“The podcast is akin to clickbait. It’s one of these false moral panics in which we clutch pearls and gnash our teeth about issues such as teen smoking/drinking/pregnancy/drug use/slackerdom/etc…. etc… You have to be completely mad to believe that vaping represents a crisis to today’s teens. Smoking (a much less safe activity) has plummeted among teens; pregnancy rates have dropped from the time that I was a lad in the 80s and 90s; almost all indicators show a safer and saner generation of teens than we’ve had since before the Baby Boomers hit middle and high school. It’s a sign of the amazing good fortune we have in America that vaping can be the cause du jour for ad hoc public opinionists and parents to be riled about. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. Do you know what flavor of vape your children are vaping?” <cue ominous music> Anyway, obviously there are corporate malfeasances behind marketing and distribution of vaping items, but the idea that vape (especially in the day and age of increasingly legal THC) can be worth your fears and worry is almost laughable. It’s also a mistake to look at Big Vape as a problem when so many small businesses are the backbone of the vaping phenonmenon. As a whole, vaping is hardly a megalithic scam perpetrated by shadowy corporate overlords (a la Philip Morris) If America’s worst habit is vaping, it represents a major turning point in reducing self-destructive national vices; which is to say, there’s little reason for this podcast other than to gin up a mountain of outrage over a molehill of danger.”
ZeroKilroy via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
05/26/21