So the goal is to force smokers to increase the number of cigarettes they smoke to achieve the same effect. A 20-a-day smoker may now have to smoke 80-a-day to satisfy their craving, massively increasing their exposure to carcinogens and increasing their risk of COPD. Either that or switch to vaping, which might be the real intent.

Funny enough, I thought vaping would save me tons of money, but I find myself burning through coils/juice super fast. OTOH I feel like I'm also consuming a ton more nicotine with vapes than with cigarettes.

weird. It isn't the nicotine that's harmful in cigs but the combustion products like tar. So smokers would be forced to burn far more cigs to get the same nootropic nicotine hit that they normally get from one cig.

Sounds like good news for the tobacco companies.

This sounds absolutely bonkers, tobacco plant will quickly be illegally cultivated. Without the nicotine it will also be harder to cultivate and make cigarettes more costly.

I wonder if we should expect similar regulation, within my lifetime, for alcohol and sugary foods? Both are strongly associated with a variety of common diseases, and alcohol itself is seemingly associated with numerous common cancers.

Your body isn't yours; why should the State allow you to wreck it with poor life choices? The rest of society needs you healthy and consuming, Citizen!

Your body is yours, and you are free to wreck it. However, society shouldn't have to pay for your bad behavior via higher health insurance premiums.

I'm all for legalizing recreational drugs, including meth, heroin, whatever. Go to a drug or liquor store, show an ID, and get whatever you want. We do it with alcohol, why not drugs?

But people who decide to get hooked on shit that's bad for your body - drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar/snacks - should have to pay all their health costs out of pocket, other than X fixed months of health counseling to help them get unhooked.

Is it terrible that tobacco companies get people hooked? Of course it is. But kids (and adults) are not completely stupid. They know that smoking and vaping are not good for ones health, but they do it anyway. Whatever regulations the government creates will somehow get bypassed by companies (add a different ingredient that is addictive other than nicotine), and some people are going to continue to do things that they know are bad for their health, because they have no discipline and are irresponsible.

Here's a thought: force the cigarette companies to pay for the health insurance of people who smoke, the snack and soft drink companies pay for the people who are obese, and allow pharmaceutical companies to manufacture meth, heroin, cocaine, etc and sell it in liquor stores, but they also have to pay health insurance for their "users", I mean "customers". It's still dumb because all of these put unnecessary strain on the health system, but at least society isn't paying for it.

> People who decide to get hooked on shit that's bad for your body... should have to pay all their health costs out of pocket.

What about those driven into those situations at young ages when the state should have been looking after them?

This is a non-effective policy. There’s a study which clearly shows that abstinent smokers prefer smoking denicotinized cigarettes over self-administered (push-button) intravenous nicotine.

A link to the study for any like me who found this fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4154143/

Makes me wonder if we could make vapes more effective at smoking cessation by adding MAOI as well as nicotine.

They are already very effective at smoking cessation, and the inclusion of MAOIs could make it more difficult to stop vaping.

Yeah you're probably right, I'm just being greedy. Vaping Nicotine never hit me the same as smoking, but that's probably a good thing.

Have these same regulations been applied to vaporizers? Anecdotally it seems these have taken over the majority of nicotine consumption in the US (along with Zyn pouches).

> Anecdotally it seems these have taken over the majority of nicotine consumption in the US

Cigarettes have not. The drop in cigarette-smoking rate been basically linear.

Through 2018: https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...

Through 2020: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adul...

They don't exist yet so they can't have been applied to vaporizers.

A better policy is to increase the age restriction by a year every year! The younger generation will never be entitled to the stuff while those already addicted arent forced to smoke more or forced to stop. Sure you can grow your own but in my experience theres better drugs that are less fiddly to produce and have less consequences.

I don't think more restrictions would do anything except boost the black market. Drugs are illegal, yet the younger generation enjoys them more then ever.

There are no current alternatives to nicotine that tickle the brain quite like it. But I'd love to be proven wrong!

I am skeptical of a "non-addictive" cigarette. My experience with tapering nicotine vape concentration is that if the puffs don't satisfy, one will tend to just puff more.

I couldn't find Biden's proposal, and later realized the report is based on insider knowledge. I doubt there is any benefit to dictating nicotine levels, or any basis for a theoretical benefit.

Bingo. When I smoked cigs, I'd end up smoking half as many if I had access to a really strong brand e.g. Marlboro Reds or Newports. Likewise, I'd go through a pack of light cigarettes twice as fast. It wasn't conscious - my brain wanted its set dose of nicotine.

When I did quit eventually with nicotine gum, I gradually lowered the dose over the course or a month or two, but it was a very conscious process, and I absolutely had to discipline myself to push through the cravings.

All this will accomplish is forcing mostly poorer people to purchase more cigarettes than they currently do in order to get the same fix they're accustomed to.

It’s not just the nicotine; rather, nicotine is a weak and essentially non-reinforcing stimulant unless it is administered with monoamine oxidase inhibitors, such as those found in tobacco smoke and coffee, which greatly potentiate nicotine’s effects and make it strongly reinforcing.

Wouldn’t that just generate more sales for tobacco companies and make current smokers smoke more cigarettes

Which part of the US Constitution gives Biden that power?

If I had to bet, the commerce clause.

One is allowed to hold right-wing opinions.