NOTE: As of November 8, 2019, going back a few months, there have been 39 fatalities reported by the CDC in Atlanta caused by e-cigarette and cannabis vaping devices, reportedly caused by the addition of vitamin E acetate to the vaping liquid as a preservative. Vitamin E is often used to preserve various oils. (Used topically in lotions or eaten in supplements, Vitamin E acetate is considered beneficial or harmless.) For the past 12 month trailing period, we have also had over 60,000 fatalities caused by opiate overdoses. The 60,000 fatality figure for opiates has been reported since at least 2017, so that would be over 120,000 deaths from opiates over the past two years, compared to 39 total from vaping over many years.

Anything which sidetracks this age group toward the usage of hard drugs and opiates, which are actually killing well over 60,000 Americans per year right now, would be suicidal for our country.

At the moment, the "hard drug cartels" which sell fentanyl and heroin and cocaine on the street apparently no longer deal that much in cannabis. Being more restrictive on cannabis will simply pass our youth over to the hard drug cartels.

At the moment, with medical cannabis legal in many states for teens with parental permission, I would think most would see the wisdom of continuing such a transparent, non-secretive, approach to the usage of "soft-drugs". The question now is how much cannabis is being consumed, not whether it's being consumed or not. I would prefer an approach which allows the current situation to continue, but to fine-tune it so that people are not overdoing it.

If we cut back on the amount of cannabis being consumed, we may find that the results are much better, our youth avoid recreational opiates and other hard drugs, and the death rate continues to decrease as caused by drugs of all types. (The death rate from death by drugs of all types has slightly decreased in the USA lately. But we're still one of the worst countries in the world in this category, especially for women where we are the worst.)

Repression of cannabis during the period 1967-1972 more or less, especially in the military, helped create a heroin epidemic since heroin and other hard drugs are easier to conceal and smuggle than illicit cannabis. Let's not continue repeating that mistake.

As the world's leading superpower militarily, the USA thus seems to be cursed with the soldiers' disease, aka, opium addiction, more than nearly all other countries on earth. But not all victims are soldiers, especially for the female victims. This is such a shocking statistic.

In the town where I currently live, there's actually a special 420 Cafe especially for veterans of the armed forces to share and congregate in the usage of medical cannabis. So there are some commonsense solutions being implemented here in the USA that should be steering our military veterans away from hard drugs. This is good. This same cafe in a different location was once more accessible to regular civilians back a few years ago, but that ended.

We also should distinguish between "addiction" and "insubordination" in this context. Anyone who is not an adult may be coerced by parental authorities to stop using various substances in certain contexts. The state and federal courts will have to decide who is in control of minors in this context. But those 18-21 are not minors.

And medicines are not generally considered age-controlled, historically speaking. This could be an unprecedented and really cruel crackdown taking place against younger users of cannabis as medicine who are being steered toward the hard drug cartels.

Another point is this: concerning the vaping crisis, if the culprit is the Vitamin E acetate entering the lungs as vapor, and not the cannabis ingredients, then why do some want to attack the cannabis?