E-cigs vaping
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see bak 919
see acsh
SEE juul VAPE dci
merri ok
roots in tobacco, taxed enough already, smoker's alliance bs astro; ets secondhand smoke
reynolds trump inaug parscale
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Supreme Court OKs California ban on flavored vaping products - Los ...
Dec 12, 2022Dec. 12, 2022 12:20 PM PT. WASHINGTON —. The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-minute plea from the tobacco industry and cleared the way for California to enforce a statewide ban on the ...
Proposition 31 passes in California: flavored tobacco will be banned
Nov 10, 2022Proposition 31 passes in California: ... Tobacco use fell rapidly from over a third of teens to about 5%. Then the arrival and marketing of vaping reversed that. Matt Myers says tobacco flavors ...
California will impose new vaping tax to help curb teen use - Los ...
Oct 5, 2021Oct. 4, 2021 6:35 PM PT. SACRAMENTO —. Amid concern over widespread teen vaping, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday approved a new 12.5% excise tax on electronic cigarettes to be paid by California ...
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TikTok Shop is selling black market vapes to children | Media Matters for America
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RELATED?
Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment & Expungement Act (MORE) conflict of interest
In December 2020, Foxx voted against the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment & Expungement Act (MORE).[52] According to financial disclosure reports, she made at least six investments in Altria, one of the world's largest tobacco companies and a leader in the burgeoning U.S. cannabis industry, since September 2020.[53] In all, records show she has purchased somewhere between $79,000 and $210,000 in Altria stock.[54]
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whelan ross e cig NY testimony 2013? enstrom on ltrhead
https://www.nysenate.gov/sites/default/files/American%20Council%20on%20Science%20and%20Health%20testimony%20e-cigarette.pdf
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11 21 grab acsh
Health Scares Vs Health Threats
Thank You,Trial Lawyers, For Protecting Us from the Scourge of Baby Powder
Scientists say that talcum baby powder doesn't cause cancer. Trial lawyers say it does. As usual, the lawyers win. Scientists, common sense, and Americans lose.
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Coronavirus: Fear of a Pandemic, or a Pandemic of Fear?
We must eliminate both. Here's one group's plan to do that.
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95% of Baby Food Tainted with Toxic Metals? Don't Panic
The Centers for Disease Control says that the “American food supply is among the safest in the world.” But a read of some recent news reports about toxic metals in baby food may have you feeling somewhat concerned. So what's really the state of the supermarket aisle? Let's take a closer look.
Read more
Everything Goes to Pot: Myths Are Driving FDA, CDC Vaping Policy
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While an investigation is underway into the exact nature of the problem, so far the likeliest explanation is that improper use of vaping devices has led to illness, or the death, of some users. But that sort of nuance isn't governing the thinking of the FDA or CDC officials, both of which are allowing myths and fearmongering to drive their policies and public statements.
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Precautionary Principle:We Must Ban Driving to Whole Foods
Better safe than sorry. That's a great lesson for a child when a parent explains why she should wear a helmet when riding her bicycle. But that refrain makes for terrible public health policy.
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CDC Misleads by Calling E-Cigarettes a 'Tobacco Product'
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The CDC says "tobacco use by youth is rising." If that were to be true, it'd be horrible -- but it's not. Cigarette use is down. The only reason the CDC can make this claim is because the agency considers e-cigarettes and vaping devices -- which only contain nicotine -- to be tobacco products. This is misleading and undermines public health.
Read more
AAAS Runs Dishonest Glyphosate Story, Then Deletes It. Is Politics to Blame?
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the foremost pro-science organizations in the world. Not only does it advocate for good science and science policy, it publishes Science, the prestigious journal read globally by millions. Unfortunately, AAAS has gotten a bit weird in recent months.
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UK Parliament Endorses E-Cigarettes to Help Smokers. Will U.S. Follow?
U.S. public health agencies struggle to endorse an obvious solution to a true public health menace. Hopefully, the UK Parliament will provide a much-needed boost to the forces of common sense.
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Glyphosateand Pesticides: Et Tu, Live Science?
Normally a reliable source of information, Live Science published an article that is a dream for anti-pesticide and anti-chemical fearmongers.
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CNN's Christiane Amanpour Misleads on Flint Water Crisis [recall BSS elsewhere on pb]
The recent reporting on Flint's water crisis by CNN's Christiane Amanpour has a tenuous grasp of the data and the reality.
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New Study Refutes the 'Wine Will Kill You' Nonsense
A few weeks ago, a paper claimed that an extra glass of wine will shorten your life. The story circled the globe in minutes. A new paper, with better methodology, concluded what we all knew: Moderate alcohol consumption can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle. It, however, won't receive nearly as much attention as the sensationalist report. Such is the power of the academic PR hype machine combined with a gullible, sensationalist press.
Read more
Diarrhea Outbreaks: A Glimpse into Anti-Vaxxer Utopia
Despite the reality of measles, rotavirus, and a plethora of other infectious diseases, there's yet another anti-vaccine movement afoot in California. And its aim is to turn the clock back to the 10th Century.
Read more
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intercept
THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY pioneered tactics to fight regulations by manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that cigarettes kill. So it should be no surprise to encounter a strategy among defenders of the e-cigarette that also centers around doubt. If we don’t know for certain that a product is safe, we might urge caution. Sense About Science has argued the opposite: so long as we don’t know the product is unsafe, medical professionals have no business urging regulation.
E-cigarettes turn chemical solutions into a nicotine-filled mist, which consumers ingest without the added harm of tobacco tar. When the devices hit the American market in 2007, sales quickly took off. Tobacco companies increasingly dominate the industry, which is projected to be worth $54 billion by 2025. A recent national survey found a sharp rise in e-cigarette smoking among high school students — from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 16 percent last year.
The skyrocketing popularity of e-cigarettes among young people worries public health experts because so little is known about the devices’ safety. E-cigarettes are too new for scientists to have assessed their long-term health risks. British and American scientific bodies have reacted to this paucity of evidence with different views of the relative dangers.
Last year, Public Health England joined other British public health organizations in encouraging smokers to use e-cigarettes as an aid in quitting tobacco. The Royal College of Physicians effectively endorsed this view in April, when it argued against regulating a product that could help smokers quit.
But American public health officials worry that nicotine, which is as addictive as heroin and cocaine, will hook young smokers and cause lasting harm to their still-developing brains. Nicotine is linked to immunosuppression as well as cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal disorders. There is evidence that it interferes with chemotherapies and may even play a role in cancer. Researchers are just beginning to study whether the more than 7,000 flavoring chemicals, which typically aren’t disclosed on e-cigarettes, are safe when inhaled.
Back in 2012, the British Medical Association called for a ban on the devices in public in order to “ensure their use does not undermine smoking prevention and cessation by reinforcing the normalcy of cigarette use.” BMA reaffirmed this judgment as recently as this past June, despite the opposing position of the Royal College of Physicians. Sense About Science reacted to BMA’s call for a ban by asking the association to produce evidence that e-cigarettes caused harm. “This move towards heavy regulation appears to be driven by the fear that e-cigs might be harmful or act as a gateway to conventional tobacco — despite little or no evidence for either claim,” the organization argued on its website in 2013, two years before Public Health England endorsed e-cigarettes as a tool to quit smoking. Such regulations, Sense About Science stated, could do more harm than good by inhibiting access to products that may help reduce harm from smoking tobacco cigarettes.
