Twitter (aka X) is bad now. I could write out a long list of reasons, but they should be obvious enough. Here’s where to find me going forward:
Bluesky — Of all the Twitter-like platforms I’ve tried, this is the one I’m getting the most value from so far. I have doubts about whether any Twitter-like format can truly scale but it’s fun for now. Follow me there at jacobgrier.bsky.social. (It’s invitation-only, but invites are fairly easy to come by. As of now I have a few.)
Seabird — One of my main uses for Twitter was finding and sharing links to writing and other media. That’s the only thing we do on Seabird, the platform I’ve been building with two friends, and we have a small but growing community of enthusiastic users. It’s also invitation-only for now; sign up here. (If you’ve signed up and not received an invitation, feel free to ping me to make sure we prioritize getting you in.) Read more about why I’m excited about Seabird here.
Substack — I have an infrequent newsletter there, mostly with updates on my recent writing, book and music recommendations, and cocktail recipes. But I’m tempted to phase out Substack in favor of blogging. We’ll see!
Instagram — I post mostly food and drink photos on the main timeline and I use stories for music, travel, and other personal things. No news and politics!
Facebook — Rarely posting on it these days, also no news or politics. I probably won’t add you there unless we have a personal connection.
Other Twitter-like platforms — I have accounts on Mastodon, Post, Substack Notes, and Threads, though I rarely check them. I’m open to becoming more active if they take off.
X/Twitter — I’m not deleting my account, but I’m going to focus elsewhere and likely just do the minimum to keep it from being taken. It was fun, and I enjoyed meeting many of you there, but it’s time to move on.
“How can you be a libertarian and live in Portland?” I’ve heard variations on this question a lot in the fifteen years since I left my job at a libertarian think tank in DC to move to one of the most progressive cities in the US. It’s especially relevant now, as perception of the city post-2020 has shifted from quirkily liberal to violently chaotic. The question was posed again recently by a visiting friend, which prompted me to write up this answer.
What is there for a libertarian to like about the politics of Portland, Oregon? Quite a lot, actually.
Ending the drug war has long been one of the top priorities for libertarians. Oregon is a pioneer at liberalizing drug laws, becoming one of the most liberal drug jurisdictions in the world. We were the third state to legalize recreational cannabis. We are the first to decriminalize possession of all drugs. We are the first to implement legalized psychedelic therapy. You can debate how well some of these policies are working out or argue that our moves toward ending prohibition haven’t gone far enough, but where in the US is trying more libertarian drug policy than we are?
Politics aside, one of the things that first attracted me to Portland is its dynamic dining scene, driven in part by food carts that offer niche cuisines and serve as an incubator for entrepreneurs before they go brick and mortar. A report from the US Chamber of Commerce concludes that Portland’s light touch regulations make it the number one city in the country to operate a food truck. “Obtaining all the permits and fees to start a mobile food business in Portland costs just $1,877 compared to $6,211 in Seattle,” reports Eater. And “there are few restrictions on when, where, and how they can operate. In Portland, food carts can remain permanently on almost any commercially zoned parking lot.”
What about alcohol? Oregon is a control state with high taxes for liquor, though in my experience it’s the most consumer-friendly of control states when it comes to selection. Our liquor restrictions are at least partially offset by the ease of getting an on-premise license, which costs just $800; compare to six-figure prices in quota states like California. Our beer taxes are low. Cocktails to-go are permanently legal. Despite our control state status, the huge numbers of breweries, wineries, distilleries, and excellent bars contradict any suggestion that Portland is an oppressive place to be a producer or consumer of alcohol.
Like many cities, Portland has inflated housing costs due to restrictive zoning. Unlike many cities, Portland is doing something about it. The Residential Infill Project passed in 2020 is “the most pro-housing reform to low-density zones in US history,” according to the Sightline Institute. It legalizes up to four homes on residential lots, up to six with regulated pricing, and removes parking mandates from most of the city. Additional reforms passed in 2022 won praise from Reason’s Christian Britschgi. The changes aren’t perfect, but overall they’re a big win for property rights.
The state does have capital punishment, but recent reforms drastically reduced its scope and previous governor Kate Brown cleared death row by commuting all existing sentences to life without parole, effectively taking the state of Oregon out of the business of executing residents.
