We should be clear what the actual object of this "epidemic" is. It isn't really about vaping. It's about Nicotine. And this fight is just one battle in a larger war: the societal struggle to define the proper moral dimensions of chemical dependency.
Many people have a knee-jerk reaction to "chemical dependency"... they assume it must be a bad thing. That somehow sobriety is the "natural" state of human beings, and that any dependence on a mind-altering chemical is a weakness, a deviation.
You can see this in the way we mix up terms like "dependency" and "addiction". People treat the former as if it were equivalent to the latter, but it isn't: "addiction" is when the harms of a dependency outweigh the benefits, when it becomes "maladaptive" (a vague, value-laden term). But a dependency by itself isn't necessarily maladaptive. Sometimes it's a positive adaptation.
Consider this, one of my favorite essays, about a woman whose relationship with Nicotine appears to have enriched her life:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/can-nicoti...
There are certainly chemicals that cause far more harm than good... there's no denying that. I'm not saying we should embrace Fentanyl. But it would be a mistake to treat every chemical dependency as an obvious evil. The moral valence of Nicotine dependency is far from black-and-white. Sometimes we depend on something because it's good for us. (Notice how nobody's complaining about a coffee epidemic.)
Many people have a knee-jerk reaction to "chemical dependency"... they assume it must be a bad thing. That somehow sobriety is the "natural" state of human beings, and that any dependence on a mind-altering chemical is a weakness, a deviation.
You can see this in the way we mix up terms like "dependency" and "addiction". People treat the former as if it were equivalent to the latter, but it isn't: "addiction" is when the harms of a dependency outweigh the benefits, when it becomes "maladaptive" (a vague, value-laden term). But a dependency by itself isn't necessarily maladaptive. Sometimes it's a positive adaptation.
Consider this, one of my favorite essays, about a woman whose relationship with Nicotine appears to have enriched her life:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/can-nicoti...
There are certainly chemicals that cause far more harm than good... there's no denying that. I'm not saying we should embrace Fentanyl. But it would be a mistake to treat every chemical dependency as an obvious evil. The moral valence of Nicotine dependency is far from black-and-white. Sometimes we depend on something because it's good for us. (Notice how nobody's complaining about a coffee epidemic.)