{"id":78103,"date":"2021-06-01T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=78103"},"modified":"2021-05-31T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T17:54:28","slug":"78103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=78103","title":{"rendered":"You Were Warned.  Fat Lotta Good It Did."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Politicized &#8220;Science&#8221; in Public Health is to &#8220;Science&#8221; as Scientology is to &#8220;Science&#8221;. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Case in point:   Vaping was a godsend for millions of smokers who <em>wanted <\/em>to quit smoking tobacco, but couldn&#8217;t.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Big Left, riding a wave of prohibitionism driven by (pick one) (or two, or all of them, I don&#8217;t know, it may be entirely appropriate):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Self-righteous dudgeon, or <\/li><li>A pathological hatred of people enjoying themselves, or<\/li><li>The aesthetics of putting something in one&#8217;s mouth for fun, or<\/li><li>A need to <em>control everyone&#8217;s behavior<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;drove a wave of rules and statutes that treated vape <em>like cigarettes<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the &#8220;unintended&#8221; consequences?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.yale.edu\/2021\/05\/25\/ban-flavored-vaping-may-have-led-teens-cigarettes-study-suggests\">what do you think<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a 2018 ballot measure banning the sale of flavored tobacco products \u2014 including menthol cigarettes and flavored vape liquids \u2014 public health advocates celebrated. After all, tobacco use poses a significant threat to public health and health equity, and flavors are particularly attractive to youth.<\/p><p>But according to a new study from the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.yale.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Yale School of Public Health<\/a>&nbsp;(YSPH), that law may have had the opposite effect. Analyses found that, after the ban\u2019s implementation, high school students\u2019 odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in San Francisco\u2019s school district relative to trends in districts without the ban, even when adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies.<\/p><p>The study,&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jamapediatrics\/fullarticle\/2780248\" target=\"_blank\">published in JAMA Pediatrics<\/a>&nbsp;on May 24, is believed to be the first to assess how complete flavor bans affect youth smoking habits.<\/p><p>\u201cThese findings suggest a need for caution,\u201d said&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.yale.edu\/profile\/abigail_friedman\/\" target=\"_blank\">Abigail Friedman<\/a>, the study\u2019s author and an assistant professor of health policy at YSPH. \u201cWhile neither smoking cigarettes nor vaping nicotine are safe per se, the bulk of current evidence indicates substantially greater harms from smoking, which is responsible for nearly one in five adult deaths annually. Even if it is well-intentioned, a law that increases youth smoking could pose a threat to public health.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p> In other words:  to &#8220;safeguard&#8221; people from addiction to a chemical that&#8217;s about as dangerous as caffeine, they drove people from a delivery system with minimal, largely edge-case dangers, to one that literally involves drawing concentrated air pollution into the lungs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s almost too obvious to be a Berg&#8217;s Law:  when you mix science and politics, you don&#8217;t get scientific politics; you get politicized science.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicized &#8220;Science&#8221; in Public Health is to &#8220;Science&#8221; as Scientology is to &#8220;Science&#8221;. . Case in point: Vaping was a godsend for millions of smokers who wanted to quit smoking tobacco, but couldn&#8217;t. Big Left, riding a wave of prohibitionism driven by (pick one) (or two, or all of them, I don&#8217;t know, it may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78106,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78103\/revisions\/78106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}