Category Archives: Vaping

Electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without tobacco or combustion, are the most important harm-reducing alternative to smoking ever developed one that could prevent millions of premature deaths in the United States alone. Yet bureaucrats and politicians seem determined to negate that historic opportunity through regulations and taxes that threaten to cripple the industry.

When a court-set deadline for premarket approval of vaping products came and went on Sept. 9, the Food and Drug Administration had received millions of applications but had not approved any. As a result, the agency says, every vaping device and nicotine liquid sold in the U.S. is marketed unlawfully and subject to enforcement action at the FDAs discretion.

Seven years after the FDA officially declared its intention to regulate electronic nicotine delivery systems as tobacco products, the industry remains in legal limbo, existing only because of the agencys enforcement discretion and limited resources. Despite the FDAs promises of regulatory flexibility, it is perpetuating a situation in which manufacturers dont know whether they will still be in business next week, next month or next year.

The FDA has rejected millions of applications for nicotine liquids in flavors other than tobacco, which are the products that former smokers overwhelmingly prefer. Because those flavors also appeal to teenagers, the agency says, they will be approved only if manufacturers present robust, reliable and product-specific evidence that their benefits in helping smokers quit outweigh the risk that they will encourage underage vaping.

No one really knows what that means, although the FDA says the evidence of benefits to adult smokers for such products would likely be in the form of a randomized controlled trial or longitudinal cohort study. Such research is beyond the means of all but the largest companies, and even they may have trouble persuading the FDA that approval of their products is appropriate for the protection of the public health, taking into account the risks and benefits to the population as a whole.

Under that highly subjective standard, which is mandated by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, it is not enough for a manufacturer to show its products are far less hazardous than conventional cigarettes. Nor is it enough to show that nontobacco flavors are enormously popular among former smokers because the FDA might still conclude, however implausibly, that the risk of underage consumption outweighs the welfare of smokers interested in making the potentially lifesaving switch to vaping.

Survey data indicates that the vast majority of teenagers who vape regularly are current or former smokers, which means the FDAs fear that e-cigarettes are causing an epidemic of adolescent nicotine addiction is overblown. So is the fear that vaping is a gateway to smoking among teenagers who otherwise never would have tried nicotine; if anything, recent trends suggest, the availability of e-cigarettes has accelerated the downward trend in adolescent smoking.

The folly of the obsession with preventing underage vaping was apparent in San Francisco, where a ban on flavored e-cigarettes seemed to have boosted smoking by teenagers and young adults. That cautionary example has not deterred other jurisdictions from considering the same counterproductive policy.

In case heavy-handed federal and local regulations are not enough to stop smokers from quitting, House Democrats have proposed excise taxes that would double or triple the price of e-liquids. This tax will not only kill my business, a Georgia vape shop owner told my Reason colleague Christian Britschgi, it will kill Americans.

Last month in the American Journal of Public Health, 15 prominent tobacco researchers warned that policies intended to reduce adolescent vaping may also reduce adult smokers use of e-cigarettes in quit attempts. They emphasized that the potential lifesaving benefits of e-cigarettes for adult smokers deserve attention equal to the risks to youths.

Although the FDA acknowledges the harm-reducing potential of e-cigarettes, in practice, it is giving that benefit short shrift. Other policymakers, meanwhile, are proceeding as if the lives of smokers count for nothing.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum.

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Politicians, bureaucrats determined to cripple lifesaving alternative to smoking - The Whittier Daily News

This segment of Whats Ahead sharply admonishes the Food and Drug Administrations cruel and wrongheaded crusade against e-cigarettes.

The agency refuses to green-light even a single application, putting the vaping industry in legal limbo. It should follow the science, as other countries are doing.

Real world experience and studies have demonstrated that nicotine vaping is 95% safer than traditional cigarettes. Its by far the most effective way to stop smokingbetter than nicotinepatches, gums and other antismoking aids.Thats why British health authorities strongly recommend vaping to reduce cigarette smoking. In fact, the countrys national health service hosts vaping shops in its hospitals. And France doesnt tax e-cigarettes, in sharp contrast to the levies it imposes on traditional tobacco products.

Contrary to myth, vaping isnt a gateway to teenage smoking, which has actually been declining.