Without endorsing all aspects of the 2020 protests, the core motivation was a sound one. As I wrote at the time, “I’m sure I disagree with marchers on any number of issues. But on the one that matters — the dignity of all people and their right to live free from the fear of state-sanctioned violence — there should be no disagreement about the justice of their demands.”
Of course, none of this is to suggest that Portland is a libertarian utopia, but where is? Do libertarians who move to red states get asked how they can stand to live there? If I moved back to my home state of Texas, I don’t imagine nearly as many libertarians asking such a question. Yet Texas threatens long prison sentences for things like selling weed or performing an abortion, which strikes me as barbaric compared to how we do things in Oregon.
My impression is that the frequency with which I’m asked how I can live here reflects an outdated perception that libertarians should feel more at home on the right than among the left. There were some eras when this was truer than others, but it’s certainly not true right now, and the liberty movement has always been more diverse than the legacy of Cold War era fusionism suggests. (See Matt Zwolinksi and John Tomasi’s excellent new book on the topic or my review of it here.)
As the late Steve Horwitz observed in when Trump took office in 2017, “Too many libertarians are too focused on economics” and “[… too] many libertarians hate the left more than they love liberty.” Economics is important, but on substantive issues where the cruelty of the state is most forcefully imposed, humane and liberty-enhancing policies often come more from the left than the right. Democrats are currently much better on the preservation of liberal political institutions too, now seriously threatened by the Trumpist GOP. (For all the justified criticism of some Portland protest tactics, it wasn’t the left that tried to overturn a presidential election, violently overran the Capitol, chanted about hanging Mike Pence, and nearly incited a constitutional crisis.) Portland has some dumb economics — can we kill the arts tax, please? — but there’s much else here that libertarians should applaud.
Obviously there is plenty I disagree with in Portland and Oregon politics, someofwhichI’vewritten about. There’s a bland uniformity of thought here which one may be wary of running afoul of if involved in a public-facing business. I’d like lower taxes and less regulation. I’d like more respect for property rights; protesters shouldn’t smash windows of random buildings and businesses should be better protected from property crime. I cringe when I hear some locals talk about the evils of capitalism and I wouldn’t want the median Portland voter setting national economic policy. Cato’s “Freedom in the 50 States” report summarizes, “Oregon is among the worst states on economic freedom but despite a relative slide remains a top-10 state on [personal] freedom.” I don’t expect Portlanders to become ideologically libertarian, but the city would benefit from becoming a little more neoliberal.
The post-Covid hollowing out of downtown and general failures of governance are a genuine blight on the city; the official Portland motto boasting its status as “the city that works” now comes across as a joke. (“Let it ride,” the Bachman-Turner Overdrive-inspired motto suggested by 1980s mayor Frank Ivancie, would be far more apt.) Yet there are reasons for cautious optimism. Voters decided last year to completely overhaul the city government, implementing charter reform and ranked choice voting that will take effect in our next election. The city is trying out expanded enterprise zones with tax abatements. It feels like ages since we had a freakout over something trivial like white women allegedly appropriating burrito recipes; right now anyone opening a business feels like a victory. The recognition that we need pragmatic revival is palpable.
The quality of life is what attracted me to Portland, and despite the city facing some very real problems, I still find it an appealing place to live. I came here to bike to coffee shops, not hang out with libertarians. But to the extent that ideological alignment matters, I could do a lot worse than here.
A libertarian can live in Portland the same way they can live anywhere else: by engaging thoughtfully with their neighbors, advocating for positive changes, and putting politics in its place by making room to relate to others in non-political roles. A better question than asking how a libertarian can stand to live here is asking why more of them don’t. If one gets over bias against the left, you can make a pretty solid case that in policy if not ideology, Portland is among the more libertarian cities in the US. And the coffee’s pretty great too.
For the past few months, I’ve been debating when I will post my final tweet. Maybe that technically occurred this week, since Twitter is now “X” and Elon Musk has decided to “bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” This is fine with me, as I’ve coincidentally been working on a new app that has a bird in its logo:
Yet another app? Bear with me. Seabird is not a Twitter clone. One of the things that has surprised me about the raft of new Twitter competitors is that, despite some substantial backend differences, they all offer more or less the same microblogging format: short posts that can include text, links, pictures, and sometimes videos, presented in an algorithmic or chronological feed, with something like a retweet feature to amplify or quote a post. Pointing this out isn’t necessarily a criticism. Twitter is bad now, so I’m rooting for at least some of these similar competitors to take its place. (For what it’s worth, Bluesky is my favorite so far and the one where I’m most active. We’ll see what happens with Threads.)
