I am a realist, so I don't care. Not in the sense of if it should be legalized or not (although I don't much care about that either.) My kiddo was smoking and asked to vape at 17. I let him. As far as I'm concerned, if a teen is adult enough to admit to smoking illegally and to ask for a harm reduction product, they should get it. The majority of older smokers started before 18 because it was so culturally in place it was easy to do.
Perhaps one day vaping can be the same, is my hope. My realistic self also says that the teen stealing a juul to go suck on it with their friends is not great, but better than smoking.
I don't think that should impact ANY legislation about vaping because a given subset of teens IN ANY generation is going to BREAK ALL THE RULES and that includes vaping. It should be roundly ignored.
I also told my kid if he was dumb with his vape and got caught doing anything dumb, l would "participate" with him, in the sense of whatever Juvenile Stuff/Laws/treatment they could dish out but I would not be best pleased and he should use his vape responsibly.
Which as far as I know he did. I had the distinct displeasure of participating in Juvenile (and adult) services with him to knock some sense into his slightly conduct disordered skill. It was TOTALLY worth it and as a rule breaking teen myself I certainly have a certain amount of sympathy AND a night in jail, 90 months probation and expunging and adult felony was GOOD for his little soul.
I am proud to report he went to a bar last night, and used a Lyft driver to get home.
He got in trouble for driving at18 on 16 hits of acid, so to quote an old slogan, "We've come a long way, baby."
Sometimes rule breaking teens need to BREAK some RULES, I for sure did, and I for sure wound up with consequences, not legal ones but ones that sucked nonetheless.
So I don't much care about vaping, ,but society will do what it will do. It's unfortunate that the rule breakers get USED so everyone gets consequences, but if that's the society you got and you don't want it RISE UP AND VOTE AND NOT FOR ......s. Etc.
Anna