Letters to the editor for Feb. 6

Product bans come with unintended consequences

State lawmakers are concerned with youth vaping statistics – with good reason – but tunnel vision is leading them down a path with unintended consequences. Last fall, Gov. Inslee issued an executive order to temporarily ban flavored vapor products in response to what he considered to be a health crisis. SB 6254 would make that ban permanent.

Washington lawmakers have their heart in the right place but their focus on youth prevents them from seeing the bigger picture. Adults use vapor products, too, and they often use them as a cessation aid for more damaging cigarettes. Simply put, a ban on flavored vapor products impacts harm reduction and smoking cessation choices for adults, not just youth usage rates.

This bill leads the adult vaper to choose between two evils: return to the certain unhealthiness of the cigarette or gamble on the questionable manufacturing standards of online retailers. Ask almost any adult vaper – they are considering one of these two options in response to this bill.

Both of these options are riskier for adults than the status quo. Vaping is still vastly safer than smoking – 8,300 Washingtonians die each year from smoking, compared to approximately 2,300 cases of vaping-related illness ever reported nationally – but risk factors for vaping increase when the user sources their products from shady online sellers.

Instead of enacting a hasty ban, consider other policy options to keep our youth safe. Regulate the industry to ensure that this protection extends to adults, too.

Support open textbooks

As a STEM student, I am no stranger to paying exorbitant prices for textbooks that may only be used for a single quarter. So many college students in the U.S. are in a similar situation, where they are being forced to buy the newest edition of a textbook, or an extra access code, to do their homework or are unable to sell their books back to suppliers.

I personally have had to buy six different textbooks over the course of a year, each ranging in price from $80-$300. This system adds to the already overwhelming amount of financial strain students experience from their student fees, tuition and other expenses as well as serves to continue making education less accessible to those who are not well off financially.

Stories of students pirating PDF copies of their class materials and printing them off themselves are rampant in all areas of study at institutions nationwide. Students shouldn’t have to commit crimes just to be able to afford an education, nor should they bear the burden of legally obtaining something that should already be provided for them. We need to stop the monopoly that textbook companies have on their market that puts a stranglehold on some of the most financially strained people in the U.S.

I write this letter to urge college faculty and administrators to support open textbook policies that would make an education much more approachable for many students who are already struggling to cope with the devastating cost of a degree.