Although Sense About Science has demanded evidence that e-cigarettes cause harm, it seems poised to cast doubt on the evidence when it turns up. In August, the organization challenged the relevance of research presented that month at a cardiology conference showing that nicotine in e-cigarettes can stiffen arteries, an early indication of heart disease. Sense About Science’s expert dismissively compared the effects of nicotine documented in the research to those of “watching a thriller or a football match.”
Here in the United States, just this past May, the Food and Drug Administration moved to regulate e-cigarettes, including banning sales to those 18 and under. The CDC, too, takes the health risks of nicotine seriously. Last fall, the centers called for strategies to reduce the use of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. “The potential long-term benefits and risks associated with e-cigarette use are not currently known,” the CDC reported. “What is known is that nicotine exposure at a young age may cause lasting harm to brain development, promote nicotine addiction, and lead to sustained tobacco use.”
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3/9/20 kpfa gave money to many AG's but lawsuits contine in many states
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1219 ew
Congress Raises Age for E-Cigs and Tobacco to 21
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HNN 1019
:{:{}:
How the Vaping Industry Is Using a Defensive Tactic Pioneered Decades Ago by Big Tobacco
:{:{by Sarah Milov}::{}:
Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History, argues "the most dangerous aspect of vaping might not be what it does to the body, but rather what it does to the body politic."
}:}:
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scalia jr Juul Labs, the e-cigarette company owned by tobacco giant Altria.
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Vaping Lung Illness: Why E-Cigarettes' Dangers Might Get ...
https://www.theatlantic.com › health › archive › 2019/09 › vaping-illness
1.
Missing: entine | Must include:entine
Juul Illegally Marketed E-Cigarettes, F.D.A. Says - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com › 2019/09/09 › health › vaping-juul-e-cigarettes-fda
Sep 9, 2019 - Juul Labs, the dominant e-cigarette company, illegally marketed its vaping products as a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes, the ...
Missing: entine | Must include: entine
Juul warned over claims its e-cigarette is safer than smoking
https://www.wlbt.com › 2019/09/09 › juul-warned-over-claims-e-cigarette-sa...
Sep 9, 2019 - WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health authorities on Monday blasted vaping company Juul for illegally pitching its electronic cigarettes as a ...
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https://cei.org/content/fear-profiteers
really long
Fear Profiteers
How E-cigarette Panic Benefits Health Activists
Michelle Minton • December 5, 2018
>
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The rise of a vibrant market for e-cigarettes has been a blessing for many smokers. After many failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes provide an exciting new means for smokers to reduce their exposure to the harmful aspects of combustible cigarettes or even break their life-threatening smoking habit entirely.
Although research on e-cigarettes has yet to definitively calculate the precise long-term risk associated with vaping, reputable scientific institutions are increasingly coming to the same conclusion—e-cigarettes are vastly safer than smoking, help smokers quit, and are a net positive for public health. Despite this, public perception of e-cigarette safety has declined, while demands for stricter regulation—even bans on certain e-cigarettes—have only intensified.
That the public perception of e-cigarettes diverts so radically from the actual evidence raises the question: Why? This paper makes the case that the confusion is the intended result of an orchestrated disinformation campaign led by individuals and groups that ought to be among the most supportive of lower-risk tobacco alternatives—anti-smoking health advocates.
Instead of recognizing the historic opportunity e-cigarettes represent to displace traditional smoking, powerful charities like the American Cancer Society and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, state and federal health agencies, and some academics have condemned the proliferation of vaping products. Their influence on public opinion and public policy stems largely from their image as credible, apolitical entities motivated purely by an interest in protecting public health. As their approach to e-cigarettes demonstrates, this perception is inaccurate.
In addition to their public health goals, health agencies’ and health charities’ activities are also driven by a need to defend and expand the financial resources they need to pursue their respective missions. Whereas for-profit businesses raise funds by competing for consumer dollars, non-profits—and to a certain extent, health departments—compete for charitable donations and sometimes government funding. The two basic strategies health charities and agencies employ to court funding are to: 1) raise the perceived need to address the health problem on which they focus; and 2) promote their organization’s comparative effectiveness in addressing said health problem.
This approach to fundraising is generally uncontroversial in the non-profit arena, where organizations compete intensely in an environment where both attention and charitable dollars are limited. However, when an organization is part of a government agency or endorsed by government agencies, its efforts to raise awareness of an issue and its own clout can incentivize activities that clash with sound public health policy.
Furthermore, using e-cigarettes as a case study, this paper demonstrates how this negative effect is magnified when health charities, federal health agencies, and state health departments are financially co-dependent. Though perceived as independent health charities, many of the nation’s most well-respected health non-profits are, in effect, arms of federal health agencies. Groups like the American Cancer Society (ACS) receive money from agencies, like the National Cancer Institute within the National Institutes of Health. As such, it is in ACS’ interest to support or even lobby on behalf of the National Cancer Institute as it seeks to sustain or increase the funding allocated to it in the federal budget.
In turn, health agencies like the National Cancer Institute have an incentive to boost the reputation of their supporting health charities like ACS. Not only can these charities provide strong support during budget discussions, by echoing or even executing the Institute’s efforts throughout the year, they can make the Institute appear more effective and therefore more worthy of budget allocation.
A similar process takes place at the state level, where state and local health departments “partner” with respected health charities like ACS, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association. The health departments divert funding to the charities, while the charities do what health departments cannot—lobby state and local governments.
These health charity-government agency alliances have proven so effective and lucrative that it has given rise to a vast, nationwide network of groups that includes government bodies at the local, state, federal and international level; charities; grassroots organizations; universities; and even scientists. While seemingly independent from one another, these entities are in fact deeply financially interwoven.
In the case of e-cigarettes, this interconnected network of health groups and advocates has helped fuel public fears about tobacco alternatives. To the general public, these disparate groups appear to have reached the same conclusion about the health effects of e-cigarettes independently of one another.
Anti-smoking activists have reason to be skeptical about nicotine products advertised as intended to “reduce harm.” But, unlike the tobacco in- industry's previous efforts to promote safer cigarettes to sustain profits from smoking, e-cigarettes appear to be genuinely harm-reducing. At present, the evidence increasingly indicates that e-cigarettes not only carry significantly less risk than combustible smoking, but also help people to quit smoking and do not attract non-smoking individuals to nicotine use. In fact, smoking among both adolescents and adults is currently lower than it has ever been.
Health agencies should communicate this information in an unbiased way that allows consumers to make informed choices about the relative risk of using e-cigarettes versus smoking. Instead, health agencies, charities, health advocates, and the media have promoted the unfounded notion that e-cigarettes are as harmful as—or more harmful than—combustible cigarettes.
This campaign to restrict or ban e-cigarettes does a huge disservice to public health, decreasing the likelihood that smokers will utilize these devices as a means of quitting their deadly habit. Though concerns over e-cigarettes’ long-term effects are reasonable, that is not the impetus behind the anti-e-cigarette movement. Rather, as this paper demonstrates, it is the consequence of those groups and individuals vested with the power and funding of the government seemingly prioritizing their organizational interests over public health.