Seabird takes a different approach. With my partners Jay Mutzafi and Courtney Knapp, we’ve been working on this project since before Musk’s Twitter acquisition, building an app more narrowly focused on sharing writing and other media. It’s the kind of app we ourselves want to use, inspired in part by what we miss about the pre-social media era and the golden days of blogs and Google Reader. We’ve kept details close to the vest, but now that we’ve soft-launched the first versions of our mobile app we can start talking about what makes Seabird unique.
On Seabird, we intentionally limit both the kinds of posts users can make and how frequently they can post. Posts are presented chronologically from the users a person follows. Posts on Seabird have to include a link to external content and users get only three of them each day. A typical post is a link to an article with a brief note recommending it:
There are a few ways to interact with posts, most obviously by clicking the link to read the article. Users can also bookmark them to read later or hit the like button. But my favorite feature is one that I hope longtime bloggers will enjoy: we’re bringing back the hat tip!
Back in the blogging era, it was customary to offer a “hat tip” to another blogger when they brought something interesting to your attention, via a link back to their original post to give them credit and thanks. It was a nice gesture and also helped lower-profile writers get discovered when a popular blogger credited them. We’ve built this function into Seabird. In the post below, for example, my friend Benjamin shares an interesting article from the New York Times. To share it on my own feed, I click the re-post button circled in yellow:
Now when I write my own post, it automatically includes a link back to Benjamin’s, enabling my followers to click over to it:
We have some additional features designed for writers, including the option to mark a post as a link to their original work so that it will be highlighted in a priority feed and collected in a separate tab on their profile, where it can act as a portfolio of sorts (or as we like to call it, their “SeaVee”). You can read more about the project here.
I’m excited about these unique features, but I’m equally excited about how Seabird focuses exclusively on sharing links without trying to do all the other things we’ve come to expect from social media. In a long post last year, I argued that part of the reason Twitter changed from being a smart, fun, and somewhat inscrutable place into a toxic hellsite is that we demanded too much from it:
[…] as much as I love Twitter, I’m not convinced there’s any way to make it more than marginally better while still keeping what makes Twitter Twitter. We expect too many different things from the site. We want it to be the fun virtual place to watch the Super Bowl, follow breaking news, find smart things to read, learn from experts, keep up with friends, make jokes about the new three-hour Batman movie, look at funny cat memes, share our Wordle scores, go viral, open our thoughts up to comment from millions of strangers, and gather for ritual combat over politics all at the same time while somehow not having the site devolve into Boschian chaos. Maybe that’s just not possible. But if we can’t fix it, we can exit and look elsewhere, at least for some of these purposes.
I’m intrigued by the various Twitter competitors that have sprung up, but I hope that none of them replace Twitter in such an all-consuming way. Instead, I’d like to see more distinct platforms and communities with different purposes. As Noah Smith wrote recently, one lesson from Twitter is that we should desire a more fragmented internet. Share your aspirational photos on Instagram, keep up with friends and family on Facebook, do business networking on LinkedIn, write essays on Substack, joke around and debate the news on Bluesky or in a private Discord server. It’s a maddening mistake to try to do it all on one site.
Elon Musk says he wants X to be an “everything app.” With Seabird, we’re proudly building a “one thing app.” That one thing is sharing and discovering worthwhile writing and other media.
But I will die on this hill. Twitter is a bad way to be informed about the world. It’s just a bad way to do it. […]
It’s about what you’re not doing when you’re on Twitter. And the best way I’ve found to articulate this is I think there’s a really profound difference between feeling informed and being informed. And I think Twitter and, frankly, a lot of things in social media, specialize in giving people, particularly jittery info-hungry journalistic types, the feeling of being informed. But the people who I think of as most informed are the ones who seem the best at not doing things on Twitter.
There’s almost nobody whose knowledge of things is really Twitter-based knowledge or communicated primarily through Twitter who I find that is where I get my information and really value it. For instance, Sam misses a feeling when it seems like everyone on Twitter is reacting to the same thing. And I would say, typically, what they are reacting to is the wrong thing reacting to.
