The thing that always concerns me is the whole "Think of the children!" counter-argument that comes up when this information surfaces. It's a stupid argument that's based on half-truths, but it does work. People in power are easily attracted to the noble cause of protecting the children.
The most common one you'll come across is that kids who wouldn't have smoked will pick up vaping and ultimately wind up smoking, which never made sense to me - we're talking about devices that make people never want to smoke again! But again, people believe it. They think that because more kids are vaping that the second half of the argument must be true.
And on the whole gateway argument... ...I can't believe anybody still accepts that. Without getting into the forbidden zone, most people who use a gateway anything don't move onto more harmful things because of the supposed gateway thing, but rather because they were predisposed to taking more risks in the first place. It just so happens that people who are willing to do this are also more likely to do that. It's sort of like how speeders are more likely to gamble or steal. Does speeding lead to the other two? Not necessarily. It's just that someone who already drives recklessly is more likely to take other risks. No risk-averse person really takes a big risk and then "becomes" a risk-taker. People who take risks in the first place are just general risk-takers.
I can't believe that such a redundant statement still bears mentioning. The observation that people who exhibit "x" risky behavior will also exhibit "y" doesn't mean anything for "x" or "y". It just means they like to do stupid shit, no matter what it is. How is that not obvious?
It's simply a behavioral marker designating what choices those people are likely to make in the future. Looking at the progression in chronological order is misleading. Makes you think that taking one risk leads a person to take the next ones, which flat-out isn't true.
It's really the same with addiction. I like to think that it's not that addiction is a product of so-called addicting things. You have to look at the nature of the addict himself. Addiction is a symptom of a problem, not a cause. If you remove the source of the addiction, you still have a person who has something wrong with them. Ask most addicts why the started and they will usually tell you "It was there." It's not some mythical force that swoops-in and devours just anyone. It only finds addicts.
A lot of the arguments against children vaping show a false sentiment and a very poor understanding of human behavior. It should be quite easy to predict the outcome of children being exposed to vaping, given what we already know. Those kids are already risk takers. The best you can hope for is harm reduction. Yes they will go on to do other things they're not supposed to do, with some of them potentially being quite harmful and dangerous. If you want to help them, let vaping be the "bad" thing that they do. If you're lucky it may satisfy their desire to take risks for a little while. They will go on to take many more, but vaping will not be one that they regret. And this would have been true for those individuals even if they didn't happen to pick up vaping.
It's really a bittersweet revelation... ...something most of us here suspected would happen for a long time. It's just too bad that it is so easy to spin. The general populace falls for this argument every time. What's really unfortunate is that people will blame vaping for these kids' risk-taking behavior and miss the bigger point that their kids are generally risk-takers and fail to address it properly, thinking that keeping them from taking certain risks will keep them from taking any. It's a very unfortunate SNAFU on the part of parents who buy into this crap.
If anything, this "think of the children" BS is harmful to children. It's missing the larger point... ...which is that you need to be able to recognize and acknowledge signs that your child is a risk-taker and teach them how to operate more safely, in general. Not don't do this or that. That approach doesn't work! Ever! It doesn't protect them from jack shit. They learn nothing. You shouldn't be concerned that your child is a vaper, but rather what that means about your child. It doesn't stop with keeping them from vaping, yanno? In fact, it never stops for many.
