It definitely seems like all we get exposed to now is a constant battery of news stories about vaping and the danger that it can cause so many people in the community. Obviously, vaping is becoming popular among teenagers and young people, and it is causing health issues, which is why a lot of people and government officials have called for more rules and regulations.
However, do we support this move towards a more tightly regulated vaping industry? Well, we thought we would share our thoughts on this.
Regulations Can Help Us Protect People
If there is one message which we want to communicate, it is that we do not want to outright deny the value of rules and regulations because that would be short-sighted and honestly a knee jerk reaction to the threat of lawful intervention. The truth is that rules and regulations can help to protect us from the risk of putting people in harm’s way and create a safer community for everyone.
When we talk about things like vaping regulations, it’s important to acknowledge that they would be put in place to help the community look after itself and stay safe. If there are dangers to young people which stem from vaping, then, of course, we would want those dangers to be resolved in a timely fashion. However, we also acknowledge that the issue is not as simple as it might first seem.
Tackling the Real Issues
If we are going to put rules and regulations in place to try and protect people from the dangers of vaping – which we feel can be prevented – then we do have to try and think about what types of dangers we are dealing with and indeed how we navigate them.
As far as we can see, there are two main issues to think about – the problem of people selling vapes to anyone who is clearly underage and the adults who purchase for underage users to enable their behaviour. In both cases, we can’t help but feel that massive financial consequences should be put into place as an attempt to curb this type of behaviour.
We need to make the idea of selling these types of devices to underage users so undesirable for fear of sanctions that it gives us the opportunity we need to make sure that people don’t do it. The only way to do that is to ensure that there is some type of robust system in place to prevent these sales – although it would take more than our ideas to put it into place.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, we do recognise that the challenges of vaping are more complex and nuanced than is allowed in a single blog. We do support new rules coming into place, but they need to target the problem and not savagely attack the ability of normal people to make sales. This type of process can be lengthy but ultimately, we feel it will be worth it in the end to make these types of changes.