Steve Forbes is Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media.Steves newest project is the podcast Whats Ahead, where he engages the worlds top newsmakers,

Steve Forbes is Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media.Steves newest project is the podcast Whats Ahead, where he engages the worlds top newsmakers, politicians and pioneers in business and economics in honest conversations meant to challenge traditional conventions as well as featuring Steves signature views on the intersection of society, economic and policy. Steve helped create the recently released and highly acclaimed public television documentary, In Money We Trust?, which was produced under the auspices of Maryland Public television. The film was inspired by the book he co-authored, Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy and What We Can Do About It. Steves latest book is Reviving America: How Repealing Obamacare, Replacing the Tax Code and Reforming The Fed will Restore Hope and Prosperity co-authored by Elizabeth Ames (McGraw-Hill Professional).Steve writes editorials for each issue of Forbes under the heading of Fact and Comment. A widely respected economic prognosticator, he is the only writer to have won the highly prestigious Crystal Owl Award four times. The prize was formerly given by U.S. Steel Corporation to the financial journalist whose economic forecasts for the coming year proved most accurate.In both 1996 and 2000, Steve campaigned vigorously for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. Key to his platform were a flat tax, medical savings accounts, a new Social Security system for working Americans, parental choice of schools for their children, term limits and a strong national defense. Steve continues to energetically promote this agenda.

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Vaping vs. Tobacco Smoking: What The FDA Is Getting Wrong - Forbes

In mid-September, two articles in prominent news outletscaused an uproar over how the media continues to misunderstand and misrepresent vaping.

The first, published September 15 in The New York Times, was an op-ed by former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao about sexism in the tech industry. The piece mainly focused on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing company that folded in scandal, but also included a long bit about the vaping company Juul.

In June 2019, Congress began an investigation into Juuls part in the youth nicotine epidemic, including efforts to market its products as safe for children, Pao wrote. By February 2020, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] showed that 68 people in the US had died from lung injury associated with the use of vaping products.

One can rightfully criticize Juul for many things, starting with its original Vaporized campaign. But the idea that the company caused e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI)the injuries Pao referencedis simply not true. The CDC eventually linked most EVALI cases to illicit THC cartridgeswhich is to say, not anything ever produced by Juul.

The CDC bears some of the blame for the publics confusion. Although months went by without a definitive culprit, the agency should have made it much clearer that it had identified vitamin E acetate, a chemical found in those illicit THC vape cartridges, as the primary cause.

Still, the characterization in The Times, however you read it, is at the very least misleading. A person unfamiliar with EVALI could easily come away from that essay thinking that Juul was somehow behind the condition, whenagainthere is no data to support that.

A number of public health experts and consumer advocates pointed out the issue, including Danielle Jones, the board president of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA), and Michael Pesko, a health economist at Georgia State University. (I wrote the editors an email as well.)

There is a significant inaccurate belief that e-cigarette products like Juul are the cause of EVALI, Pesko told Filter. This is damaging because it discourages adults from trying to quit with e-cigarettes, and it also does not communicate to marijuana users that purchasing from informal sources may put them at risk of EVALI.

A few days after the op-ed ran, the line containing the claim about EVALI deaths was quietly replaced with: This summer, Juul agreed to pay $40 million to settle the first of many lawsuits claiming that the companys marketing practices fueled widespread nicotine addiction among young people.

An editor in the op-ed departmentlater responded to Joness inquiry that while the sentence you flagged is accurate, we decided that an example regarding marketing to minors was more relevant to our readers. So we swapped in a line that was more appropriate. Call it a coincidence if you like.

As for Pao, faced with a contingent of activists on Twitter, she appeared to double down.

We regularly edit web articles to refine the story, add new information, additional context or analysis, a Times spokesperson told Filter. We only make note of changes if they involve an error. Making note of every change is unrealistic and would not serve the reader.

In the case of both articles, the clarifications may have been too late.

Just days after The Times article,The Wall Street Journal reported on a new Truth Initiative campaign, Its Messing with Our Heads. As part of its PR push, the influential tobacco and anti-nicotine nonprofit created a fictional brand called Depression Stick, complete with hidden-camera gags, influencer outreach and a billboard in Times Square. It drew a casual relation between depression and teen nicotine use thatby its own admissiondoes not exist.

In the piece, the reporter quotes the chief creative officer behind the campaign, Mo Said, as saying that vapes are just diet cigarettes and that they cause cancer but a little bit less.

Days later, the article was updatedand a correction issuedto acknowledge that it had failed to mention that health authorities havent established that e-cigarette use can cause cancer.

But in the case of both articles, the clarifications may have been too late. Anyone who read The Times op-ed probably has no ideaeditors revised a sentence that inaccurately reinforced the notion that Juulnow nearly synonymous with vaping to the laymancaused EVALI. Readers of The Journal who finished that story prior to its correction were left with the conclusion that vaping causes a little cancer.

Media needs to get vaping right the first time aroundespecially at a moment when much of the industry is currently collapsing from the Food and Drug Administrations regulatory process. Even as any amount of product authorization stands to help improve the publics perception of vapingand finally accept, as countless tobacco control experts, scientists, and public health authorities have insisted, that it is far safer than smokingmissteps in reporting threaten to undo that progress.

