San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban
Its very sad to see personal liberty treated with such contempt in cities like San Francisco.<p>I have a friend who&#x27;s 80 year old grandmother was addicted to cigarettes. He wanted to buy her an ecigarette for christmas to help her quit, even though he subtly felt like it may be for naught given her age and how long she had been addicted. I suggested a Juul just because of how easy it is to operate and the high nicotine content, given its targeted toward people trying to quit.<p>A few months ago he showed me a picture of her &quot;empty pod drawer&quot;. She didn&#x27;t want to throw out the pods because she was hoping there was a way to recycle them. There were probably a hundred. She doesn&#x27;t smoke anymore.<p>Maybe, in the worldview of the officials, no one would consume nicotine. That isn&#x27;t the world we live in; in the world we live in, these city officials are simply indirectly responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of people. Moreover, I don&#x27;t even know if that&#x27;s a world we should be idealizing, in the same way I don&#x27;t know if a world without alcohol or caffeine or tylenol would be more ideal than the one we have. Just to start thinking about it: nicotine is a nootropic, and recreation is definitely great for your productivity and wellbeing. There aren&#x27;t zero positives to the chemical.<p>Its mostly just sad to see addiction so continually demonized in our society. We want to point blame, and then push it out of our minds like it doesn&#x27;t exist. And in the case of these city officials; literally push it out of their city. I can only hope that, one day, the people who run that very strange city start the process of learning to treat other people with the love and care we all deserve.