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I get that what I'm saying sounds absolutist and simplistic. I get that there's lots of influences on kids and peer pressure and whatnot.

But I'm also going by my own experience as a kid. You were a kid too once, yes?

My parents didn't yell or scream or threaten. They explained. Even as a child I understood why smoking was bad and what damage it did to lungs. By the time I was old enough to consider smoking or have any opportunity to do so, I understood lung cancer, and addiction, and that it's much easier to start something addictive than to stop. These things had been explained to me openly, without masking the ugliness of cancer or death or addiction.

So when I say TEACH your kids not to smoke, I mean that literally. Don't preach at them or threaten them or yell at them, because it doesn't work and kids tune it out. Don't wait until they're in middle school to show them the bad side of the world.

I would love to kill off gerrymandering, because it's anti-freedom and is only a tool for those in power to contradict the vote of the people. District lines should be drawn by neighborhood, without regard for the resulting vote mix.

And if you think me a Republican you are quite incorrect. I'm a registered Democrat, politically I consider myself liberal-libertarian- I think the married gay couple should have guns to defend their adopted children and their pot farm, knowing that single payer health care is there if they get hurt.
However this means I don't fit squarely into either the red or the blue camp. I align with Republicans on issues like personal freedom and gun ownership, I align with Democrats on issues like reducing corruption (they're not great but better than GOP at least) and environmental protection. And I'm quite unhappy with both of them as I think both separately and together they do a piss poor job of representing the interests of the American people.

As for nicotine- I don't defend addiction, I defend freedom and a person's right to choose what they put in their own body without excess government interference. If people make bad choices, that is their right and I reject the idea that the government should play 'nanny state' and save people from themselves. So for the government to say 'you can have this flavor vape but not that flavor' is to me no different than saying 'you can have vanilla ice cream but not chocolate as it's too tasty and too likely to make you fat'.

If people are making harmful bad choices, then the solution is to improve education so people grow up with the tools and the practice to make better choices, not to restrict the choices available.

What a self-centered take. Are we all supposed to upvote you for your lack of morality?

"I'm selfish and anything that bothers me or prevents me from doing something is wrong." Thats what your post reads like. Clearly society needs more people like you?

Well, see, birthday cake flavored Smirnoff still tastes like absolute garbage.

The real comparison would be actually good tasting alcoholic drinks like hard lemonades or seltzers. Those do actually draw in a lot of the younger crowd, you see them at a lot of underage parties.

I think it's hilarious that we keep reinventing wine coolers every so often. Wine coolers, Zima, Smirnoff Ice, hard lemonade, twisted tea, hard seltzer... it's all just neutral alcohol mixed with fruit juices and sugar, but we've got to keep coming up with fun new labels for it every ten to fifteen years so as to market it to the current hip young demographic.

It's surprising how cheap most politicians are, and I wouldn't think he's any different.