Photograph by Adrian Michael via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The Influence Foundation, which operatesFilter, has received unrestricted grants and donations from Juul.

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The Media Needs to Get Vaping Right on the First Try - Filter

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From October 1 this year, the federal government is changing industry legalisation to see nicotine e-cigarettes only accessible via a prescription. This includes importing vapes and vape products from overseas, however, Lung Foundation Australia is calling for a nationwide ban on vaping. Chief executive Mark Brooke said vaping is an issue that we as a country, should let get away from us. "People shouldn't be sucked into the hype of vaping," he said. The foundation has a new resource, called Unveil What You Inhale, urging young people to consider the research and information in order to make better decisions about their health. However, there are groups that see the new legislation as a step back for the reduction of smoking in society. Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association chairman Joe Kosterich banning vaping would not work. "Complete bans don't work. It's going to make life harder for smokers who are trying to quit and a lot of people that vape will go back to smoking or buy products from the black market," he said. "We don't want to put barriers in the way of people wanting an alternative to smoking." Mr Kosterich says the message from ATHRA is that vaping is a tool to reduce the harm and death toll of smoking in Australia. "We are not advocating for those who have never vaped before to start," he said. State Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff said his the government's stance is that they will not be changing the strict rules around e-cigarettes. "They are addictive and have the potential to reverse recent gains made to reduce the smoking rate in our state and 're-normalise' smoking within the community, which is unacceptable risk," Mr Rockcliff said. Tasmanian Clinical Respiratory Scientist, Dr Sukwinder Sohal, has done extensive research and believes vapes are not safe. "Vapes are marketed as better value, better tasting and better for you than cigarettes and this is just not true. They are very toxic," Dr Sohal said. A study by Curtin University tested the chemical and toxicity of 52 flavoured vape e-liquids for over the counter sale in Australia. The data showed that 100 per cent of the products were labelled incorrectly and 21 per cent contained nicotine despite this being illegal in Australia. Mr Brooke said the new campaign and push for a ban on vaping was not to criticise those who are trying to quit smoking and using vaping as an alternative. "It's super hard to quit smoking and we are not saying this to demonise smokers," he said.

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September 24 2021 - 8:00AM

From October 1 this year, the federal government is changing industry legalisation to see nicotine e-cigarettes only accessible via a prescription.

This includes importing vapes and vape products from overseas, however, Lung Foundation Australia is calling for a nationwide ban on vaping.

Chief executive Mark Brooke said vaping is an issue that we as a country, should let get away from us.

"People shouldn't be sucked into the hype of vaping," he said.

The foundation has a new resource, called Unveil What You Inhale, urging young people to consider the research and information in order to make better decisions about their health.

However, there are groups that see the new legislation as a step back for the reduction of smoking in society.

Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association chairman Joe Kosterich banning vaping would not work.

"Complete bans don't work. It's going to make life harder for smokers who are trying to quit and a lot of people that vape will go back to smoking or buy products from the black market," he said.

"We don't want to put barriers in the way of people wanting an alternative to smoking."

Mr Kosterich says the message from ATHRA is that vaping is a tool to reduce the harm and death toll of smoking in Australia.

"We are not advocating for those who have never vaped before to start," he said.

State Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff said his the government's stance is that they will not be changing the strict rules around e-cigarettes.

"They are addictive and have the potential to reverse recent gains made to reduce the smoking rate in our state and 're-normalise' smoking within the community, which is unacceptable risk," Mr Rockcliff said.

Tasmanian Clinical Respiratory Scientist, Dr Sukwinder Sohal, has done extensive research and believes vapes are not safe.

"Vapes are marketed as better value, better tasting and better for you than cigarettes and this is just not true. They are very toxic," Dr Sohal said.

A study by Curtin University tested the chemical and toxicity of 52 flavoured vape e-liquids for over the counter sale in Australia.

The data showed that 100 per cent of the products were labelled incorrectly and 21 per cent contained nicotine despite this being illegal in Australia.

Mr Brooke said the new campaign and push for a ban on vaping was not to criticise those who are trying to quit smoking and using vaping as an alternative.

"It's super hard to quit smoking and we are not saying this to demonise smokers," he said.

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Changes to legislation around vaping sees varied opinions - The Macleay Argus

As a new parent, I've rapidly discovered what a dangerous place the world is for children. It's an overwhelming realization at times. Given all the real threats my wife and I have toguard against, I can't understand why anyone would invent health scares that needlessly worry America's moms and dads, yet this seems to be the tobacco control movement's specialty.Earlierthis week, for example, the Truth Initiative (TI) launched a campaign highlighting the alleged mental health risks associated with teen vaping as part of their broader effort to restrict access to electronic cigarettes (also called "e-cigarettes" or "vapes.")

