Vaping devices, e.g. the unfortunately named e-cigarettes, were a valuable tool for smoking cessation and harm reduction, with better results in ending smoking than nicotine patches and gums.

Then suddenly they were everywhere, a market so large that a tobacco company whose primary business was cigarettes spent billions for a small stake in Juul, which had become the leader in vaping products. Now they have written 90 percent of that investment down because it turns out that while nicotine is addictive, vaping never had the 'cool' factor of cigarettes. Cigarettes were boosted in culture by film and television prevalence but vaping never attained that kind of traction.

New survey results show the 'epidemic' manufactured by the US CDC was never real, but since vaping is in decline they can claim their "Reefer Madness"-type PSAs of kids throwing their televisions out the window if they can't vape did the job. In reality. it was sensible regulations and wariness about exploitation by the vaping community that drove out bad actors.

The good news results via 994,000 adults from U.S. states and territories and reveal a decrease in the prevalence of any e-cigarette use in the last 30 days. The problem with CDC hype, and government throwing money at groups hoping to engage in scared straight tactics was always that any experimental use in the last 30 days was classified as an addiction, and then gateway to smoking. It was a manufactured concern. The biggest drop from 2018 to 2020 was people 18 to 20. Since smoking is a pediatric disease, the logic was vaping would be also, but that is clearly not the case.

Even for those who still vape the news remains good. Smoking kills. The 200 cancer-causing chemicals in smoke are the problem, nicotine is just what kept addicts smoking. But the caffeine in Red Bull is more dangerous than the nicotine in vaping. Nicotine is not killing people, the only time someone even tried to kill themselves with nicotine they consumed it far beyond the LD50 and nothing happened.

Some of the drop could absolutely be that as the industry grew FDA took notice. The days when some shyster could buy a vat of liquid nicotine and open a vape shop near a school are long gone. Regulations make sense, just like they do for tattoo parlors and use of toxic chemicals like copper sulfate.