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FDA completely contradicts Denver council claims on flavored nicotine

(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.)

I quit smoking decades ago. I committed to smoke only after sex.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has officially declared the Denver City Council is working to kill people. This counters the council’s stated fib they want to help people stop smoking.

I know we’ve been over this before. But the timing of the FDA’s action is just too delicious, like a fine cigar, not to spend a moment celebrating it.

If you recall it was mere weeks ago when Denver’s City Council put aside such trifling issues as crime, homeless squalor and tens of thousands of immigrants sucking up city resources to ban the sale of flavored nicotine products.

Instead of focusing on how to keep mentally ill violent criminals behind bars and not running around town stabbing folks, the council banned the sale of products like Zyn, the popular tobacco-free nicotine pouch. We were told this was going to save lives by keeping people away from the evil gateway product that leads to deadly cigarettes.

FDA says otherwise

How very embarrassing, then, that after years of rigorous study, the nation’s Food and Drug Administration has cleared the makers of Zyn to market their product, finding it leads to reducing tobacco use, not increasing it. Oopsie!

Repeat: The national agency whose full-time mission is not fixing potholes, fighting crime or housing homeless fentanyl addicts, but is instead only to study what’s healthy and what’s not, has found flavored nicotine pouches help people get off lethal tobacco, not lead them to it.

Let’s take a moment to remember most all progressives chant the mantra “my body, my choice” when it comes to abortion. This very blue state even voted in the most permissive constitutional abortion amendment in the nation, creating a right to abortion nanoseconds before birth at taxpayer expense.

I’m a pretty simple guy. So, when I hear chants of “my body, my choice,” I’m foolish enough to think those people mean it. Thus, it makes my tiny brain hurt when I see the very same people demanding others get jabbed with Covid vaccines they don’t want. How does that jibe with, “my body, my choice”?

I don’t understand how those who now claim democracy is on the line and fascism is enveloping our nation were the very people who demanded “your papers please” to prove you’ve been vaccinated to enjoy your constitutional right to assemble or travel.

Hell, this is how stupid I am: I don’t know how those who claim “my body, my choice” can ban trans fats, sugary drinks, large drinks like Big Gulps, put sin taxes on consumable products they don’t like and even censor restaurant menus from listing soda products.

Whose body is it?

It’s almost like their mantra is, “your body, our choice.”

Since the people, like Denver City Council, who are now standing up to fascism are also dictatorially controlling what we can put into our own bodies, we can only hope they make the right decisions.

So, what will city council do with the FDA’s findings like, “… due to substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes and most smokeless tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus, the authorized products (Zyn) pose lower risk of cancer and other serious health conditions than such products”? Again, oopsie!

Or what about, “… that a substantial proportion of adults who use cigarette and/or smokeless tobacco products completely switched to the newly authorized nicotine pouch products.” Again, there’s no tobacco in Zyn. It gets people off tobacco.

But (and I say this with all the same faux passion freedom-hating progressives have), WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!? Well, keep reading from the FDA:

“… the applicant showed these nicotine pouch products have the potential to provide a benefit to adults who smoke cigarettes and/or use other smokeless tobacco products that is sufficient to outweigh the risks of the products, including to youth.”

So now not only does the Denver City Council want adults to keep consuming tobacco products like cigarettes, but they are also actively working to help young people build a cigarette habit.

Isn’t this the definition of child abuse? Seriously, call child protective services and stop city council from shoving lit cigarettes at kids.

And, in other news, to stop the spread of venereal infections, the Denver City Council is banning the sale of condoms which, again, will sadly not affect me.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.

 

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