Two health crises among youth a mental health crisis and a vaping epidemic pose increasing threats to a generation of young people, the Truth Initiative wrote in a report accompanying its new marketing campaign. While it is well known that nicotine harms developing brains lesser known are the worrying connections between nicotine and mental health.

Activist-group rhetoric aside, no evidence implicates vaping in teenage depression.There is an established link between the disease and nicotine consumption, though it's a complicated relationship that doesn't lend itself to political causes.

A causal relationship?

Our first clue that the Truth Initiative is wandering away from the data comes fromthe Truth Initiative. The executive summary of its new reportincludedthis important qualifier:

Though it is unknown whether a causal relationship between nicotine and mental health conditions exists, there are troubling links between vaping nicotine and worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as higher odds of having a depression diagnosis among those who use nicotine[my emphasis].

This statement tells us right off the bat that the nicotine-mental health connection is messy. There could be many other factorsthat influence the association in various ways. After surveying the evidence, it's my contentionthat TI's analysis is backwards: the stimulant doesn't cause or amplify feelings of depression; people suffering from the condition seek relief in nicotine consumption. According to a 2017 review of almost 300 studies:

... [A]dverse internal states are the primary drivers of smoking behavior in depressed individuals. Accordingly, experimental treatment approaches which seek to modify reactivity to external smoking cues (e.g., via cognitive bias modification) are unlikely to be effective in depressed smokers [my emphasis].

Rather, treatments should identify the adverse motivational states that are the primary drivers of smoking in each individual and personalize treatment to target those states. Further, effective intervention strategies should address smokers beliefs about the high reward value of smoking in these motivational states.

This is a significant challenge to TI's thesis. Their activism is built on the assumption that removing external smoking cues, restricting e-cigarette marketingto adults for example, is the best way to discourage vaping, which is clearly not the case for depressed patients. That said,it is always unethical to market nicotine products to children, and ACSHopposesminors having access to any nicotine-containing products.

Why are depression and smoking linked?

Why? is a difficult question to answer in this case, but one possibility that adds some clarity is that nicotine has a well-documented antidepressant effect. Because it stimulates dopamine release, depressed patients often resort to smoking (or vaping) to mitigate the adverse effects of stressful stimuli. Depressed smokers have reported mood improvements that depression-free smokers don't experience after finishing a cigarette.

Several studies have also produced the same antidepressant effect in rodents, while other experiments have shown that nicotine can enhance the beneficial effects of some antidepressant drugs. The Truth Initiative seems to be aware that mental illness often leads to nicotine use as patients seek symptom relief, pointing out that its surveys reveal that many young people cite feelings of stress, anxiety, or depression as reasons they start and continue vaping.

TI tried to argue around this by pointing to nicotine-withdrawal symptoms, which can mirror the effects of depression. "The common misconception that nicotine relieves stress, anxiety, and depression, may be rooted in the cycle of nicotine withdrawal," the group's report states. But that's a different phenomenon than causing or amplifying a patient's depression.

Crucially, there is some evidence that vaping actually reduces nicotine dependenceby minimizing the peaks and troughs in blood nicotine smokers experience.If that's the case,vaping may help mitigate the withdrawal symptoms commonly associated with smoking cessation.

Of course, if vaping contributes to depression, then so do any smoking-cessation treatments that contain nicotine, which would include FDA-approved patches and gums endorsed by anti-tobacco groups.More importantly, the majority of teenagers do not vape. The fewwho doare already smokers in most cases. It follows, then, that regulations restricting adult access to vapor products will not help reduce nicotine use among teens.

A complicated disease, oversimplified

Chronic nicotine consumption mayalter brain receptorsthat can lead to depression, but that's not terribly useful as an argument against vaping. We still need to know why now-depressed individuals seek out vaping in the first place. Do they have a genetic predisposition for nicotine dependence and depression? Did they develop a habit of smoking when drinking socially, which led to nicotine addiction? These are just some of the possibilities researchers are investigating.

The bigger issue is that depression, like many other diseases, probably has multiple causes that can augment each other. Your genetic makeup influences how sensitive you are to stressful life events, Harvard Medical School notes. When genetics, biology, and stressful life situations come together, depression can result. How these various factors contribute to the disease varies from one patient to the next, and there's still a lot we don't know.

What we do know is that, while researchers are investigating the depressive effects of childhood sexual abuse and the loss of a parent early in life, the Truth Initiative is running slickly produced videos referring to vapes as depression sticks and staging videos where a fake vaping company executive tries to honestly market his productto convenience stores. Nicotine can amplify depression and anxiety, he tells the cashier, so I'm trying to sell some depression!

Is that the work of a group truly concerned about mental illness? Color me skeptical.

