It may be two pronged.
“For the children” is a classic “you sure you want to block this legislation, mate?” move.
And the big tabacco companies have been rapidly pivoting to target vaping at children (to set up lifetime consumers), since we’ve made amazing headway reducing smoking.
Yeah there is definitely a problem with big tobacco taking advantage of children. This looks like a proper legislation that I stand for. However, it’s hard to not be skeptical as “for the children” is usually for malicious intents.
It seems like targeting vaping at children has worked for them. The handful of millennials I know who vape are people who started smoking at ~14 years old before transitioning to vaping instead. I don’t personally know any millennials who went from being non-smokers to picking up vaping. And the millennials I know who vape all use the rebuildable, customisable ones, too.
The percentage of zoomers I see who vape is far, far higher. A lot of them have never smoked a cigarette in their lives, they just went straight to vaping. And it’s almost exclusively disposable vapes, too.
I think vaping is preferable to smoking cigarettes, but I think not doing either is ideal. And I’m obviously dead set against disposable vapes.
So yeah, in this case, “for the children” actually seems to be appropriate. And not that Sunak really gives a damn about the environment, but I think framing this as “for the children” rather than for environmental reasons is the right approach for a conservative government anyway; left-wing people will support it for environmental reasons anyway, but the government directly saying it’s for environmental reasons would probably upset a segment of right-wing people who think doing anything for the environment is “woke”. This way, it’s seen as a good thing for everyone (except the disposable vape buyers, I guess, but it is good for them, too, even if they don’t agree now).
It may be two pronged.
“For the children” is a classic “you sure you want to block this legislation, mate?” move.
And the big tabacco companies have been rapidly pivoting to target vaping at children (to set up lifetime consumers), since we’ve made amazing headway reducing smoking.
Yeah there is definitely a problem with big tobacco taking advantage of children. This looks like a proper legislation that I stand for. However, it’s hard to not be skeptical as “for the children” is usually for malicious intents.
Sometimes you have to play the game to win, even if the game is not something you want in the first place.
It seems like targeting vaping at children has worked for them. The handful of millennials I know who vape are people who started smoking at ~14 years old before transitioning to vaping instead. I don’t personally know any millennials who went from being non-smokers to picking up vaping. And the millennials I know who vape all use the rebuildable, customisable ones, too.
The percentage of zoomers I see who vape is far, far higher. A lot of them have never smoked a cigarette in their lives, they just went straight to vaping. And it’s almost exclusively disposable vapes, too.
I think vaping is preferable to smoking cigarettes, but I think not doing either is ideal. And I’m obviously dead set against disposable vapes.
So yeah, in this case, “for the children” actually seems to be appropriate. And not that Sunak really gives a damn about the environment, but I think framing this as “for the children” rather than for environmental reasons is the right approach for a conservative government anyway; left-wing people will support it for environmental reasons anyway, but the government directly saying it’s for environmental reasons would probably upset a segment of right-wing people who think doing anything for the environment is “woke”. This way, it’s seen as a good thing for everyone (except the disposable vape buyers, I guess, but it is good for them, too, even if they don’t agree now).