INTRODUCTION
The rise of the vaping industry has been a blessing for many smokers. After years of failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes offer smokers a promising new approach to potentially break their life-threatening habit, while immediately reducing their exposure to the harmful elements of combustible tobacco. Since the introduction of e-cigarettes to the market, there has been a growing consensus among reputable health researchers that vaping is vastly safer than smoking. With just 1 percent of the risk,1 they have proven effective as a means of smoking cessation,2 and are likely responsible for displacing smoking among children and adults. In fact, researchers recently estimated that substituting e-cigarettes for smoking could prevent up to 7 million premature deaths in the United States.3
Given this evidence, public health advocates should welcome vaping as an effective harm reduction and smoking cessation tool. But even as the evidence and consensus on the relative safety of e-cigarettes has grown among the research community, the public’s perception of the phenomenon has grown increasingly negative, thanks in large part to the tone of news coverage. In fact, the frightening reporting on teen vaping has become observably more alarmist since January 2018.
Many recent news stories touting the risks of vaping have focused on concerns regarding one product, the Juul. The New York Times described it as the “cool-looking and sweet ... vice teens can’t resist,” and blamed it for a supposed “explosion” of vaping in schools.4 Providing no better evidence than anecdotes from teachers and administrators, CNN cited the Juul as the cause of a vaping “epidemic among U.S. high schoolers.”5
National publications like Time Magazine,6 NBC News,7 The Wall Street Journal,8 USA Today,9 and countless local outlets have repeated some version of this same story, portraying the Juul as a unique threat to America’s youth, using similar and, in many cases, the same language.10
Concerns about a sudden, large increase in adolescent use of nicotine-containing products are understandable, particularly if e-cigarette use in adolescence were to lead to smoking in adulthood. However, there is no evidence, apart from anecdotes, that a significant number of adolescents are habitually vaping and zero evidence that experimental or even habitual vaping leads to use of combustible tobacco products among those who otherwise would never have used such products. If anything, the evidence shows that teen use of e-cigarettes remains a passing experimentation phase for most. The number of adolescents habitually using e-cigarettes is low. Moreover, vaping likely leads to decreased use of combustible tobacco, which is lower among teens than it has ever been, according to the latest data. That the headlines divert so jarringly from the reality of the situation and appear almost coordinated in timing, tone, and language, raises the question: Is something driving this misleading coverage?
This paper makes the case that the answer to that question is: Yes. The misleading media response is the result of an orchestrated effort meant to create confusion and public panic over electronic cigarettes—part of a strategy to pressure governments to restrict or eliminate these alternatives to traditional cigarettes. As this paper will explore, the individuals and groups behind this fear campaign are those most likely to profit from it: anti-smoking and health advocacy groups.
Put together, the facts do not indicate an epidemic of e-cigarette use among adolescents. Yet, that is exactly how some anti-smoking advocates, the news media, and even government agencies have portrayed the situation. The question this paper seeks to answer is: Why?
In its 2017 annual report on teen use of tobacco, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) observed that in 2016 just 11.3 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes at least once during the previous month.11 In the 2017 edition, released in
June 2018, the rate remained statistically unchanged, at 11.7 percent.12 While 11 to 12 percent of high schoolers reporting use of e-cigarettes might still seem like too much, the rate actually represents a 30 percent decline from the rates the CDC reported in 2015, when 16 percent of high schoolers—the most CDC ever recorded—reported e-cigarette use. Notably, the CDC survey only reports “ever use” in the previous 30 days. Habitual use, defined as using e-cigarettes on 20 or more days in the previous month, was not reported in past editions of the National Youth Tobacco Survey. However, during the zenith of e-cigarette popularity among adolescents, from 2014 to 2015, habitual e-cigarette use by teenagers was infinitesimally small, with just 2 percent of teens vaping daily and just 8 percent vaping three or more times a month. The rest can be classified as “experimental,” not habitual users.13
In November 2018, the CDC released some preliminary information gathered for the next National Youth Tobacco Survey, though not the actual data. According to these latest numbers, experimental e-cigarette use among middle schoolers, and especially high schoolers, has significantly increased since the previous survey. While in 2017, about 11.7 percent of high schoolers reported any e-cigarette use during the previous month, the newest CDC data indicate that number has increased from 20.7 percent to 20.8 percent. The survey also indicates that the proportion of high school e-cigarette users who report frequent use (20 or more days a month) has increased from 2.3 percent in 2017 to 5.7 percent in 2018.14
These early numbers have led to widespread hysteria among anti-tobacco groups and prompted FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to initiate action against e-cigarette manufacturers. In September 2018, Gottlieb initiated conversations with the e-cigarette industry, asking them to take voluntary steps to address e-cigarette use by minors.15 In response, some companies, including Altria and Juul, decided to stop selling most of their flavored e-cigarettes in stores (Juul continues to sell those flavors online with enhanced age-verification procedures).16 However, in November 2018, the FDA announced its intention to ban the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, except for mint, menthol, and tobacco flavors, in all retail outlets.17
Yet, all this preliminary data indicate that habitual e-cigarette use among high schoolers, including 18-year-old adults legally purchasing these devices, is still very small at under 6 percent. Furthermore, the most recent data reveal nothing about youth use of combustible tobacco products. Since the introduction of e-cigarettes to the U.S. market, adolescent use of cigarettes has more than halved, from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 7.6 percent in 2017.18 All of this indicates that, rather than e-cigarettes acting as a “gateway” into smoking, they are more likely diverting would-be smokers into a less harmful means of consuming nicotine. Still, the number of adolescents using e-cigarettes on a daily basis remains small, at under 6 percent.
However, even these small numbers have led some public health advocates to declare all-out war on e-cigarettes, fueled by panic about the potential consequences of adolescent experimentation with nicotine, an addictive drug that may have negative effects on children’s development. But, if the number of teens habitually using e-cigarettes is small, evidence shows that the number of teens using e-cigarettes that contain nicotine is even smaller. Recent research indicates that when asked what kind of e-cigarette they used, most adolescents reported using nicotine-free varieties.19
Even as study after study demonstrates that teen vaping is not widespread, that it is declining, and that these products have the potential to save lives by displacing smoking, outlets continue to publish headlines about the “skyrocketing” number of teens succumbing to vaping and the myriad health risks supposedly associated with it.20
HOW NONPROFITS PROFIT
It might seem counterintuitive that anti-smoking advocates would spearhead a campaign to scare people away from products that reduce tobacco-related harm—a central part of their mission. But as admirable as that mission is, improving public health is not their sole objective.
All charitable and nonprofit organizations must pursue funding to support and sustain their efforts. They need income in order to pay salaries and rent and invest in the projects that advance their cause.
Like for-profit businesses that compete for customers, nonprofits must also compete with one another for limited sources of financial support, such as private donations from individuals, corporations, or foundations. Some also compete for grant money awarded by universities, governments, and other institutions.
As with for-profit ventures, competition in the nonprofit sector is fierce. In 2012 there were more than 1 million non-religious nonprofits in the United States, vying for a piece of the $190 billion donated to charities that year. That may sound like a lot of money, but allocated equally among them it amounts to less than $160,000 each—barely enough to cover the salary and operating costs for one senior employee.21 Of course, no organization or donor would be satisfied with such a low fundraising total. Thus, much of a nonprofit’s activities are aimed at convincing potential donors that their organization is more worthy of support than another.
NONPROFITS VS. GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED HEALTH ADVOCATES
Because corporate donors have for-profit motives, non-profits that receive financial support from industry often face the accusation that their activities are driven by the interests of their financial sponsors. Corporate sponsorship is not, in and of itself, sufficient evidence to question the motive of a non-profit, but it can raise other questions.