So I have a burner account on Twitter for when I need to read something that’s on there. And I happen to have to use it on the day there was a huge amount of debate about Joe Rogan demanding or challenging or offering money for this vaccine specialist to debate R.F.K. Jr. on Rogan’s show. And everybody in my feed, like Nate Silver, everybody was commenting on this.
And they were all on the same thing. And in a way, being there made me feel like I was informed. I knew what the zeitgeist was that day. I was seeing the conversation. And it was an extraordinarily dumb conversation.
It was just a bad thing to allow into your mental space for that whole day. You would have just been better off reading a report about homelessness or whatever.
And so, to me, in terms of being informed about the world, actually, one of the really difficult disciplines is not letting the wrong mediums or the wrong people decide what you’re thinking about, not being too plugged into a conversation if you think that conversation has turned toxic, or you think the conversation has turned trivial, or you think that conversation is being driven by algorithmic dynamics that do not serve you.
I’ve certainly gotten value out of Twitter. It was a great way to stay in touch with people in the public policy sphere after I left DC in 2008, it was useful for promoting my writing, and at its peak it was smart and fun in ways that no other network has yet replicated. You can debate the extent of its recent decline, but there’s one way subjective way that Twitter has inarguably declined for me personally: a lot of the smart people I follow there post a lot less often, have stopped posting, or have deleted their accounts entirely. It’s become a less rewarding place to devote attention to.
We’ve had a small private beta of Seabird going for more than a year, and during that time I posted prolifically because I wanted to get a sense of what it’s like to be on a platform where I can only share three items a day and where there are no quote-tweets or reply threads for distracting sarcastic dunks and trivial arguments. What I’ve found is that it’s made me a better and more varied reader. I’m less likely to get caught up in the topic of the day; I’m more likely to read in-depth and explore more diverse subjects and sources. Even with a tiny fraction of the audience I have on Twitter, posting on Seabird is a more gratifying and thoughtful experience.
We’re not yet at the point where we can open that experience to everyone. We still have technical fixes and improvements that we’re working on and we need better moderation tools. We want to scale responsibly. But now that our apps are out, we are gradually welcoming new users. If Seabird sounds like something you’d like to try, I invite you to sign up on our website. As Twitter bids adieu to the birds, we’re excited to offer a sunnier place to land.
WARNING: Prohibition kills. Government prohibition of nicotine and tobacco products is hazardous to public health. Prohibitions are often poorly targeted, encouraging smoking by banning safer alternatives and protecting deadly cigarettes from competition. Prohibition creates illicit markets that lead to unregulated and untaxed products, raids and arrests by law enforcement officers, and incarceration of sellers.
We are poised at the edge of a new era of nicotine and tobacco prohibition, one that has failed to learn from past policy failures involving drugs and alcohol. This collection of essays explores how illiberal policies, from unjustifiably extensive smoking bans to laws forbidding the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, lead to dangerous unintended consequences. Fortunately, the aim of saving lives lost to smoking is compatible with a more humane approach to nicotine and tobacco use. The New Prohibition charts a smarter way forward that encourages harm reduction and respects the rights of consenting adults.
With a new introduction by the author, The New Prohibition collects essays previously published in Reason, Slate, Arc Digital, Liberal Currents, and Exponents.
In January I took a trip to Helsinki, Finland. This is kind of a weird choice for someone who lives in Portland, Oregon. We’re sun-deprived by that time of year and the beaches of Hawaii and Mexico are easy flights away, so why pick a place that’s even darker and grayer than here? I had a few reasons. One is that Finland is the only Nordic country I hadn’t visited yet (excluding the Faroe Islands, which I definitely do want to get to). Another is that as much as I love the Nordics, I felt like a bit of a poseur traveling there in every season except the winter. Scandinavia is easy to love in the summer; I wanted to get a sense of what Nordic daily life is like during the coldest, darkest time of year.
And lastly, flights and hotels were really cheap. Presumably because most people think there are much better places to go in January than Helsinki.
