Off to a rocky start 2019 is seeing flavor bans

January 23, 2019

everywhere.  It's not just eLiquids either, lots of cities, counties, and states are passing or working on passing legislation to enforce all these various kinds of flavor bans.  It's really crazy to see that the most common mechanism for legislating is targeting flavor.  Why have any other "sin" related items never faced such a specific element targeted ban?  Just call it what it is; prohibition. 

From Beverly Hills to North Dakota, we've seen all kinds of these bills up in the air if not already on the ground, but those battles can be fought on their local and provincial levels, so make sure you know your local representatives best method of contact and reach out them, frequently.  What we're focusing on today is the meeting on the 18th at the FDA.  

To use a phrase that has entered the now common parlance, the anti-vaping advocates basically ran train on this meeting. Not only were none of the smoking cessation talking points even mentioned, but the entire meeting might as well have been titled "Vaping bans: how many different ways can we be against vaping and how many different forms of prohibition can we enforce?"

Obviously I should not write titles for events, but you get the gist. In attendance to this one sided anti-vaping fanatics meeting was Ruth McCormack of Long Island. McCormack made the psychotic outrageous claim that fourth graders are going through several JUUL pods a day, AND that vaping caused a teen to jump in front of a train and commit suicide. That's the insane level of rhetoric that went on in this meeting. 

Unfortunately because we also live in this strange cyber-dystopia Gottlieb of course had to jump onto twitter to post: "I still believe e-cigs offer an opportunity for currently addicted adult smokers to transition off cigarettes and onto products that may not have the same level of risks. But if youth use continues to rise, the entire category faces an existential threat.” Gottlieb continued the thread: “I believe if every currently addicted adult smoker switched completely to e-cigs it would provide a tremendous public health gain. But that opportunity is in significant risk if kids use continues to rise. There’s an opportunity now for responsible parties to address youth use.”

There's only two thoughts that can possibly come from reading the head of the FDA tweeting that; one, Gottlieb has already made up his mind and he's going to kibosh the entire vape world.  Two, the head of the FDA is so irresponsible why would you listen to anything he says, let alone trust his judgement on how the FDA acts?

There was one sane person in the meeting, Bill Godshall.  Bill Godshall is the founder and executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania, and here is what he had to say about the whole thing; “Gottlieb used the hearing to once again demonize, bully and threaten to ban the nicotine vapor industry before the Deeming Rule’s 2022 execution date."  Continuing, "Gottlieb still hasn’t formally proposed any regulation to ban sales of flavored vapor products at retail stores that allow youth entry and hasn’t even issued a Guidance for Industry, perhaps because the TCA prohibits FDA from banning sales of any tobacco product at any category of retailer.”

Optimistically Bill stated; “I suspect that vapor prohibitionists at CDC and FDA have not informed Gottlieb about the key findings in the Department of Health and Human Services youth vaping survey data”  Let's just hope that sanity wins out on this one, but seeing the current strange and interesting times we live in makes you really wonder about the future. 

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