My own organization, for example, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), is a non-profit think tank that advocates for greater economic liberty. Since some of our donors are businesses—in addition to individuals and foundations—and would benefit from the adoption of such policies, our political opponents occasionally accuse of us of “shilling” on behalf of donors. But CEI makes no attempt to hide our political agenda. Our mission is to decrease regulatory hurdles, both for businesses that provide goods and services and consumers who purchase those goods and services. On the other side of the political spectrum, an organization like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) takes the stance that consumers need to be protected from what it says are unscrupulous food companies through greater government regulation. CSPI openly advocates for policies that increase government oversight of food production, sales, and advertising. It also occasionally provides nutrition advice.
The health-focused nonprofits discussed throughout this paper are distinct from other non-profits because their advocacy is not so overt.22 Unlike overtly political non-profits, these health advocacy groups present themselves as health authorities whose advice emanates from medically accepted wisdom and whose activities are focused, without political bias, on public well-being. The air of authority these health charities seek to cultivate is heightened by the fact that they often function as an extension of government, sometimes as paid contractors of public health agencies. Not only do these health advocacy organizations receive government endorsement, they also receive financial support. Government entities are prohibited from lobbying. Instead, they route funding to health advocacy non-profits, either as direct grants or through programs sponsored by local health agencies. In this way, health advocacy nonprofits work as subcontractors for government entities, legally executing their shared political agenda. Often, a centerpiece of that agenda includes lobbying to protect or increase access to public funds.23
This, perhaps, is the most important distinction that sets public policy nonprofits like CEI or CSPI apart from the government-sponsored health policy groups discussed in this paper. Unlike traditional nonprofits to which individuals have the freedom to give money or not, the public has little choice about financially supporting government-sponsored health advocates. For the largest and most well-known of the health groups, competing for these public funds has proved far more efficient and lucrative than competing for private donations.
PURSUING FUNDING
For most non-profits, private donations are their only means of funding. But, by making the case that they provide a public service, some health advocacy groups have succeeded in securing a steady supply of taxpayer funds. As the public money for these charities has increased, so has their incentive to pursue it as a source of revenue.
This strategy has a long pedigree. “It is getting difficult relatively to get as much private money as you need,” one physician remarked at the 1910 annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis—now the American Lung Association. But he noted, “if you strike for public money you can get it in greater and greater abundance. Therefore, we must turn our energies from begging money to voting money.”24 Many modern public health advocates have taken this lesson to heart.
Whether the source is private or public, nonprofit groups generally court funding using two approaches. The first is to demonstrate the need for or value of the organization’s mission. The second is to persuade potential funders of the organization’s comparative effectiveness, or “clout,” in pursuing that mission. As is often the case, the more money a charity has, the more it can do. As charities increase their activities, they also raise their clout and perceived effectiveness.
Over the last decade, the amount of money available for health-focused nonprofits, particularly from federal and state governments, has grown exponentially.25 At the same time, the number of groups willing to address those issues has also increased. Thus, while the total funding available is greater so is the difficulty in persuading people to care about and give money to any particular cause.
At the turn of the 20th century, the need to invest in combating communicable diseases was clear. Serious diseases like cholera, malaria, smallpox, polio, and measles were widespread. But, by the middle of the 20th century, public health campaigners had been so effective that most of the diseases they set out to combat were either extinct or nearly eradicated in the U.S.
The March of Dimes, for example, was established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938 to address polio. By 1964 there were fewer than 121 cases reported in the U.S. Rather than calling it a day, firing its employees, and returning money to donors, the March of Dimes instead shifted its focus to preventing birth defects and infant mortality, the mission we now associate with the organization. To put it in economic terms, demand for organizations addressing communicable disease declined in the mid-20th century. To survive as an entity, the March of Dimes—like any good business— wisely shifted the service it supplied to meet the changing public demand for medical research aimed at curing certain diseases.
In contrast, the missions of modern public health advocates can extend to efforts to influence public policy. For example, smoking was not considered a public health problem until the 1960s. This changed, thanks in large part to anti-smoking advocates, who promoted awareness of the dangers of smoking. As awareness of smoking-related harms increased, so did the number of groups and organizations working to address the problem.
In some cases, efforts to promote the value of a nonprofit’s mission also serve to demonstrate why it is more effective and deserving of support than another. One of the best ways to raise public awareness of a public health issue is to stoke public anxiety, which puts pressure on government entities to address the issue. A nonprofit can then point to the change in public policy to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Governments, like private donors and the public, have limited resources— time, money, and energy—to direct toward any given topic. Campaign donors or “special interests” have some sway over lawmakers’ attention. But public pressure and publicity are also effective means of enlisting government support. When there is enough public attention focused on an issue, the promise of good publicity can incentivize lawmakers to do something about it. This publicity, whether it results in policy changes or not, increases the chance that constituents will be aware of, and vote for, the lawmaker in subsequent elections.
The most effective way to generate this public attention—or at least the appearance of it—is through media coverage. As media attention increases, so does public awareness. If public attention becomes widespread enough, it can attract lawmakers’ attention. If lawmakers adopt the policy goals set forth by nonprofit advocates, it demonstrates the advocacy organization’s effectiveness. Even if lawmakers fail to institute advocates’ recommendations, they can point to such failures as evidence for the need for groups to redouble efforts and receive more donations.
Put into a formula, the lifecycle that takes this approach looks like this:
- Identify a policy goal;
- Generate media coverage to stimulate public anxiety, concern, or outrage;
- Leverage public outrage to promote policy goals;
- Leverage government/agency interest to create a feedback loop of fear;
- Fundraise based on success or failure of policies.
In many cases, organizations do not follow this formula in a linear fashion, but rather jump back and forth between the steps, often in a sort of positive feedback loop. For example, media coverage might provide the initial idea for organizations to target a specific product or behavior, or push for a specific policy goal. As public health agencies and lawmakers get involved, they generate even more media and public interest in the issue.
THE BUSINESS OF ANTI-SMOKING ADVOCACY AND GOVERNMENT FUNDING
Before the 1980s, the anti-tobacco movement was comprised primarily of passionate volunteers. They advocated for policies they believed would reduce smoking-related harms, with modest financial support. In the early days, the most prominent of these organizations, like the American Cancer Society (ACS), American Heart Association (AHA), and American Lung Association, were staffed mostly by physicians and their activities focused on research and education. Generally, they shied away from political activism and lobbying, except for one area: lobbying for federal spending on the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The world’s largest funding source for medical research, the NIH is comprised of 21 separate institutes dedicated to specific diseases or conditions, like cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, drug abuse, aging, and many others. These individual institutes are the major funding source for many of the private charities that share their mission and often act as proxies to execute the institutes’ programs. But federal spending on each given institute is not guaranteed. Like private charities, each of the individual institutes must make its case to Congress for why it deserves a share of the federal budget. The larger the piece of the pie an institute receives, the more money it has to pass along to the private charities below it. In recent decades, this has created a significant incentive for the private charities allied with NIH institutes to lobby for budget allocations for NIH.