But honestly, it was a great trip. Yes, it’s cold and the days are short, but I had a very good time. Helsinki in winter is underrated. I was prepared for the cold with long thermal underwear, a heavy coat, waterproof boots with good traction, and touchscreen-friendly gloves. Dressed for the elements, walking around the city was pleasant and public transit is accessible.
I’d planned to travel solo but a friend ended up joining. Although hanging out alone in coffee shops is a perfectly good way to spend a vacation in my book, I was glad for the company since Finns are famously reserved. That said, everyone we talked to was friendly. Just perhaps don’t expect them to be the ones to initiate conversation.
We only had a few days in Helsinki, but packed them full enough to pick out some highlights. Some recommendations if you go:
Perfect weather for a cold sea plunge at Löyly.
Löyly — This contemporary sauna was a highlight of the trip. Saunas are a must-visit in Finland. This one is all-gender and clothed; from what I’ve read, expectations on mixing genders and nudity vary from sauna to sauna. Löyly is upscale but very reasonably priced, with two on-site saunas, outdoors decks, an indoor fire, and casual food and drink. Most importantly, it’s right on the water, so you can stroll outside for an invigorating cold sea plunge. Not to be missed! Make a reservation as it fills up quickly, and good luck on the pronunciation.
Kultá Kitchen and Bar — This Lappish restaurant was my first meal in Helsinki. They offer multi-course prix fixe dinners, which I’m sure are amazing, but we couldn’t resist ordering the reindeer burger instead. It was honestly one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. I would love to go back for a tasting menu.
Korvapuusti!
Café Esplanad — Korvapuusti, Finnish cinnamon rolls, were at the top of my list of food to seek out in Helsinki. A friend recommended Café Esplanad as her favorite in the city. I didn’t try them anywhere else in town because they were so wonderful here; I’d happily go every morning. Bonus: we were there for fastlagsbulle season, the traditional Fat Tuesday pastry better known as semla in Swedish.
Skiffer — This local chain makes what they call “liuska,” an oblong, very thin crust pizza. We got the surf and turf with chorizo and little shrimp. Paired with hearty salads and a selection of local beers, it’s a great place for a casual meal.
Coffee — Finland is said to boast the world’s highest per capita rate of coffee consumption. We barely scratched the surface of local coffee shops, but we loved Andante. Sprudge has a guide to the local scene.
Bars — Bars weren’t our top priority, but when it’s dark by 5 pm, what are you going to do? We liked Liberty or Death and Runar for cocktails, Juova Hanahuone for Finnish beer, and Beaky Basterd and Bar Llamas for hangouts.
Helsinki Distilling Company — Worth a visit to sample their extensive line of spirits; highlights for me were a rum barrel-aged whiskey, sea buckthorn snaps, and (of course) aquavit. The only downside is that if you want to take a bottle home, you’ll have to track it down at the state monopoly Alco shops. Request to Finland: legalize craft distillers selling directly to consumers!
Hattu — My friend lost his hat and so we ended up at this small, charming menswear shop to replace it. A great spot for hats and workwear from brands like Stetson and Pike Brothers.
Old town Tallinn, Estonia, a short ferry ride from Helsinki.
What else? Definitely take advantage of the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia, easily worth a couple days visit. We didn’t have much time in Tampere but I’ll vouch for the city’s blood sausage. On a future trip I would love to get way up north for an aurora borealis experience, but wasn’t able squeeze it in this time.
In under the wire, here’s my annual list of the best books I read over the past year. In 2022 I finally figured out how to get paid for reading books, thanks to a consistent reviewing gig with the Washington Examiner, so some of these recommendations will link to reviews there or in my newsletter. I should probably also mention that I also published a book this year? Make sure Raising the Baris on your stack too!
Non-fiction
Breathless, David Quammen — When the world shut down in March of 2020, I immediately reread Quammen’s prescient book Spillover. (See my 2020 post revisiting the book in that context.) His latest lacks, for obvious reasons, the adventurous travel of his earlier books. But it’s a very worthwhile read on the course of the pandemic and the origins of COVID, coming down on the side of natural spillover as the most likely explanation while fairly considering alternatives.
The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen — Literary memoir from a Danish writer, newly published as a trilogy in English. Illuminating portrait of working life in twentieth century Copenhagen, struggling as a female writer, and the grip of addiction. She was renowned as a poet and lines jump out from every chapter.