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Vaping And Mental Health: Does Nicotine Use Cause Teen Depression? - American Council on Science and Health

Mathematician Jacob Bronoski once said, No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Unfortunately, in the last six years, I have spent advocating for the life-saving capabilities of vapor products when used by adult smokers as a less harmful alternative, I have experienced this first hand in many ways on multiple occasions.

The anti-vape lobby continually harps on a so-called epidemic of youth vapor product use, yet they consistently fail to mention that they are combining the youth usage numbers of nicotine vaping products and THC vaping products. Theyve been so closed-lipped about the breakdown of this total (which they simply refer to as vaping) that even now we do not know how many minors are vaping each product. However, during the Q&A portion of a recent public meeting with the Arizona Attorney Generals office that I attended, a representative let slip that over half of the products used among Arizona youth were vaping products that contained THC. While kids should not be vaping THC any more than they should be vaping nicotine, the fact that our opponents are disingenuously inflating the youth access numbers to cause a panic should highly concerning to everyone involved.

Another way the prohibitionists are knowingly muddying the waters to make rational policymaking impossible is by counting anyone who has used a vapor product in the last 30 days as a vaper.A 2018 Gallup pollshowed that while 9 percent of minors had used a nicotine vapor product in the last 30 days, only 2 percent had used one the day of the survey. The same poll showed 19 percent had smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days, while 13 percent had used one the day of the survey. This clearly shows the overwhelming majority of teens that had used a vapor product in the last month were experimenting and not addicted, with only 22 percent of current users using daily. Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for cigarettes, with a whopping 68.4 percent of current smokers doing so daily. As a 16-year smoker who converted to vaping eight years ago, I can personally attest that addiction to nicotine cannot be satisfied by consuming nicotine in any form once a month.

Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of extreme dishonesty Ive experienced while fighting for the rights of adult smokers to choose a less harmful alternative surrounds theU.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) taxpayer-funded vaping epidemic media campaign. Before unleashing this campaign to the public, FDA conducted focus groups with 300 minors and 900 adults. These studies showed unintended consequences among adults, including perception of risk shifted to think that e-cigarettes were equally or more harmful than cigarettes. This is highly troublesome considering vaping has repeatedly been found to be95 percent safer than smoking, and FDAs study shows that they knew their campaign was causing adult smokers to believe otherwise.

The public policy solution to this was to assure that the campaign would be laser-targeted and stating The Real Cost Youth E-Cigarette Prevention Campaign will be limited to age-verified digital media, limiting adult spill by hyper-targeting the media to exclusively reach 12- to 17-year-olds on digital and social channels. These rules went out the window immediately upon opening Pandoras Box. Ive personally seen these misleading commercials preceding R-rated movies, during late-night TV shows centered around adult content, and during YouTube videos that required age verification in order to play. Ive also seen them replayed as the subject of news segments and during commercial breaks from shows that have confirmed to me that vapor products could be legally advertised due to over 80 percent of their audience being over 21 years age or older. Needless to say, the FDAs laser-targeting has proven to be as focused as a nuclear bomb.

In the end, the FDA has spent taxpayers money to convince the adult public of something they knew to be a lie.Anyone who has ever heard the term vaping epidemic, is a victim of this farce as well. Common sense regulations cannot be achieved under these conditions, and the fact that the agency responsible for doing so is knowingly and intentionally spreading inaccurate information that theyve proven will cause adult smokers to become misinformed underscores the alarming fact that science has fallen to corruption and politics at the FDA and American public health.

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Opinion: In the Era Of Fake News, FDA Is Contributing to the Epidemic - Prescott eNews

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

As a producer and director for our documentary series The New York Times Presents, Im used to pursuing subjects that are difficult to render onscreen. But when we set out to tell the story of the e-cigarette giant Juul Labs in the film Move Fast and Vape Things, which aired on FX last Friday, we faced some unexpected obstacles.

We started the production process armed with an arsenal of reporting from Sheila Kaplan, a reporter for The New York Times who has covered the tobacco industry for decades, and others who have chronicled the rise and eventual troubles of Juul Labs. Reading through the archives, you could see a clear arc of a once-scrappy start-up that found itself a Big Tobacco juggernaut accused of marketing its nicotine product to minors and helping perpetrate one of the nations greatest public health concerns.

But when we started to reach out to some of Sheilas original sources to sit for on-camera interviews, the challenge ahead of us became painfully clear. With thousands of lawsuits pending against the company related to a youth vaping epidemic declared by the Food and Drug Administration, no one wanted to talk.

Juul Labs, which denies that it knowingly sold its products to teenagers, declined to make anyone available for an interview. The company, which announced a reset in 2019, is proceeding with caution as its very existence is debated by regulators at the F.D.A. So instead, we mined hours of news reports, public hearings, conferences and even other documentaries for footage of the founders James Monsees and Adam Bowen, who have said they set out to help smokers quit. Piecing those tidbits together, we were able to reconstruct their narrative in their own words, at least partially.

