Last I checked, nicotine isn't carcinogenic. It's the tobacco that kills you. Or, at least, there isn't enough research yet to say that nicotine alone is harmful enough.
So I may be playing devil's advocate here, but isn't this a net improvement over the last few decades? Kids getting hooked on something that's significantly less deadly? It's not ideal, sure, but it's better than a slew of cancer epidemics.
Maybe only tangentially related, but Michael Pollan's recent book about psychedelics "How To Change Your Mind" goes in-depth on this. There's something about being able to quiet the "default mode network" that lends the mind to transcendental/creative thought. The same effect can be achieved through meditation or breathwork.
i'd bet that proto-beer and proto-bread appeared around the same time, and techniques were developed over generations to calibrate different recipes until they resembled what we might recognize as "beer" and "bread" today.
> In most other contexts we encounter, stuffing an adjective in there means "NOT".
I think that's less a comment on grammar and more about how there's a tendency to name stuff that is similar to other stuff, yet markedly different, in oxymoronic ways. For example:
Recently finished The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. I would have been embarrassed to have been caught reading the latter given the subject matter, despite how influential he's been on how I think about food, but it was a real insightful treat.
Currently reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South and Safe Area Goražde, a comic book about the Bosnian War.
Also reading Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy in between books, but that's a book I'll never really finish.
I can attest to this. I've struggled with anxiety/depression/insomnia/adhd for years, and over the past couple years I've learned that careful attention to exercise, diet, and sleep are the most reliable ways I can ensure a healthy baseline.
I used to run a couple miles in the morning and evenings, on streets, until I injured my leg. So I switched to hiking after my leg recovered. Short 2-3 mile hikes turned into 12 mile stretches, which turned into short trail runs, and now I'm running 5-6 miles of trails 2x a week and 12+ mile runs/hikes on weekends (I'm secretly training for an ultra). I'd always thought I'd hate running, because it was too strenuous or something, but I haven't looked back. Maybe I'm just literally running away from my problems, but, it's far more rewarding in any case.
From my understanding, the reason it hasn't been opened yet is to preserve whatever's inside, not so much out of fear for mercury poisoning. For instance, the terracotta army was actually painted before it was excavated [1], but the paint curled and flaked off within minutes of opening the mausoleum, leaving us with a sea of drab stone statues. I think they're just waiting until they have the tech to properly preserve the interior.
So I may be playing devil's advocate here, but isn't this a net improvement over the last few decades? Kids getting hooked on something that's significantly less deadly? It's not ideal, sure, but it's better than a slew of cancer epidemics.
What is the FDA trying to achieve?