Firebrand, Joshua Knelman — A breezy but informative look at the cigarette business told from the perspective of a lawyer for Big Tobacco. Reviewed here.
Sex and Social Justice, Martha Nussbaum — Filling in another gap in my reading, I was especially interested in her conception of liberal feminism, defense of legalizing prostitution, and analysis of sexuality among the ancient Greeks.
How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan — With psilocybin therapy becoming legal in Oregon in 2023, I was interested in a good introduction to psychedelics. Pollan provides it.
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson — I read this as background for the startup I’m working on, Seabird, but it’s of wider interest. A sympathetic look at the victims of cascading shaming on social media, something we’re designing our platform to be less likely to enable. Recommended.
Mastering the VC Game, Jeffrey Bussgang — Of niche interest, but since I’m involved with a tech startup of my own, this was a helpful guide to the finance side of the business.
Fiction
No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood — One of my favorites this year. From April: “If you’re online enough to know what an allusion to someone not being sad about an alligator eating a kid refers to, this book is for you.”
Secret Identity, Alex Segura — Noir fiction with tie-ins to the history of superhero comics? Sign me up! Reviewed here.
Random, Penn Jillette — The funniest novel I’ve read in a long time, good-hearted yet very raunchy. Review coming soon.
Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson — A great sci-fi novel, pessimistic on human space travel with an environmental message that doesn’t cross over to being too didactic, though I like it best as an allegory about how to order one’s single life on earth.
The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro —Klara and the Sun was one of my favorite novels in 2021, setting me to reading these two. Deservedly acclaimed but I don’t think I’d have read so many of his novels recently if I hadn’t begun with Klara.
Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen — My verdict back in January: “There’s always someone else you could be reading, but ignore the haters. If you enjoy Franzen novels, Crossroads is worth your time.”
Mister Miracle, Tom King — King’s comics are hit or miss for me, but I appreciate that he so often tries for something ambitious. Mister Miracle is fully in hit category, with one issue in particular standing out as truly great.
On December 15, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners will vote on an ordinance that will ban the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products in the county (which includes Portland, Oregon). I testified in person against the ban, which you can view here. But since testimony was limited to just two minutes, I’ve also submitted the following written response below. If you would also like to submit a response, use this link. My comments:
I have previously testified in opposition to the proposed ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products in Multnomah County. While I oppose the ban in its entirety, I’d like to suggest two modest reforms that the Board should consider if it is serious about having a positive impact on public health. I’ll conclude with a few other notes.
1. The ordinance as currently written will ban flavored nicotine products even if they are authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act created the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products to determine which tobacco and nicotine products should be authorized for sale in the United States. The Center has an annual budget of more than $700 million and nearly 1,000 employees working on tobacco regulation. In contrast, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners consists of five people with no specialist training in tobacco regulation and myriad other issues to consider.
It’s obvious that the FDA is in a better position to evaluate the health impact of various nicotine products than the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Novel products such as e-cigarettes must meet an extremely high bar to be authorized by the FDA, persuading regulators that allowing their sale will be “appropriate for the protection of public health” by weighing population-level impacts on both existing smokers and people who do not currently smoke or consume nicotine. To date, the FDA has not authorized any vapor products for sale in flavors other than tobacco, so exempting products that receive FDA authorization would not have an immediate impact on what vapor products are allowed in Multnomah County.
The Board should not substitute its judgment for that of the FDA. The ordinance should be amended so that if flavored vapor products are eventually authorized by the FDA, they will be exempted by the ban in Multnomah County.
2. The ordinance as currently written will ban flavored oral tobacco and nicotine pouches (the latter of which do not contain tobacco). The science is clear that these products are far safer than smoking and they have demonstrated great potential to reduce the harms of tobacco use. See, for example, Sweden, which has achieved the best tobacco-related health outcomes and lowest smoking rates among men in Europe thanks in large part to snus.
The most recent data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey find that barely over 1% of youth report using oral tobacco. The FDA has authorized several oral tobacco products for sale noting their low appeal to youth and their much lower risk profile than cigarettes. Indeed, oral tobacco products from Swedish Match, including flavored varieties, are among the first products ever authorized by the FDA with modified risk orders permitting them to be labeled with truthful claims that they present much lower risks than smoking cigarettes. Specifically, the FDA determined that authorizing their sale “will significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco-related disease to individual tobacco users and benefit the health of the population as a whole.” Has the Board completed its own review of these products to conclude that the FDA is mistaken and should be overruled? It is doubtful that it would have any basis to do so.