When it came to interviewing former Juul Labs employees, the task was harder. Working from a database Sheila and her fellow reporter Julie Creswell had created three years ago, we combed LinkedIn, assembling a list of dozens of potential subjects. Then, we started cold-calling. We were ignored. We were hung up on. In some cases, we were granted off-the-record conversations. In two separate instances, we had booked interviews only to have the subjects back out on the eve of the shoot, frustrating our attempts to tell what we thought was a vital story.

So how did we ultimately urge people to go on-camera in the face of so much pressure? In some cases, they were motivated by a desire to clear their names. In others, Sheila and Julie had developed yearslong relationships with sources who came to trust that this would be worth the exposure. But for a few, it was simply a moral imperative. They saw the youth vaping epidemic as a systemic failure. Hiding from it would only ensure that it happened again. The only way to learn from it was to talk about how it had happened in the first place.

We encountered the same challenge when it came to finding teenagers who would share their experience with us. Over the phone, my own nieces and nephews confirmed that vaping was a huge problem in their schools. They talked about students they knew and shared dramatic stories of nicotine addiction. But when they asked those same peers if they were willing to share those stories on-camera, the response was silence. They were embarrassed. They didnt want to deal with the ramifications on social media. Their parents didnt want it to affect their futures.

A public health group connected us with Jackie Franklin and her mother, Janine Browne Franklin. As a high school student, Jackie was vaping three pods a day. Her terrifying experience with nicotine addiction (detailed in the film) led the Franklins to speak out against teen vaping.

Like the great investigations of the 1990s that targeted the tobacco giants, this sort of journalism relies on individuals willing to come forward and share their experiences, often at great personal risk. The decision to do so is less a rational choice than a leap of faith. Feeling the weight of their trust, my colleagues and I agonized throughout the edit, ensuring that nothing was taken out of context or twisted around. I would lie awake at night questioning whether it was OK to cut this part or that, double- and triple-checking that it didnt violate the spirit of what was being shared.

As a journalist, your greatest achievement comes when you can cut through the spin and bring your audience the unvarnished truth. But without the contributions of these individuals, we would never even come close.

Readers can watch Move Fast and Vape Things on Hulu.

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A Film on a Crisis, Powered by Willing Voices - The New York Times

SHENZHEN, China, September 23, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SMOORE, a global leader in offering vaping technology solutions, today has made its mark at The Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF) 2021. Senior Vice President of SMOORE and President of FEELM, the flagship atomization tech brand belonging to SMOORE, Frank Han makes the keynote speech to outline SMOOREs mission of "atomization making life better."

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210923005511/en/

GTNF 2021 Frank Han's Keynote Speech (Photo: Business Wire)

The Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF) is the worlds leading annual forum discussing the future of the tobacco and nicotine industries. The annual industry conference brings together key stakeholders from around the world, including global tobacco companies, vaping brands, scientists, public health experts, NGOs and policymakers.

In his speech, Frank Han calls upon all stakeholders of the industry to join the mission of "atomization making life better", promoting the evolution of atomization ecosystem. He asserts that policymakers and NGOs should take the lead in institutional innovations to promote the healthier industry development and more balanced regulations, embracing vaping as a strategy to improve public health while safeguarding against youth vaping. Global media could also involve more people in the unbiased public dialogue on vaping.

Moreover, industry leaders should work together to build up more comprehensive industry standards. As one of the key industry standard setters, SMOORE has developed its vapor and material safety standards, which involve over 300 physical and chemical tests. These standards have also covered all of PMTA tests and the safety evaluation of over 50 atomization materials, thereby guaranteeing industry-leading product quality.

In terms of product innovation, Frank Han indicates that the underlying technology of vapingatomization, has showed promising prospects in other fields, such as healthcare. With one of its R&D focus on the atomization application in healthcare, SMOORE has made significant progress on the research of atomized medication in the past three years.

Story continues

"In the near future, more and more people will inhale medicines or vaccines with atomization devices. It could help the world pull through the pandemic," said Frank Han.

According to Frank Han, SMOOREs innovations are based on its insights into global consumers requirements and the commitment to improving user experience, which is the companys first principle of product development. Based on the principle, SMOORE launched the worlds first Taste Evaluation Model in 2020, covering 4 dimensions and 51 indexes, so as to establish a scientific system to evaluate vaping tastes.

Moreover, Frank Han points out that scientific innovation is the driving force of the industrys evolution. Industry pioneers are constantly committed to the cross-disciplinary fundamental research of "atomization science", to explore the mechanism of atomization.

