Et Tu, DeSantis?

Florida's controversial Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has been a bit of a mixed bag overall.  The True Spirit of America Party (TSAP) is, to put it mildly, not exactly a fan of Republicans in general and Trump supporters in particular, but has nonetheless generally agreed with his light-touch, focused protection handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has actually yielded a lower cumulative per capita death rate than the national average (and much lower than several lockdown states) despite Florida's significantly older and fatter population.  And in terms of excess all-cause mortality, wide-open Florida even did better than the overall strictest state of all, California.  There are some bad things about DeSantis of course, such as his latest Georgia-style voter suppression efforts and his heavy-handed and poorly-written anti-rioting law that arguably throws out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, but generally he is not too terrible by current low-bar Republican standards.

And of course, Twenty-One Debunked in particular has supported the fact that he was one of the most prominent holdouts in keeping the legal smoking age at 18 despite the trend towards raising it to 21 at the local, state, and eventually federal levels.  After all, he has previously opposed and vetoed every single attempt to raise Florida's smoking age any higher than 18.  Well, until now, that is.  Like most other governors, as of today, DeSantis has officially SOLD OUT and signed into law a bill that raises Florida's smoking and vaping age to 21, effective October 1, 2021.  True, this new law does have an exemption for military service members aged 18-20, making it a shade less bad than some other states, but we still oppose this law on principle like we oppose all inherently ageist Tobacco 21 laws, period.

One could argue that any state law that sets the age limit below 21 is effectively void since the federal smoking age has been 21 since December 2019, but that is beside the point.  A state that chooses to remain 18 in spite of the federal Tobacco 21 law is a principled state with integrity, and is at the very least NOT helping the federal government enforce such an ageist abomination.  Today, Florida lost that status.

DeSantis is now the 34th governor to raise the age limit for tobacco and vaping to 21, bringing it to now more than two out of three states who set it at 21.  With "allies" like him (and Trump, who raised the federal age limit to 21), who really needs enemies?

NEWS FLASH: Vaping Black Market Concoctions Is Bad For Your Lungs

That is what the conclusion should have been from the latest vaping study finding that cannabis vaping is more harmful to the lungs than nicotine vaping, cannabis smoking, and tobacco smoking.  But that does not appear to be the way the mainstream media is presenting the study, without any sort of nuance or detail.  The study did not distinguish between black market, gray market, and legitimate market products, nor did it bother to examine or even mention the old-fashioned way of vaping weed (namely heating regular and pure whole bud in a loose-leaf vaporizer).

Have we really forgotten the primary culprit in the EVALI (vaping illness) epidemic in 2019, namely questionable additives and diluents such as Vitamin E acetate (et al.) that were almost entirely found in black and gray market cannabis vape oil concoctions?  Especially since EVALI was significantly less common in states where cannabis is fully legal compared to states where it is not, as there are by definition much safer alternatives to the black market in legal states (though a significant black market still remains in highly taxed and tightly regulated states like California as well, or at least did in 2019-2020).

The solution is really quite simple:  legalize cannabis 18+, ban any additives that have not been proven safe for human consumption via inhalation, implement strict quality control standards, don't overtax it, charge excessive licensing fees, or otherwise have excessive barriers to entry into the legitimate market, and crack down on any remaining illicit markets.

And for users, as we have said before, DO NOT vape, juul, or dab anything you find on the black market!

Problem solved.  We ignore these facts at our peril.

What About Tobacco, Again?

The Biden administration is currently considering two new sweeping FDA rules affecting combustible tobacco cigarettes:  1) banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, and 2) reducing nicotine levels, presumably to a non-addictive level.  Where we stand on these two potential changes is as follows:

The first one, Twenty-One Debunked is on the fence about that, as we can see both sides of that issue, noting that Canada has already banned menthols and the EU has phased them out, while also noting the inconvenient truth of racism and how it intersects with this issue as well.   The flavored cigars we generally lean against banning, while for menthol cigarettes we believe that if they must do it for whatever reason, they should phase them out more gradually and allow existing stocks to be sold well after the designated "quit date" for selling newly manufactured menthols.  Also, possession and consumption of menthols should NOT be banned or punished, and police should NOT go out of their way to target the sale of menthols or "loosies" in underprivileged neighborhoods with people of color.

(For what it's worth, quit rates in Canada have improved significantly since their menthol ban, particularly among formerly menthol-preferring smokers.  That lends credence to the idea that menthol enhances the overall addictiveness of tobacco by making the high nicotine levels less harsh on the throat, which also makes it easier for young experimenters to pick up the habit in the first place.)

The second one, reducing nicotine levels, Twenty-One Debunked has cautiously supported since 2014, and we still do, provided that all of the following are true:

• The phasedown of nicotine to a non-addictive level is done gradually and stepwise over a period of at least a year, in at least three stages.
• The sale of existing domestic stocks of cigarettes above the nicotine cap can continue at least six months after the "quit date" for manufacturing and importing cigarettes above that cap (at each step of the phasedown).  
• The possession/consumption of cigarettes with nicotine levels above the cap is NOT banned or punished.
• The only other tobacco products subject to the same cap shall be little cigars (below a certain size), perhaps all cigars with a smoke pH below 8, and possibly loose roll-your-own cigarette tobacco and/or pipe tobacco with a pH below 8.  Nothing else, period.  We would be fine with, and would actually prefer, if only pre-rolled commercial cigarettes and little cigars (the size of cigarettes) were subject to the nicotine cap.  
• The addition of any harmful or addictive additives to all newly manufactured tobacco products is banned effective immediately as well.  All additives must meet the same standards as for additives to food.  Radioactive fertilizers for growing tobacco must also be banned as well.

