Seattle Mayor Calls for Vape Ban, Sparking Fierce Online Debate

Recently, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan sparked intense debate online after proposing to follow San Francisco’s lead and make Seattle the second city in the United States to completely ban the sale of e-cigarettes. Her stated reason was the growing body of evidence showing that e-cigarette use can harm human health, especially among young people.
 
However, the mayor’s proposal was immediately met with opposition from many local internet users, and their reasoning was even more striking: why are you trying to ban e-cigarettes while at the same time allowing addicts to legally use heroin in your city?

Yes, these local netizens were not joking. As early as 2017, Seattle’s Democratic city government announced plans to open local “community health” sites where addicts could legally use heroin. The idea was also given a very “pleasant-sounding” name: “harm reduction therapy.” This move would make Seattle the first city in the United States to allow legal heroin injection.
 
But the problem is that when the Seattle government, under the banner of “harm reduction,” allows addicts to “use drugs safely,” yet takes a hard-line stance toward e-cigarettes, many local netizens simply cannot make sense of it.

In other words, although e-cigarettes are not 100% healthy either, according to Seattle’s logic in dealing with heroin—namely so-called “harm reduction therapy”—the city should actually be encouraging e-cigarettes. But Seattle, which is tolerant toward heroin, says it wants to completely ban the sale of e-cigarettes. That is why many Seattle netizens find it “hard to understand,” and even describe their government’s approach as “double standards” and “surreal.”

“Are e-cigarettes more harmful than heroin?” they asked.
 

Some local netizens went even further, asking: if you believe e-cigarettes are harmful and should be banned, why not ban the entire tobacco industry at its source instead of targeting only e-cigarettes?