Flavored oral tobacco and nicotine products are not popular with youth but can help adult smokers switch to safer alternatives than smoking. Indeed, I personally know someone here who has successfully stayed smokefree for more than a year thanks to flavored nicotine pouches. What will happen to adults such as him if these products are banned? Unfortunately, one likely outcome is that many will revert back to smoking. This would obviously be a bad outcome but it could be easily averted by exempting flavored oral products from the ban.
If the aim of the Board is to actually protect public health rather than to paternalistically forbid adults from consuming flavored nicotine products, regardless of their potential to save smokers’ lives, then both of these small reforms should be no-brainers. There is no justification for banning flavored products authorized by the FDA and oral products that are not popular with youth. Is anyone on the Board taking these matters seriously enough to consider these amendments?
As I mentioned in my testimony at the recent public hearing, the evidence presented to the Board has been extremely one-sided in favor of prohibition, with arguments against the ban coming mostly from business owners. The Board has overlooked a massive scientific literature on the benefits of tobacco harm reduction. Opinion among experts is much more divided than the activists and health advisors speaking to the Board have indicated, so I’d like to recommend a few other sources that are worth your time.
First, public health officer Dr. Jennifer Vines testified that smokers should simply try FDA-regulated cessation products rather than switching to vaping. However, these products have a very high rate of failure and there is mounting evidence that e-cigarettes have a higher rate of success helping smokers quit and that smokers are more likely to try them in the first place. Making it illegal for adult smokers to access the vast majority of e-cigarettes, leaving them with only ineffective patches and gums, has a very “let them eat cake” quality to it. As a counterpoint, see this recent Cochrane Review drawing on 78 studies to conclude that there is high-certainty evidence that e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine replacement therapies.
I also highly recommend reading this paper coauthored by fifteen past presidents of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. These are some of the most esteemed figures in the field of tobacco science and they warn that policies such as the one proposed in Multnomah County fail to consider the potential benefits to adult smokers. “We believe the potential lifesaving benefits of e-cigarettes for adult smokers deserve attention equal to the risks to youths,” they write. The exclusive focus on youth vaping overlooks both the near- and long-term benefits of displacing the most dangerous tobacco products with safer alternatives. This perspective was completely lacking in testimony to the Board.
Lastly, I’ll bring a recent piece of my own to your attention. I am disappointed that the Board voted against an amendment to exempt hookah lounges from the ban. Only 1.1% of youth report using hookah and there are only three lounges remaining in Portland, so their impact on public health is negligible. Yet the impact on the owners and employees of these businesses is potentially devastating. One of these is Raed Dear, a deaf immigrant from Jordan whom I wrote about for Reason. Will you feel good about yourselves when you drive him out of business? You should not.
Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with substance use. Harm reduction meets people where they are and supports their agency in preventing overdose and adopting safer practices, on their own terms and with the respect and dignity they deserve.
This philosophy of harm reduction should not be limited to opioids. What would it mean to meet people who smoke where they are, support their agency, and treat them with the respect and dignity that they deserve? It would mean recognizing that many of them are addicted to smoking and that pharmaceutical options like patches and gums are insufficient to help many of them. It would mean not making it illegal for them to access safer products that are far less likely to kill them and that have a proven record of helping people stay off cigarettes. It would mean acknowledging that their choices are ultimately theirs to make, and that many of them will turn to illicit, unregulated sources if they cannot obtain them from legal retailers. In short, it would mean offering them something better than “quit or die,” which is essentially what the Board is saying to them with this poorly thought out ban.
It is madness to regulate products solely by their flavor and with zero regard for their capacity for harm. This ordinance will ban many of the safest sources of nicotine, leave deadly cigarettes on the market, trample on the rights of consenting adults, pointlessly destroy minority-owned businesses, and perpetuate the harms of smoking. Voting in favor of it will be a shameful and embarrassing mistake for a county that portrays itself as liberal and progressive.
