It's irresponsible because it's ignoring a very clear factor in all these cases is that they're all linked to illegal, off the street goods filled with who knows what. It would be more akin to saying oxycontin is bad because people die from contaminated heroin. Not that oxys don't have their own dangers and addiction issues.

I'd like to understand why you think it is completely flawed. That is a strong statement that confuses me.

Because it sets up a false dichotomy that one can either be anti-vaping/pro-smoking or pro-vaping/anti-smoking. It is possible to recognize that vaping is safer than smoking but it is still dangerous and provides enough negative externalities that it should be highly discouraged.

Ok, fair enough. But you'd agree, then, that the degree of discouragement should be proportional to risk, right?

And that's where the 10 people per day dying in swimming pools seems relevant to bring up. Or the fact that 67% of smokers die from smoking, with hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. Or the fact that a majority of Americans believe that vaping is more harmful than smoking. https://reason.com/2019/04/10/the-percentage-of-americans-wh...

That's weird, right?

>But you'd agree, then, that the degree of discouragement should be proportional to risk, right?

Yes partially, but it should also be proportional to the public's knowledge too. That is why some products are recalled after a single accident. It isn't that people are destined to die. The problem is instead when people assume the level of risk is low when it is actually moderate. That can be more dangerous than a riskier option in which everyone knows it is risky. For example, a swimming pool is unquestionably more dangerous than a trampoline. However most parents know a swimming pool is dangerous and won't let their kids swim unsupervised. They might not be aware of the dangers of trampolines. That asymmetry in the knowledge of the risks might end up making the trampoline more likely to result in an accident.

The general public thinks vaping is safer than it is. The general public is already very well aware how dangerous smoking is. I therefore think it is perfectly reasonable to be louder in denouncing vaping, especially considering this recent news seems to show it is even riskier than initially thought.

Check this article out. I see where you are going, but we are talking about an alternative to smoking, which is really bad.

https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k575

Sure, but that is missing half the equation. Every person who vapes is not a person who previously smoked or would have chosen to smoke if vaping didn't exist. The rate of the growth in vaping is much higher than the rate in decline of smoking. Like I said before, vaping can help people who are already addicts become healthier, but it is also creating new addicts and that is a problem.

I like to vape. I like to drink coffee. I like potato chips. All are addictive. If potato chips and coffee were released in 2019, would they be banned in San Francisco because they are addictive and dangerous for public health?

If OxyContin and fentanyl were both available at grocery stores, and a bad batch of poorly formulated street Oxycontin caused a slew of numerous deaths. And the blame causes more people to switch to fentanyl then Oxycontin that blame could be dangerous

> Is it irresponsible to criticize OxyContin because an alternative like fentanyl is even more dangerous?

Except that "fentanyl has a higher therapeutic index than morphine (400 vs 70)". Meaning that the difference between a therapeutic dose and lethal dose is much bigger with fentanyl (ie: safer!).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312206/

The main issue with fentanyl is that it's potent. Which our supply-driven interdiction system has favoured the movement toward.

But so potent that intermediaries can't mix it up right outside of a proper lab.

The issue which I understand is primary with fentanyl is purchasing black market fentanyl and selling it on the street as heroin or whatever other opiate and cutting it with various things leading to a wild variety of potency of street drugs, even within the same purchase (poorly ground, poorly mixed) which leads drug users to overdose much more frequently.

Fentanyl, absolutely is safer than many other popular pharmaceutical opiates but only when the dosing is done competently and accurately (even someone abusing opiates is safer using fentanyl IFF they are capable of knowing and distributing their desired dose)

Exactly. It would be better to dissolve easily-measurable-at-home quantities into large volumes of fluid, but it's hard to make powdered synthetic H substitutes that way.

Properly micronized and triturated, synthetic H made with fentanyl would be very safe stuff. Unless you could afford enough to OD yourself, which you might now be able to at the prices it could be sold at.