New York Just Banned Flavored Vapes. Is All of America Next?

https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a29067489/which-states-banned-flavored-e-cigarettes-vaping-juuls/

The tide is turning against Juul and other e-cigarettes as more cities and states enact regulations.

The entire state of New York is going to ban the sale of all flavored e-cigarettes. Over the weekend, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would issue an "emergency" executive order to take some vapes off the shelves to prevent underage New Yorkers from using them. This fresh wave of e-cigarette outrage has been building for awhile now.

Vaping used to be little more than a joke—you imagined a vape user as a slimy kind of dude with a fedora blowing milky clouds across the sidewalk. Then the cool people caught on, and it became a fascination. Was Juul actually a street style brand? Could it save the world from Big Nicotine? We didn't know much about these electronic sticks, but Leonardo DiCaprio was fully on board.

And then the kids took to vaping. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration started to look into Juul and other e-cigarette companies' marketing practices to see if they were targeting minors—especially with fun, fruity flavor pods. Then, in December, a report found that vape usage had skyrocketed among high schoolers in 2018 alone. These kids weren't using vapes to lessen nicotine dependence, like many adults were (and, as the Centers for Disease Control conceded, was a potential benefit of vaping). They weren't hooked on nicotine to begin with. But research indicated that vape usage could lead to nicotine and tobacco use in these young people.

A day later, the Surgeon General issued an advisory recommending state and local governments ban indoor vaping and tax the sales of e-cigarettes, to protect America's youth. Some states and localities have gone even further, moving to enact bans on e-cigarettes.

And here we are now. Last week, the CDC pointed to 380 cases of lung disease in the U.S. that were linked to vape usage, six of which led to death. News outlets are ramping up reporting on the public health issue—NBC just reported that some vape users are actually turning back to cigarettes to lessen their Juul dependence, which is, needless to say, ironic—and governments are ramping up serious regulations. The federal government might even step in. 

On the flip side, vape proponents say bans will keep adults hooked on regular cigarettes, which we know are extremely harmful, and lead to a vaping black market.

So where, exactly, are vape bans going into effect, and what do they cover?