Proposed Flavour Ban Reactions
Reactions and quotes from those involved on both sides of the vape battle in the United States
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by Dave Cross
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President Donald Trump held a meeting on camera and said a number of things, some of them decidedly weird, but we chose this quote: "We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t have our youth be so affected."
One-time porn model college drop-out, now public health expert Melania Trump said: “I am deeply concerned about the growing epidemic of e-cigarette use in our children. We need to do all we can to protect the public from tobacco-related disease and death, and prevent e-cigarettes from becoming an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for a generation of youth.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar attempted to cover up for the obvious stupidity coming from the previous two, but ended up making idiotic comments of his own: “The Trump Administration is making it clear that we intend to clear the market of flavoured e-cigarettes to reverse the deeply concerning epidemic of youth e-cigarette use that is impacting children, families, schools and communities.”
Acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Ned Sharpless said: "People are dying from vaping, so we’re looking at it very closely."
Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley said: “It’s been clear for years that an epidemic of youth e-cigarette addiction was building. It should never have taken multiple deaths and hundreds of cases of teenagers with lung disease.”
Republican Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley said: "I'm concerned about the rise in underage vaping and the ability for devices to be tampered with in ways that might be especially hazardous to users' health. It's something we're looking into in the Finance Committee."
Ex-FDA commissioner and now pharma bloke looking to sell its own vaping product Scott Gottlieb said: “Regulation of e-cig flavours will help address appeal of products to kids and potential for another spike in youth use. The 2019 NYTS is pending. But many acute lung injuries are likely to be mostly result of illegal vapes not legal e-cigs and must also be directly addressed.”
The Vapor Technology Association responded: “Barring flavours would be a public health travesty.”
Gregory Conley, President of the American Vaping Association (AVA), released the following statement: “We are deeply disappointed in the President’s decision to take direction from anti-vaping activists like Mike Bloomberg by attempting to ban the sale of nearly every vaping product on the market. A ban will remove life-changing options from the market that have been used by several million American adults to quit smoking.”
“In the history of the United States, prohibition has never worked. It didn’t work with alcohol. It hasn’t worked with marijuana. It won’t work with e-cigarettes. The President should meet with just one of the millions of American voters who have used flavours to quit smoking before moving forward on this draconian approach to regulation and public policy.”
“Destroying thousands of small businesses and sending ex-smokers back to smoking will do nothing to stop drug dealers from selling contaminated THC cartridges. A flavour ban will only lead to the creation of yet another multibillion-dollar black market that will operate with zero safety controls.”
The AVA point out:
- FDA testing of nicotine vaping products has found “nothing unusual,” according to the Washington Post last week.
- FDA and the New York State Department of Health have found vitamin E acetate, an oil used as a diluent thickener, in only THC products.
- Emergency room doctors, including one in New York, have stated that young patients are often reluctant to admit to using THC.
- Multiple state health departments have pointed to illicit THC vaping products as the likely cause these illnesses.
- Two of the six deaths associated with “vaping” were explicitly linked to THC vaping cartridges by state health departments. Three deaths have no details. In a sixth death, in Los Angeles County, no details of the deceased were released, but the LA County Health Department did state that “nearly all” patients had vaped THC.
Research by John Buckell, Joachim Marti, and Jody L Sindelar states: “A ban on flavoured e-cigarettes alone would likely increase the choice of cigarettes in smokers, arguably the more harmful way of obtaining nicotine, whereas a ban on menthol cigarettes alone would likely be more effective in reducing the choice of cigarettes. A ban on all flavours in both products would likely reduce the smoking/vaping rates, but the use of cigarettes would be higher than in the status quo. Policy-makers should use these results to guide the choice of flavour bans in light of their stance on the potential health impacts both products.”
Related:
- Department of Health & Human Services announcement, POTV – [link]
- The Mystery Lung Disease Caused by “Vaping” Was a Textbook Drug Panic, Filter Magazine - [link]
- “Should flavours be banned in cigarettes and e-cigarettes? Evidence on adult smokers and recent quitters from a discrete choice experiment” by John Buckell, Joachim Marti, and Jody L Sindelar – [link]
Photo Credit:
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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