Throughout the 1980s, the major health charities opened government relations offices in Washington, D.C. Lobbying grew in importance as part of their activities. For example, while the American Heart Association’s 1979 annual report made little mention of lobbying, by 1984 the AHA noted that it “authored a bill that became the toughest legislation in history governing cigarette advertising,” and that “AHA’s voice will continue to be heard in Washington through the National/ Affiliate Public Affairs Network (NAPA), an effective national grassroots response system.” This network of volunteers, the report notes, “covered virtually all the powerful legislative districts in the country and almost three-quarters of all Congressional districts,” making their voices heard “whenever health issues or legislation affecting the Association, such as health issues, fundraising or research allocations came before Congress.”26
To justify its greater involvement in politics, the American Cancer Society explained in its 1987 lobbying handbook that “cancer has become political, as well has a medical, social, psychological and economic issue.” It also hints at another motivation for the organization’s involvement in politics: guaranteeing its own access to revenue. Private nonprofits, the handbook notes, are “part of an endangered species. ... Therefore, we try to push government to invest more of its vast financial resources into ... the cancer battle.”27....
==
// to ca legis gun to head?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Juul-backed-initiative-to-overturn-SF-e-cigarette-14067094.php
The Juul-backed campaign to secure a ballot initiative to overturn San Francisco’s just-passed ban on e-cigarette sales has collected enough signatures to go before voters in the November election, the campaign said Tuesday.
If passed, the initiative would override the ban and allow Juul to continue selling its lucrative vaping devices and nicotine “pods” in the company’s hometown of San Francisco, while enacting some new regulations on brick-and-mortar and online retailers that sell the products.
The campaign, called the Coalition for Reasonable Vaping Regulation, has collected about 20,000 signatures — more than double the 9,485 it needed to qualify for the ballot, said Nate Allbee, a spokesman for the campaign. It is expected to be sufficient to get the proposal on the ballot.
...
==
Reynolds Vapor prepares national launch of new e-cig rival to Juul ...
https://www.journalnow.com/business/reynolds...e-cig.../article_7ba10442-d438-575e...
1.
R. J. Reynolds Vapor Company - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Reynolds_Vapor_Company
2.
:{Jon-Patrick Allem:{}:
Assistant Professor of Research, University of Southern California
}:
https://theconversation.com/e-cig-companies-use-cartoon-characters-as-logos-and-new-study-shows-it-works-116484
Electronic cigarette use, or vaping, is unsafe for children, adolescents and young adults. Electronic cigarettes often contain nicotine and other harmful substances. Nicotine is addictive and can curb adolescent brain development, which continues into young adulthood. The leading electronic cigarette company insists it is not targeting youth as customers.
I study ways to inform public health and policy by using data from social media. As part of my research, I monitor the marketing material from tobacco companies, including electronic cigarette companies’ posts to Instagram, Twitter and YouTube – all platforms frequently used by young people.
Last year, my colleagues and I reported that electronic cigarette companies are using cartoons as a marketing strategy, and that many companies’ logos are cartoons. This suggests that cartoons are important to their brand identity.
Cartoon marketing for e-cigs is unregulated
Restrictions on cartoon marketing for combustible cigarettes and chewing tobacco have been in place since 1999. However, no such restrictions apply to electronic cigarettes.
In our follow-up study, recently published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, we examined the relationship between exposure to electronic cigarette marketing with cartoons and susceptibility to use such products in the future among young adults 18 to 25 years of age.
We recruited participants through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a web-based platform often used for experimental and survey research that has been shown to provide reliable data.
Participants (802 young adults) reported whether they had used electronic cigarettes in their lifetime, in the past six months and in the past 30 days. Those who had not used electronic cigarettes in their lifetime were categorized as “never users” (286 young adults) and were the focus of the study.
We wanted to determine if participants’ susceptibility to use electronic cigarettes in the future increased as a result of their exposure to cartoon-based marketing from electronic cigarette companies. Susceptibility was measured by responses to a series of questions such as, “Do you think that you will try vaping soon?”
Participants were presented with 22 images of electronic cigarette products. Eleven of the product images contained cartoons on the packaging, and 11 contained a noncartoon image. For each image, participants were asked to endorse whether or not they had seen the product before.
Thirty-eight percent of participants in our study recognized at least one cartoon-based marketing image. We found that among never-users, individuals who reported cartoon recognition were four times more likely to be susceptible to using electronic cigarettes in the future compared to those not susceptible.
We did not find a relationship between recognition of noncartoon images and susceptibility to use electronic cigarettes in the future. In other words, among never-users, recognition of actual cartoon-based marketing images – but not recognition of noncartoon-based marketing images – was associated with a greater likelihood of participants reporting susceptibility to use electronic cigarettes.
We controlled for other factors, including demographic characteristics, exposure to other types of marketing, that may be associated with susceptibility to use electronic cigarettes, allowing us to confidently claim that cartoon recognition is associated with susceptibility.
Our findings are consistent with prior research that examined the impact of cartoon-based marketing on the purchase and use of a range of products from combustible cigarettes to sugary foods.
The power of a welcoming character
Vaping by teens and other youth is on the rise. ]
Our study could not explain why cartoon recognition would be associated with susceptibility to use electronic cigarette use in the future, but earlier research suggests several possible reasons.For one, cartoons may be a simple communication of ideas (fun, exciting, welcoming) that can increase attention to product packaging. This ultimately leads to increased product recognition and may alter attitudes.
Also, MTurk’s recruitment is restricted to adults and may not be representative of the general population in the U.S. In the future, we plan to expand this research among samples across age groups including teenagers. Our study design was correlational and could not determine causality, meaning we found a correlation between seeing cartoon-based marketing and participants’ susceptibility to using electronic cigarettes, but we can’t say the marketing caused that susceptibility.
The Food and Drug Administration is developing ways to best regulate electronic cigarettes. Many experts in the public health community are actively trying to determine if electronic cigarettes help adult smokers quit combustible cigarettes or serve as a gateway product to smoking among youth.
While research on the public health impact of electronic cigarettes will continue for some time, it is clear that nicotine use of any kind is known to be addictive and harmful to young people’s brain development.
We believe that our findings could motivate policies aimed at reducing cartoon-based electronic cigarette marketing similar to those for combustible cigarettes and chewing tobacco.
---
==
SF ban juul hq
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-march-26-2019/
conley compares ban to tuskeegee experiemnt
st'd arg that regs will help big corps and screen out smaller competitors?
https://vaping.com/blog/news/greg-conley-to-lead-american-vaping-association/
==
12/18 some big tob corp bought 1/2 of juul sp
==
---
https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-is-helping-big-tobacco-hook-a-new-generation-of-smokers-112911
Big Tobacco is increasingly using social media to find new ways to hook young people on smoking, circumventing decades of laws restricting the marketing of traditional cigarettes to minors.
In major cities around the world such as Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Jakarta and Milan, tobacco companies have been holding extravagant events with names like “K_Player” and “RedMoveNow” that were designed to connect with young people. Often featuring alcohol, live music and attractive hosts, these lavish events spare no expense as they seek find new buyers for their tobacco products.
The problem? Those party-goers are carefully targeted young influencers, who are encouraged to share photos of their glamorous tobacco-sponsored adventures with friends and followers on social media using appealing hashtags like #iamonthemove, #decideyourflow and #mydaynow. And although the influencers are over 18, their social media followers can be much younger.
This exploitation of social media’s organic reach is one of the findings from a global research project I’ve been working on since 2016 with more than a dozen different scholars. The anti-smoking advocacy group Tobacco-Free Kids noticed a lot of photos of young people with cigarettes turning up in their online scans of global social media and asked me to look into it.