While the effectiveness of the flavor ban is a bit questionable at best, the nicotine cap and phasedown would likely greatly reduce the prevalence of tobacco smoking and associated disease and death, simply by making this conveniently deadly product by design far less addictive.  More people would quit fairly quickly, and fewer people would take up the habit in the first place.  And people who miss the old high-nicotine smokes of yore would still be free to use alternative tobacco and nicotine products.

And doing it gradually enough will make it so there is no more of a black market for higher-nicotine cigarettes than there is for incandescent light bulbs.

As for vaping, Twenty-One Debunked does not support such a massive reduction in nicotine levels to that proposed for combustible cigarettes, but rather we support reducing the nicotine content in vape products to the maximum levels permitted in the EU, UK, and Israel.  That would nix the super-addictive ones that notoriously get young people hooked within seven days (JUUL, we're looking at you!) while still allowing plenty of nicotine for adult vapers who are trying to quit smoking.  (Twenty-One Debunked does NOT recommend anyone take up vaping, except as a last-ditch effort for truly hardened and refractory adult smokers who cannot quit any other way.)

Of course, we also think the smoking age should be lowered back to 18, just like we feel about the drinking age and toking age.  We are not called Twenty-One Debunked for nothing, after all.  Raising the age limit to 21 was at best useless, and is an ageist abomination.  In the meantime, though, the above is our nuanced and well-thought-out stance on the latest tobacco-related measures being proposed. 

FINAL THOUGHT:  By the way, the fact that they use the "think of the children!" argument to justify the banning of menthols and flavored cigars, is really just a tacit admission that raising the smoking age to 21 was essentially useless in keeping cigarettes and cigars from "trickling down" to people under 18.

More Proof That Curfews Don't Really Reduce Crime

Curfews, especially youth curfews for people under an arbitrary age limit, have long been a solution in search of a problem.  They have been touted as a panacea for all sorts of social ills, most notably street crime.  And the evidence for that has been very weak at best, with plenty of evidence against it in fact.

But now we have the strongest "natural experiment" with the extreme, unprecedented, all-ages COVID lockdowns, curfews, and other restrictions in 2020 that did not exist in 2019 and prior years.  If curfews and similar policies actually reduced crime, we would have seen a sharp decrease in crime in 2020 relative to the average of previous years.  So what were the results of this yearlong natural experiment?

Well, you might wanna sit down before reading this.  Turns out, crime actually went way up in 2020 compared to the past few years, particularly homicides.  Preliminary data from the first half of 2020 put the per capita homicide rate in the USA at a 15 year high (highest since 2005), and the second half of the year may turn out to be even worse still, possibly even the highest since the late 1990s. And of course, plenty of rioting as well.  Even mass shootings and hate crimes are up as well, and if the first three months of 2021 are any indication, this very ugly trend unfortunately may not subside anytime soon, and alas may very well persist well after all such restrictions are finally lifted.

Even the supposedly good news about reported rapes being down in the first half of 2020 needs to be qualified.  Given how the vast majority of rapes occur behind closed doors and go unreported even in a normal year, the apparent decrease in 2020 may simply be an artifact of an increase in underreporting due to lockdown, especially since domestic violence and child abuse both appear to have increased significantly during lockdown.  We will ultimately see when the 2020 survey results for NCVS and NISVS are released, either later in 2021 or even as late as 2022.

Back in April 2020, anecdotal evidence of course suggested that crime was down in some areas.  But clearly that decrease was short-lived, and then the opposite occurred.  Whether it is due to pent-up rage, restlessness, boredom, unemployment, fewer "eyes on the street", destruction of community, or all of the above, these sorts of authoritarian and illiberal policies clearly do more harm than good on balance.

So let this be the final nail in the coffin for lockdowns, curfews, and similar restrictions.  If curfews are to ever be used to fight crime and/or civil disorder, they need to be very limited, local, nuanced, and short-term--if they are to even be used at all.

QED

Our Position on Parental Notification

With the recent kerfuffle in New Jersey regarding their long-overdue cannabis legalization, particularly regarding parental notification for underage possession offenders under 21, we at Twenty-One Debunked thus see a need to clarify our position on parental notification for underage possession consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis.  We believe the age limit for all three should be 18 and not a day later (i.e. the Alberta Model), and regardless of the age limit we believe the following as well:

• For anyone over 18, parental notification should be prohibited, period, as 18 is the legal age of majority.  Why this is even the least bit controversial is truly mind-boggling.
• For anyone under 18, parental notification should NOT be mandatory, but rather should be discretionary, at least for first offenses of simple possession.  Even for subsequent offenses, there should still be nuance and proportionality.
• For younger teens/tweens under 15 or 16, parental notification may very well be the preferable go-to option in many cases, but for older teens it should be regarded as more of a "nuclear" option for serious or repeat offenders.
• Underage possession/consumption per se should be decriminalized.  That is, it should bypass the criminal justice system entirely, and should carry no arrest, no jail time, and no criminal record.  Rather, the penalties (if any) should include only a verbal or written warning, a modest civil fine (i.e. a parking or traffic-style ticket), a brief educational course, and/or confiscation of the contraband items.
• Any more serious penalties should be reserved solely for more serious and/or flagrant offenses that go beyond simple possession or sharing among peers, such as when impaired driving, violence, vandalism, theft, trespassing, obstructing traffic, disturbing the peace, and/or disorderly conduct is involved.  For ALL ages.  (Note that most of these are arrestable offenses.)
• No one should lose their driver's license for any non-driving related infractions.
• Rather than disproportionately targeting young people themselves, there should be a much greater focus on adults over 18 who sell or furnish such substances to people under 18, especially when there is a large age difference between the furnisher and furnishee.

None of these should be controversial at all.  If you honestly think these are extremist positions, you seriously need to have your head examined!