the media is owned anyway, it should work. Some professors of medicine and expert THR advocates in the UK will speak out and get some media exposure from free assets not in the cabal, but who cares about them.Or from an FDA mouthpiece: "We support the use of harm reduction to reduce smoking mortality. More good news is that our new ecig regulations encourage innovation." Translation: "As 'harm reduction' is the new buzzword, we're using it. We have no idea what it means. However, we've been told to block it by any means possible. Also, our regulations will decimate the industry, remove about 99.9% of the products, and completely block all innovation. This will mightily please our funders, and that's what counts. Some of our scientists and technicians complained about this but we told them to STFU or get fired."Now even the cigarette trade is wading in. A prominent US tobacco corporation's spokesperson said: "Today starts a critical regulatory process to dramatically improve the public health of our country by reducing the death and disease caused by smoking". Translation: "Today, we are overjoyed, and it's like Christmas all over again. Our friends have given us a wonderful present: the terrible threat to our business model has been averted, and cigarette sales are safe for at least another decade". He is later reported to have added, "We're having a party with all our friends in pharma, government, cancer promotion lobbying, regulators and the other merchants of death - you're welcome to come. The theme is Grim Reapers and Expensive Whores, so glam it up (or just come as you are, as that's basically who we're inviting so you won't need to change). No need to bring a bottle, we have a chateau or three. No vapes allowed, they're too dangerous."This is the key to understanding any public statement about vaping: it's the opposite of the words used. Just remember the simple first principle of anti-vaping propaganda: reverse the garbage they utter, to get the real meaning.Once again, money and propaganda rule your world, and if you cannot see that, then you must be living in cloud cuckoo land.OverallA huge gain for cigarette sales in the face of a very significant threat. Smoking is protected now for perhaps 10 or 20 years, until the pressure mounts to such a degree that the corrupt laws are removed. (New technology always replaces the old system - eventually - after a desperate rearguard fight by the old system that typically lasts for around 20 or 30 years. They have all the money - they even have your money - so beating them is an impossible task until the pressure is so great they crumble. It often takes the retirement or death of the old guard before any progress can be made.)The black market will be immense. It will be the first time in memory that people have to go to the black market for safer products to maintain their health and allow a normal lifespan, as against the normal situation with black markets. The first time that people will be forced to buy better, safer products outside the legal channels due to deliberate government action. The first time that many people will realise just how corrupt government is. The first time a veil is pulled from some people's eyes, and they see how their health and their lifespan were sold to the highest bidder.A significant proportion of the population will become criminals in intent if not in name, by defying the law. It is the duty of every citizen to ignore corrupt laws, and to fight them; many will choose to do so, and some of those will do it because they see it as their civic duty. A new public movement will be born that organises popular resistance to the multinational pharma and tobacco industries' laws and defies their government puppets.New criminals will be created: accountants, bricklayers, doctors, construction workers, attorneys, painters, receptionists, teachers, car mechanics and many others who never dreamed they would defy government, and who had all previously, perhaps, thought that government is there to protect and support them. Now their eyes are opened, and they see that government uses them as money generation units and disposes of them when they no longer pay their way. They are just there to be milked, then sent to the slaughterhouse when they outlive their use.Round-upIt was difficult to answer how vapers feel about the FDA proposals without looking at the overall situation; apologies for the length of the explanation.This is a global fight for citizen's rights against the smoking economy: a $1 trillion plus machine of gigantic proportion and immense power. It has almost absolute control over both the debate and the laws, and has perverted all the health issues. We know the new technology will eventually win, because it is always the same old story: those making fortunes from the old system fight desperately to stop their incomes vanishing. It is one of the oldest stories there is. Another way of putting it is that, once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.What makes it so interesting to me is how propaganda completely reverses the debate so successfully. It must cost a lot, but then again it saves at least $1 trillion in revenue for every year they can successfully keep cigarette sales free from market-based threats. Since these new tech vs old guard wars typically last 20 years or more until the old system dies off, the propaganda will make at least $20 trillion, and that's a lot of fun tickets. Propaganda is an extremely profitable business.I'm not even going to attempt to outline the type of regulations that are actually needed, as this seems pointless to me. It will be another 20 years or more before we will see proper health and safety regulations applied to vaping products. The current moves are all designed to strangle vaping and kill it off, and so remove any threat to cigarette sales with the minimum chance of legal problems; worrying about proper oversight seems a bit futile. The consumers will yet again establish their own monitoring procedures online, much as in the 2010 - 2014 era of vaping, in order to make use of the emerging black market with minimum risk.In the end, people have to rely on themselves, because governments that are in effect run by giant industries are either not relevant to their everyday concerns or simply too corrupt. It may well be that vapers are the first widescale consumer grouping to engage in an alternative economy, and perhaps a vanguard: more will come as things get worse.It looks as if there are going to be a heck of a lot of people who despise their lying, murderously corrupt government and its partners in the cancer business.A2A Q: "What does the vaping community think of the FDA ruling today?"