According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kids have gotten sick from the use of flavored vaping products. This story and many like it were immediately followed by demands that the government 'do something' about this 'epidemic'.

This series of events leading to calls for government intervention are not unique. But if we take a look at these events below the surface, we find the narrative is quite different.

These kids got sick and some even died because they used cartridges obtained from the black market.

It’s clear now that these people who were sick and in this wave of vape-related incidents were using THC cartridges in which an adulterant had been illegally added. So the government's response to this has been "We should move a whole lot of other vaping products into the black market"?

Where do YOU want to buy drugs from? The guy on the corner in a trench coat? Or CVS and Walmart where that product will be insured to be safe (or it’s not on their shelves)?

I want to buy all my products from companies, because if it’s wrong they make it right. I want to buy nothing from the government where there is no responsibility.

ESPECIALLY DRUGS. I’d prefer to buy them from companies where, when the slightest inference arises that they may not be safe, they are OFF the shelves. This is not applicable with the FDA.

The idea that we’re going to push into the black market (or gray market) products that prevent people who don’t want to smoke cigarettes (lung darts) is asinine.

The Michigan executive order that has latched onto this hysteria, amongst others, has made it punishable by 6 months in prison the possession of “4 or more flavored vape products”.
It’s absurd.

This is a classic Regulatory Bait and Switch. The FDA increasingly becomes outspoken and concerned about the use of youth vaping but it's not specifically because of its ill effects. Instead, teachers and adults are inconvenienced about the ease to which students vape. It can be done and hid more easily than actual smoking due to lack of smell.

So what they have done is use the excuse of adulterated black market marijuana vapes to ban the flavored products that they believe appeal to minors. So their solution doesn’t even match up to the harm they are selling you. They do this all of the time.

This is, in fact, a solution that they came up with previously, but didn’t have the political willpower or public outcry to pass easily. Whip up a crisis and grease the skids for your prepackaged solution.

It’s instructive and revealing that regulators and public health officials will go after something that isn’t the problem and, once banned, will actually become a problem because it is now only sold on the black market where it isn’t regulated.

Let's not even discuss that the FDA gave a monopoly, ahem, I mean permission, to sell new vaping devices this summer to Philip Morris...

Check out I Vape, I Vote or the LP's Vape page to get active and tell legislator's to get out of the crony business.

UPDATE: Tests show bootleg marijuana capes were tainted with hydrogen cyanamide.
​
“History folks. This is why it is IMPORTANT!

I have spoken many times on the parallels with alcohol prohibition and how it shows the dangers of black markets

The government itself poisoned alcohol during prohibition. Not to mention the many contaminates in bootleg booze that poisoned and blinded people.

Nor is this even the first time THC products have been contaminated.

How much are big alcohol/tobacco bribing the government to poison you and your kids?”

Taxed from John Phillips Jr.

Nicholas Sarwark appeared on Dave Smith's Part of the Problem podcast this week following the debate between them on Gene Epstein's Soho Forum.  The podcast is embedded below.

The exchange begins respectfully between the two and it only really breaks down when they begin discussing what each describes as the #1 issue facing America and the Libertarian Party. 

Sarwark believes this to be "Racism" while Dave Smith believes it's "Foreign Policy / The War State". 

This is when things get heated.  

Sarwark argues that President Trump's Wall on the southern border is racist because it disproportionately affects Mexicans, who have brown skin, and not Canadians who are white.  For simplicity, we'll ignore the other implications of the southern wall for now (ie., open borders, the movement of drugs that exist in the south which isn't a problem on the northern border).

He also notes that President Trumps “Muslim Ban“ was racist because the people in those countries are brown skinned, even if, admittedly, not all countries on the list were Muslim, nor were all Muslim countries added. 

He even claims that the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville during the "Unite the Right" protest is proof that racism exists and that it is more important than the death of thousands overseas.  

Dave Smith pushes back against this well moral inequivalence, but my focus is on something different.

At this point, Nick Sarwark doesn’t understand his own contradiction. Who are we at war with? The bombs that we drop, who dies when they explode?

If, very overwhelmingly, we are only killing brown people isn’t our foreign policy just as racist as the Wall?  Isn't it just as racist as the Muslim ban?  Is our foreign policy only killing Norwegians? Or is it killing brown people in the Middle East?

Nick, if you want to stay consistent please keep beating the drum against these policies that overwhelmingly affect minorities. Your conversation regarding our failed justice system because it inordinately affects minorities is ON POINT. 

Take that point to its logical conclusion though.  Our foreign policy also disproportionately affects minorities.  And by “affect“ I mean it kills them, ruins families, eliminates entire family trees, destroys cities, introduces famine, and also just happens to executed with OUR tax money.

The episode ended well with a dual call from Nicholas Sarwark and Dave Smith for people to join the Libertarian Party.

The Libertarian Party isn’t just made up of people who talk about liberty on the Internet, quite the opposite. Libertarian party is made up of those who actually show up.

Show up. Oust Nicholas Sarwark.  Principles over Party.