Another huge problem is people rarely accept the realities on the ground in these abstract debates. That people will continue to smoke cigarettes otherwise or find black market means to vape even when its heavily regulated or banned. As a consequence it simply pushes people into completely unsafe vendors and shady people, pushing good kids into the justice system, encouraging related criminal activity which black markets help finance, etc creating a net-worse situation.

High school kids have been able to find weed for decades despite various stringent laws. Many drug dealers are high school kids themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to find kids selling vape oil and cheap chinese vape pens.

This should ultimately be about balancing real alternatives, doing our best to minimize harm, and educating the people who will do it anyway. Although most education attempts have laughably failed like those 90s TV spots by out of touch ad companies paid for by the gov.

People like to argue in some fantasy idealistic world where people will stop engaging in non-violent activity which harms themselves because policy makers say so.

I agree with the general thrust of your point, but I'm not sure it applies here. People smoke weed because it's fun or because it is medically useful. But from the tobacco smokers and ex-smokers I know, that's never the case. It's not fun; it's a very hard-to-kick addiction.

It's also an addiction provided on a for-profit basis. That means strong incentives to create new addicts. I don't think it's at all unreasonable for us as a society to work against that.

But that would force it into hiding. Much fewer people could run out for a short five minute vaping break in plain sight of everyone. So they’d save it for the evenings and their homes, which means they’d do it much more rarely, which means that much fewer people would get addicted. And nicotine as a drug isn’t all that fun.