My own research focuses on how to rigorously research online culture using natural observational techniques, something that this study definitely required.
My team’s task was to monitor, report upon and analyze the programs behind the hashtagged social media posts of young people smoking. What we learned about tobacco company’s current advertising surprised us.
Tobacco ads were much bigger in 1996 – literally. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Skirting marketing restrictions
Tobacco companies have always had a knack for finding creative ways to skirt regulations intended to curb marketing to young people.
In 1971, the U.S. Congress banned tobacco ads from television and radio. In response, companies invested heavily in outdoor advertising and magazines. In 1997, the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement banned tobacco on outdoor and billboard ads. In response, tobacco money flowed into sponsorships of sports, music and other events. These type of event sponsorships were banned, with some exceptions, in 2010, at the same time wider restrictions on youth marketing were also introduced.
No matter the medium, the messaging was often the same: find ways to reach new and young potential smokers. As documents from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library reveal, tobacco executives have long believed that the continued survival and success of their companies depends on one thing: convincing young people to buy their products.
In 2005, the World Health Organization banned tobacco advertising in 168 signatory countries. By 2010, the U.S. had closed a lot of Big Tobacco’s favorite advertising and tobacco loopholes.
With conventional media mostly off-limits, what was Big Tobacco to do? Like the Marlboro Man, the unregulated Wild West of social media rode to the rescue.
The perfect marketing medium
Social media fits Big Tobacco’s advertising needs to a tee.
At least 88 percent of American youth say they use social media apps like Facebook and Instagram regularly, and the technologies are notoriously difficult to regulate.
With Tobacco-Free Kids’ financial support, I assembled a growing team of researchers to investigate. Our work is ongoing.
My team collected a plethora of social media data and also conducted interviews with a range of tobacco brand ambassadors, party attendees, influencers and industry insiders from around the world. What we found was an astoundingly effective use of social media by a range of different tobacco companies to connect with the next generation of potential cigarette smokers.
While tobacco companies were careful to abide by the letter of the law – the influencers involved in these posts were all of legal smoking age in their countries – social media has a public setting that makes it an effective and largely unregulated form of broadcast.
Legally, anyone age 13 or over can have an Instagram or Facebook account. Our “netnography” – a type of qualitative social media inquiry that focuses on cultural contexts, social structures and deeper meanings – only looked at public posts, images that any 13-year-old with an account could see.
Training camps and pop-up parties
Our investigation uncovered a range of promotional activities and a web of public relations and advertising agencies that cleverly leveraged the strengths of social media to keep tobacco advertising under the radar of existing regulation.
We found tobacco companies in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines recruiting “nano-influencers” of just 2,000-3,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram and encouraging them to post about their tobacco-sponsored adventures.
In Indonesia, we found brand ambassador training camps that lasted two full weeks and were run by the domestic tobacco company Gudang Garam. At these camps, young nano-influencers were paid generous fees, taught about cigarette brands images and then provided lessons about how to better maintain their social media feeds.
Public relations agencies in Uruguay taught their influencers how to take pictures of cigarette packages in ways that best accentuated their brands, offering tips on lighting, hashtags and the best time to post them for maximum impact.
Some companies used Facebook pages to recruit young people to attend their parties. After answering a few questions on the Facebook page, for example, responders were enrolled in a mailing list resulting in invitations to cool pop-up “parties and edgier events.”
At those parties, young people were greeted by attractive attendants who offered them cigarettes and encouraged them to pose with floor designs modeled after cigarette brand logos. After snapping pictures, they were encouraged to post them on their social media feed using the party’s decisiveness and action-oriented hashtags. The result was unquestionably a new form of cigarette promotion.
These activities clearly violate the spirit of the existing agreements not to indirectly advertise to young people. You can call it stealth, undercover or guerrilla marketing if you wish. Whatever its name, this is 21st-century cigarette advertising that reaches millions of young people around the world.
Exploiting social media
Our research has not only helped shine a light on Big Tobacco’s unchecked use of social media, it has also informed a recent petition to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requesting it to investigate and enforce these novel forms of cigarette advertising.
Although it might be difficult for governments to keep on top of media in these rapidly changing times, they must do so if they hope to prevent global smoking rates and their consequent health problems from rising once again. Indeed, with leadership change in the Food and Drug Administration, new and tighter regulations on tobacco and vaping in the United States are already being cast into doubt.
Social media provide an incredible advance in communications that democratize communications in unprecedented ways.
However, that openness is easy to exploit by marketers with dubious motives.
---
==
Flavored e-cigarettes are fueling a dangerous increase in tobacco use
Leah Ranney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
E-cigarette usage among teens has surged. A tobacco control expert explains how flavors may be contributing.
hmmn
http://www.casaa.org/historical-timeline-of-electronic-cigarettes/
==
conley ava
70 Hemlock St.
Stratford, CT 06615
:{:{}:
}:
Company Number1242811StatusActiveIncorporation Date22 June 2017 (10 months ago)Company TypeDomestic Limited Liability CompanyJurisdictionConnecticut (US)Registered Address
- 70 HEMLOCK ST, 70 HEMLOCK ST, STRATFORD, CT, 06615
- United States
Agent NameSTEPHANIE MARIE BUZBEEAgent Address70 HEMLOCK ST, STRATFORD, CT, 06615Directors / Officers
- DAVE DANZAK CPA, partner/member
- STEPHANIE MARIE BUZBEE, owner/managing partner
- STEPHANIE MARIE BUZBEE, agent
:{:{}:
}:
==
https://vaping.com/blog/news/greg-conley-to-lead-american-vaping-association/
vaping.com
Greg Conley to lead American Vaping Association
GARY COX / MAY 7, 2014 / NEWS & MEDIA
The American Vaping Association was founded in December, 2013, "for the purpose of positive media advocacy for vaping and electronic cigarettes." It is registered in New Jersey, and has applied for 501(c)(4) tax status, which will make the organization tax-exempt for the most part, but will not authorize them to receive tax-exempt charitable donations.
In April, 2014, the organization announced that its new President will be Greg Conley, former legislative affairs advisor to the advocacy group, the Citizen Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA).
The organization's home page features testimonials, a link to the group's Facebook page and one to Twitter, and a link to a statement from Conley on the new FDA Deeming Regulations. Conley takes a very pessimistic view on the Deeming Regs, expressing the view that the costs of the approval process will wipe out vape shops and give the big win to the cigarette companies of Big Tobacco. An "About Us" page gives information about tax status, a "What is Vaping?" page offers a primer, and a "Resources" page has valuable links. The contact page includes a postal address, an e-mail link, and even a telephone number.
Testimonials form the bulk of the AVA website at this point, and most of the news and daily activity seems to be on the Facebook page, which has 1669 likes and 171 talk-abouts as of 7 May.
Conley has also joined the libertarian-leaningHeartland Instituteas a research fellow on tobacco and nicotine policy and regulation. He practices law independently in New Jersey, where he earned a Master's of Business Administration and a Juris Doctor ("doctor of laws") degree from Rutgers University. He has testified before the FDA and before a variety of legislative committees, and his writings have been widely published, in outlets such as The National Review Online, The New York Post, the libertarian publication Reason Online, and Convenience Store Decisions, a trade news source for stores that comprise the major e-cigarette and cigarette sales locations. Conley quit smoking when he began vaping, in August, 2010.