It’s hard to pick out the most exciting part of releasing a new book but it’s easy to name the most dreadful part. That’s discovering the little errors that made it into print despite the many rounds of editing and proofreading that any good book goes through. We’ve picked up a few in our advance copies of Raising the Bar, most of them thankfully very minor, but there is one that’s significant enough to be worth noting.
In our bourbon chapter we include a wonderful cocktail from Lauren Schell and Vito Dieterle called the Expat. Due to a misreading and miscommunication on my part, we ended up omitting an ingredient. The book calls for just a mint leaf garnish on the cocktail. In fact, mint leaves are also supposed to be shaken with the drink, imparting flavor and aroma. (I’d thought that using a mint leaf as a garnish was a little random, and if I’d tugged on that thread I would have caught the mistake sooner. It makes more sense with mint in the drink!)
When we ask creators for permission to share their drinks in our book, they trust us to represent them correctly. I messed up on this one and so want to take the opportunity to apologize for the error and set the record straight. The next printings of the book will go out with the corrected recipe. Anyone getting an early copy, feel free to mark it up.
Hopefully by writing about the Expat here readers will catch the correction and more people will be introduced to this drink, which deserves wider recognition. It’s one of the few really good bourbon cocktails that calls for lime juice, which along with the mint and the spice notes of Angostura bitters gives it a slightly tropical slant. Do yourself a favor and make yourself an Expat. Here’s how to do it:
2 oz bourbon
1 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz rich simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
small handful of mint leaves
mint leaf, for garnish
Shake all ingredients (including the mint!) with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a mint leaf.
(Fortunately, the recipe as erroneously printed still makes a balanced cocktail, but one that’s missing the added dimensionality of the correct version. We didn’t call for an absurd amount of any single ingredient, as I’ve seen happen before. And our recipe won’t make anyone sick, like the editors of a magazine in Sweden did by accidentally calling for twenty whole nutmegs instead of two pinches for a single cake. So things could definitely be worse. But still, we regret the error.)
Raising the Bar is officially released tomorrow and if you pre-ordered a copy it may have already arrived in your mailbox. We have a few events lined up, including a talk and signing at Powell’s, a party at Teardrop Lounge, and a virtual class with Milk Street. Get the details on those here. And if you’d like a copy for yourself or as a gift, order now from your favorite bookstore.
It’s a week to publication day, so I should probably mention on my blog that I have a new book coming out? It’s true! Back in late 2019, my friend Brett Adams and I mapped out a proposal for a book on home bartending. Three years later, it’s finally coming into print from Chronicle. Here’s the cover:
The book is intended for home bartenders but with more than 200 cocktail recipes, we’re confident there’s something in it for everyone. We’ve also organized it in a unique way, guiding the reader through stocking their home bar one bottle at a time. This means that rather than calling for one-off ingredients that will end up gathering dust on the shelf, every bottle we feature gets an entire chapter dedicated to putting it to use. I wrote a longer post on Substack about what to expect from the book, so check that out for more detail. It was a really fun project to work on and we’re excited to have it out in the world!
We also have a few promotional events lined up with more to come. On release day, November 29th, Brett and I will be at the legendary Powell’s City of Books for a talk and signing at 7:00 pm. Following that, we’ve arranged for a celebratory cocktail party at Teardrop Lounge with a special menu of drinks from the book. We also have a members-only signing lined up at the Multnomah Whiskey Library on December 8th; currently just nine seats left!
As tobacco, e-cigarettes, and e-liquids transition from legal to illicit, law enforcement agencies will more aggressively interfere with production, distribution, retail sales, and in some cases even individual use. Every such interaction carries with it the possibility of freedom lost, perhaps violently. There is a real risk that American tobacco policy will open a regressive new front in the war on drugs, just as the previous crackdown on psychoactive substances begins to wind down.
Over at my Substack, I offer up a longish essay on how how I’m currently thinking about belief polarization and social media, explaining why I no longer post about politics on Facebook, and dropping some hints about Seabird, a new project that I’m very excited about.
Jacob Grier writes about public policy, lifestyle, and books in Portland, Oregon. His own books are The New Prohibition, Raising the Bar (with Brett Adams), The Rediscovery of Tobacco, and Cocktails on Tap. He has written for a wide spectrum of publications, including Slate, Reason, The Atlantic, The Washington Examiner, Inside Hook, Imbibe, and many others.
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