As the worlds leading atomization tech platform, SMOORE has recruited R&D experts from different backgrounds and built up 7 global research centers around the world. In addition to in-house R&D resources, SMOORE has partnered with top universities to leverage the latest scientific discoveries and transform them into cuttingedge applied technologies.

The industry is also embracing intelligent manufacturing to improve resource efficiency. For example, SMOORE introduced the first fully automated pod production line in the world. Now, a single line of SMOORE can produce 7,200 standard vaporizers per hour.

In partnership with clients, SMOORE has also adopted sustainable practices in all stages of product development, especially manufacturing, so as to fulfill its commitment to reducing carbon footprint.

"Innovation and sustainability are the ideas to which the whole industry has been adhering, since the advent of vaping. The two ideas share a common goal, that is atomization making life better, which echoes SMOOREs corporate mission," said Frank Han.

Committed to the mission of "Atomization making life better", SMOORE will continue to discover more diversified atomization methods and more advanced technology roadmap while jointly promoting a more inclusive dialogue mechanism along with partners from different sectors.

About SMOORE

SMOORE is a global leader in offering vaping technology solutions, including manufacturing vaping devices, and vaping components, with advanced R&D technology, strong manufacturing capacity, wide-spectrum product portfolio and diverse customer base. The Company is the world's largest vaping device manufacturer in terms of revenue, accounting for 18.9% of the total global market share.

About FEELM

FEELM is a high-end atomization technology brand belonging to SMOORE. Focusing on the research of cutting-edge atomization technology, FEELM also specializes in the development and manufacturing of high quality atomization devices driven by FEELM ceramic coil. "FEELM inside" symbol is on the closed system pods of a number of global leading tobacco companies and vaping companies around the world. The accumulated sales volume of FEELM has surpassed 3 billion pieces per year.

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SMOORE Outlines Its Mission of "atomization making life better" at GTNF 2021 - Yahoo Finance

Mathematician Jacob Bronoski once said, No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Unfortunately, in the last six years, I have spent advocating for the life-saving capabilities of vapor products when used by adult smokers as a less harmful alternative, I have experienced this first hand in many ways on multiple occasions.

The anti-vape lobby continually harps on a so-called epidemic of youth vapor product use, yet they consistently fail to mention that they are combining the youth usage numbers of nicotine vaping products and THC vaping products. Theyve been so closed-lipped about the breakdown of this total (which they simply refer to as vaping) that even now we do not know how many minors are vaping each product. However, during the Q&A portion of a recent public meeting with the Arizona Attorney Generals office that I attended, a representative let slip that over half of the products used among Arizona youth were vaping products that contained THC. While kids should not be vaping THC any more than they should be vaping nicotine, the fact that our opponents are disingenuously inflating the youth access numbers to cause a panic should highly concerning to everyone involved.

Another way the prohibitionists are knowingly muddying the waters to make rational policymaking impossible is by counting anyone who has used a vapor product in the last 30 days as a vaper. A 2018 Gallup poll showed that while 9 percent of minors had used a nicotine vapor product in the last 30 days, only 2 percent had used one the day of the survey. The same poll showed 19 percent had smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days, while 13 percent had used one the day of the survey. This clearly shows the overwhelming majority of teens that had used a vapor product in the last month were experimenting and not addicted, with only 22 percent of current users using daily. Unfortunately, the same does not hold true for cigarettes, with a whopping 68.4 percent of current smokers doing so daily. As a 16-year smoker who converted to vaping eight years ago, I can personally attest that addiction to nicotine cannot be satisfied by consuming nicotine in any form once a month.

Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of extreme dishonesty Ive experienced while fighting for the rights of adult smokers to choose a less harmful alternative surrounds theU.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) taxpayer-funded vaping epidemic media campaign. Before unleashing this campaign to the public, FDA conducted focus groups with 300 minors and 900 adults. These studies showed unintended consequences among adults, including perception of risk shifted to think that e-cigarettes were equally or more harmful than cigarettes. This is highly troublesome considering vaping has repeatedly been found to be 95 percent safer than smoking, and FDAs study shows that they knew their campaign was causing adult smokers to believe otherwise.

The public policy solution to this was to assure that the campaign would be laser-targeted and stating The Real Cost Youth E-Cigarette Prevention Campaign will be limited to age-verified digital media, limiting adult spill by hyper-targeting the media to exclusively reach 12- to 17-year-olds on digital and social channels. These rules went out the window immediately upon opening Pandoras Box. Ive personally seen these misleading commercials preceding R-rated movies, during late-night TV shows centered around adult content, and during YouTube videos that required age verification in order to play. Ive also seen them replayed as the subject of news segments and during commercial breaks from shows that have confirmed to me that vapor products could be legally advertised due to over 80 percent of their audience being over 21 years age or older. Needless to say, the FDAs laser-targeting has proven to be as focused as a nuclear bomb.