The AVA statement on the Deeming Regulations, from Greg Conley, is as follows: “We are greatly concerned that the Food & Drug Administration’s proposal to regulate electronic cigarette products as ‘tobacco products’ will hand the electronic cigarette market over to Big Tobacco and potentially ban the sale of products used today by tens or hundreds of thousands of ex-smokers. This proposed regulation would enact regulatory barriers that will be insurmountable for many small and medium sized electronic cigarette companies. While we support banning the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors, we also believe that the FDA’s current regulatory scheme is entirely inappropriate for these innovative, technology-driven products.”
Conley was also quoted recently on the "Motherboard" page of Vice Media, in the piece "The E-cig industry will choke on new FDA regulations – but not Big Tobacco. The article's author, Meghan Neal, compares the Big Tobacco e-cigs to what you can vape in a mod as follows: it's "like the difference between instant coffee and responsibly sourced beans hand-ground and brewed with a high-end filter by a loving if pretentious barista."
The vaping community will certainly want to keep an eye on the activities of the AVA and its leader, and of course many vapers will want to visit and submit testimonials, if they have not already done so.
==
==
http://thehill.com/regulation/healthcare/269351-republican-emerges-as-champion-of-e-cigarettes
no many lnx
former smoker turned vaper, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) is becoming one of the biggest advocates for electronic cigarettes in Congress.
Hunter has pushed legislation to protect the growing industry, and made headlines this week when he puffed from an e-cigarette during a congressional hearing.
“This is called a vaporizer,” Hunter said Thursday as he accidentally blew a white cloud of e-cigarette smoke into another lawmaker’s face. “There’s no combustion. There’s no carcinogens. Smoking has gone down as the use of vaporizers has gone up.”
“There is no burning,” added Hunter. “There is nothing noxious about this whatsoever. This has helped thousands of people quit smoking. It’s helped me quit smoking."
Hunter was protesting an amendment that would prohibit the use of e-cigarettes on airplanes, which passed with some Republican support.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who sponsored the amendment banning e-cigarettes on airplanes, thought Hunter’s vaping was funny, particularly because she believes it helped her win the vote of Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), who had to sweep away a cloud of smoke from Hunter’s e-cigarette with her hand.
“Imagine what it would be like if you were sitting next to him on an airplane,” Norton joked.
Hunter did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The California Republican’s show of support for e-cigarettes was no mere publicity stunt.
E-cigarette officials say Hunter has been leading the charge for them in Congress, waging fights to deregulate the industry, stop an e-cigarette airline ban and protect the right to smoke on military bases.
Greg Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, said Hunter is a “champion” for the e-cigarette industry.
“He’s absolutely the most vocal proponent of vapor products in Congress,” Conley said.
"Being a former smoker, Hunter understands the challenges more than anyone,” said Cynthia Cabrera, executive director of the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association. “He’s lived it himself, he’s experienced the struggles of quitting first hand, and he understands that we have an opportunity to help move people away from cigarettes."
“This guy is out in front of the issue,” Cabrera added. “He’s owning it. Hardly anyone is willing to stand up there and say, ‘Hey, people are dying from smoking cigarettes. We need to look at other options.’ The fact that he’s willing to bring attention to it is great."
Hunter said last year that e-cigarettes helped him quit smoking traditional cigarettes and could "very well save my life.”
“Yes, I vape — as do millions of other Americans,” Hunter wrote in a letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “And why do I vape? It is because it prevents me from smoking the real thing.”
His letter came after Pelosi boasted about killing a policy rider in the government spending bill that would have provided vapers with greater access to e-cigarettes.
Hunter recalled his own struggles with smoking, dating back to his time as a Marine.
“E-cigarettes are a suitable alternative to cigarettes, and they could very well save my life, as well as the lives of so many Americans who are making their best effort to quit cigarettes,” Hunter wrote.
“Ironically, by not supporting the commercial availability of e-cigarettes, with all their advancements in recent years, you are giving your support — whether intended or not — to traditional cigarettes and other products,” he added.
Hunter is also trying to help the e-cigarette industry stave off government regulation. He is pushing back against new rules from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that critics say would destroy the industry.
The FDA is in the process of finalizing new rules for e-cigarettes.
The so-called deeming regulation would give the FDA the authority to review e-cigarettes before they hit the market. But critics say this would essentially be a deathblow for the industry, because the agency has a backlog of tobacco products that could slow approval for newer e-cigarettes.
The FDA Deeming Authority Clarification Act, which Hunter is co-sponsoring, would roll back those proposed restrictions.
It’s unclear with the legislation will see action, despite Republican control of House.
Though Hunter has been vocal about his personal desire to quit smoking, he has also given support to more traditional tobacco products.
In 2014, Hunter authored an amendment to the defense funding bill that seeking to overturn a proposed military smoking ban. The Pentagon was planning to ban tobacco sales on Navy bases and ships, though it would not necessarily have prohibited sailors from smoking.
At the time, Hunter defended soldiers’ right to smoke.
“We sleep in the dirt for this country,” he told theWashington Free Beacon. “We get shot at for this country. But we can’t have a cigarette if we want to for this country, because that’s unhealthy.”
The tobacco industry has opened its coffers to help Hunter. Since 2010, he’s received more than $38,000 in campaign contributions from companies that make both traditional and electronic cigarettes, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In the current election cycle, Altria Group, Inc., which has ties to Philip Morris, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company have each contributed $5,000 to Hunter. Lorillard Tobacco Company, which later merged with Reynolds, donated $5,000 to the congressman in 2014.
Hunter has also received smaller contributions from cigar makers.
==
https://www.atr.org/grover-norquist-speech-new-orleans-vaping-movement-will-win
In a speech to vapor product business owners and consumers, ATR president Grover Norquist recently outlined his view on how vapers can defeat efforts to tax and regulate electronic cigarettes and vapor products. New CDC data suggests that there are more than 9 million adult consumers of vapor products in the United States.
As Grover explains, the large number of consumers using these products to live healthier tobacco-free lives represents a political movement that politicians would be wise to recognize, especially as we head into the 2016 election cycle.
==
11/11
That's what the Food and Drug Administration tells us on its website.
My intuition makes me grateful that the FDA is there to protect me—to make sure that every drug is proven both safe and effective—but "protection" kills people.
Last week, I discussed how the FDA kills by keeping useful medical devices off the market. Now, we learn the FDA threatens the health of cigarette smokers who want to quit.
How can I say that? Hasn't the FDA proposed that new warnings and gruesome pictures be placed on cigarette packages because the old scares apparently weren't working? As Reuters reminds us:
“The Food and Drug Administration in June released nine new warnings. ... Warnings must cover the top half of the front and back of cigarette packs and 20 percent of printed advertisements, and must contain color graphics depicting the health consequences of smoking, including diseased lungs, dead bodies and rotting teeth." So the FDA certainly seems to be trying to save smokers' lives. How can I say the FDA threatens smokers?
What other conclusion can we draw when we consider that the FDA now talks about banning electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes. It sent threatening letters to manufacturers of the product.
E-cigarettes look like cigarettes, but instead of burning tobacco, they vaporize liquid nicotine when users puff on, or "vape," them. The resulting aerosol mist satisfies "smokers" without their inhaling tars and the most dangerous of tobacco's chemicals into their lungs.
What could be wrong with that? Well, the FDA says e-cigarettes contain trace chemicals that "may" be "toxic."