In the end, the FDA has spent taxpayers money to convince the adult public of something they knew to be a lie.Anyone who has ever heard the term vaping epidemic, is a victim of this farce as well. Common sense regulations cannot be achieved under these conditions, and the fact that the agency responsible for doing so is knowingly and intentionally spreading inaccurate information that theyve proven will cause adult smokers to become misinformed underscores the alarming fact that science has fallen to corruption and politics at the FDA and American public health.

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In the Era Of Fake News, FDA Is Contributing to the Epidemic InsideSources - InsideSources

Two countries divided by a common language is a common saying misattributed to George Bernard Shaw. US and UK vocabulary differences are of perennial amusement: elevator, lift; sidewalk, pavement; gas, petrol; soccer, football. Brits say pants to mean underwear; Americans say it to mean what we call trousers.

A ubiquitous British slang word for a cigarette is also an offensive slur in the States. But if social media is anything to go by, the nicotine taboos run deeper than vocabulary.

Specifically, Ive noticed regular tweets from US-based accounts which express surprise, amusement or even disgust about older people vaping. Examples include: Seeing old people vaping will never not be funny to me, Anyone else cringe x 10 when they see old people vaping? and Old people vaping is just as shocking as babies smoking cigarettes.

British adults over 55 have a higher vaping rate than the youngest adults.

These are strange tweets indeed, considering the millions of lives, in every adult age group, that have been saved by these products. What could be going on in the US to make some people believe that vaping is only for the young?

In the UK, at any rate, weve welcomed vaping with open arms and lungs. Currently, 3.6 million of us vapeover 7 percent of the adult population. Two-thirds are ex-smokers, while under 5 percent have never smoked (the rest combine vaping and smoking, likely on a path to smoking less or quitting). And these numbers emphatically include those of us with a bit more life experience.

The latest survey of e-cigarette use amongst adults by the influential UK anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and health (ASH) finds that the peak ages for current e-cigarette use in 2021 are among 35-44 year olds (10.1%) followed by 45-54 year olds (8.6%), and then 25-34 year olds (8.1%). The lowest vaping rates by age are 5% for young adults aged 18-24.

Adults over 55, the oldest age group, have a higher vaping rate (5.4 percent) than the youngest adults.

As for use by minors, ASH reports that more than 88 percent of 1117-year-olds have never tried or are unaware of e-cigarettes. Only 1.2 percent vape more than weekly. And only 0.7 percent of those who regularly vape were not former smokers.

Looking across the Pond, Brits see a panic-stricken and oppressive environment for vape shops and vapers.

Regulation of e-cigarettes is very liberal in the UK. The National Health Service hosts vape shops in its hospitals, runs a pilot program giving free vapes to smokers in emergency rooms, and recommends e-cigarettes for smokers who find them helpful during pregnancy. Vape shops freely do business in every High Street (translation: Main Street). And vaping products and accompanying liquids are sold in the health aisle in some supermarkets, alongside corn plasters and vitamin pills.

By contrast, looking across the Pond, Brits see a panic-stricken and oppressive environment for vape shops and vapers. Americans are bombarded with media telling them that there is an epidemic of youth vaping in their country. This conviction appears so entrenched that the Food and Drug Administration is currently in the process of regulating just about every flavored vaping product out of existence on the basis of protecting kids.

In truth, evidence shows that frequent youth use is about as rare in the US as it is in the UK. Yet it seems to serve the anti-vaping organizations agenda to prolong the mythwhile engaging in bizarre efforts to terrify kids that frequently end up backfiring.

In August, a seismic report by 15 world-renowned public health professors was sharply critical of the kind of public messaging that has dominated in the United States. They called anti-vaping messaging harmful, and worried that as public health groups, the media, policymakers, and the general public focus on youth vaping, vapings potential to help adults quit smoking too often gets lost.

It is surely this youth-obsessed outcry that prompts those shocked American reactions to older people vaping. And thats a real shame. Because older smokers deserve the chance to protect their health by switching as much as anyone else. They definitely dont deserve to be stigmatized and ridiculed for doing so.

From this side of the Atlantic, were baffled as to why US authorities, NGOs, media and others seem so willing to perpetuate such a counterproductive public health strategy, wrongly telling their public that youth vaping is the only game in town. Were lucky enough to have experienced an approach that embraces vaping in a calm, orderly, and government-approved mannerperhaps just the way to attract older smokers without unduly intriguing youth.

Photograph by Sarah Johnson (Knighthoodstudio.com) via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

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The US Obsession With Youth Vaping Looks Odd From Across the Atlantic - Filter