But most everything "may" be toxic. New York Times science columnist John Tierney writes: "The agency has never presented evidence that the trace amounts actually cause any harm, and it has neglected to mention that similar traces of these chemicals have been found in other FDA-approved products, including nicotine patches and gum. The agency's methodology and warnings have been lambasted in scientific journals."
Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville, concluded in the Harm Reduction Journal that the FDA results "are highly unlikely to have any possible significance to users" because it detected chemicals at "about 1 million times lower concentrations than are conceivably related to human health."
Moreover, Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, told Tierney: "It boggles my mind why there is a bias against e-cigarettes among antismoking groups" such as the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association.
It boggles my mind, too, because as Tierney points out, e-cigarettes not only pose merely a hypothetical risk compared to real "cigarettes containing thousands of chemicals, including dozens of carcinogens and hundreds of toxins," e-cigarettes also have been shown to be unusually successful in helping smokers quit. A new study from Italy found that after 24 weeks, half of all smokers using the e-cigarettes reduced their consumption of the real McCoy by 50 percent. A quarter gave up smoking altogether.
True, the cigarette substitutes are basically nicotine-delivery devices. But so what? Britain's Royal College of Physicians found that "if nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved."
The American Association of Public Health Physicians wrote that e-cigarettes might "save the lives of 4 million of the 8 million current adult American smokers."
Four million lives!
The FDA seems to believe that it can create a risk-free environment here on earth. But that is pure balderdash. Life is always a choice between greater and lesser risks—zero risk is not an option. Striving to abolish risk kills people.
"It's time to be honest with the 50 million Americans, and hundreds of millions around the world, who use tobacco," Rodu writes. "It's time to abandon the myth that tobacco is devoid of benefits and to focus on how we can help smokers continue to derive those benefits with a safer delivery system."
The FDA claims that all its regulations save lives. But its e-cigarette policy would kill smokers.
John Stossel is host of Stossel on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity. To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com.
==
###
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a11zE5yvMzk
Oct 21, 2011 - Uploaded by SmokelessDelight
Call 888-685-6429 to speak with a live counselor about Electronic Cigarettes . ... Joytech eGO PCC Model ...
Fox News: John Stossel supporting e-cigarettes | E-Cigarette Forum
www.e-cigarette-forum.com › ... › Media and General News
1.
Fox News **e**-**cig** study goes up in smoke
Jan 24, 2015
E**-**cigarettes**: Some say **vaping e**-**cigarettes** is worse than smoking **...
May 30, 2013
Great Article by John **Stossel
Nov 17, 2011
Jan 28, 2011
More results from www.e-cigarette-forum.com
The FDA Kills Smokers - Reason.com
reason.com/archives/2011/11/17/the-fda-kills-smokers
2.
Fox News: John Stossel Supporting E-Cigarettes - Vaping In The ...
www.vaportalk.com › ... › Vaping In The News
1.
Though ACSH has often taken industry-friendly positions on public health issues, it has long campaigned against smoking. In 1993, Elizabeth Whelan wrote in the *Wall Street Journal*—a frequent home for ACSH op-eds—in favor of a "user's fee" on smokers to fund health-care reform. Three years later, ACSHpublished a book called Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You, with chapters detailing how smoking makes men infertile, causes blindness, and leads to brittle bones. Ross, ACSH's medical director, has backed a call for the film industry to slap an "R" rating on any movie with smoking in it.
Yet more recently, the agendas of ACSH and Big Tobacco have overlapped, thanks to the growing market for tobacco alternatives, includinge-cigarettes and other smoke-free products. As ACSH has courted tobacco companies large and small for financial support, it has touted e-cigarettes—some being manufactured by subsidiaries of major tobacco companies—as a saferalternative to cigarettes. And the documents show that ACSH planned to receive a total of $338,200 from tobacco companies between July 2012 and June 2013. Reynolds American and Phillip Morris International were each listed as expected to give $100,000 in 2013, which would make them the two largest individual donations listed in the ACSH documents. (Reynolds confirmed making a $100,000 donation to ACSH in 2012 and donating additional money in 2013. Phillip Morris confirmed donating to ACSH in 2012 and 2013 but didn't disclose the amounts.)
Ross has stumped for e-cigarettes on TV and radio appearances and in op-eds, writing this month for Forbes that e-cigarettes are a "nascent public-health miracle" and urging US regulators to embrace e-cigarettes—which use liquid nicotine to deliver a smokeless hit for users—as an alternative to cancer-causing traditional cigarettes. Ross' op-ed was timely. Any day now, the FDA is expected to announcenew plans to regulate the $1.5 billion e-cigarette industry, which saw its sales triple this year.
But Ross' op-ed does not disclose ACSH's financial support from big tobacco companies like Altria and Reynolds that own e-cigarette-making subsidiaries. Nor does it mention that ACSH, as the fundraising documents suggest, is using the e-cigarettes issue to court potential new funders such as VMR Products and its subsidiary V2 Cigs, Green Smoke, and 21st Century.
In the Forbes op-ed, Ross criticizes nonprofit groups campaigning against e-cigarettes, huffing that they are "heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies in the business of selling near-useless cessation drugs—a fact which they conveniently neglect to disclose." It was a bold charge, given ACSH's own record on the disclosure of industry donations.
==
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/09/11/researchers-call-for-retraction-of-nejm-paper-showing-dangers-of-e-cigarettes/#comment-704232
==
Ur-TP
Other third-party groups: tobacco industry and Tea Party affiliations
In 2001, Humber announced that the NSA would be dissolved, with some of its funds being transferred to the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF, figure 1),133 ,134 which Humber founded in 1998.135 Its mission is to ‘protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.’136 As of 2012, CFIF's president was former NSA spokesperson Jeffrey Mazzella137 ,138 and CFIF's corporate counsel and senior vice president was former NSA attorney Renee Giachino.139 ,140
The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR, figure 1), which promotes ‘principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility [as] the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century,’141 has been a longstanding tobacco industry ally and employs or collaborates with individuals who worked for the tobacco industry. Philip Morris funded NCPPR in the 1990s,142–144 and NCPPR was a member of RJR's GGOOB.31 NCPPR also opposed FDA regulation of tobacco145 and the DOJ RICO lawsuit against the tobacco industry.146 In 2012 NCPPR was continuing efforts, such as its ‘Occupy Occupy D.C. Smoke-in’ to protest about taxes onsmokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes.147
Thomas Borelli, also an NCPPR senior fellow and his spouse, Deneen Borelli, an NCPPR fellow (as well as a FreedomWorks’ fellow148) worked for Philip Morris for over 20 years and have spoken at Tea Party events (figure 1 and online supplementary table S2). While at Philip Morris, Thomas Borelli served on its public policy advisory council, which reviewed and prioritised public policy grants for funding and designated CSE a Category A public policy organisation for funding.54 Dana Joel Gattuso, a NCPPR senior fellow, had been CSE's deputy director of regulatory affairs.149
Steve Milloy, who served as co-director of NCPPR's Free Enterprise Project with Tom Borelli,150 helped the industry contest the link between second-hand smoke and disease.29 Milloy directed The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition151 (TASSC, figure 1), which was created for Philip Morris in 1993 by the public relations firm APCO Associates, as part of the effort to undermine the EPA's second-hand smoke risk assessment.29 Though TASSC was eventually disbanded, Milloy maintained http://junkscience.com as of 2012152 (see online supplementary table S2).
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early hist sci corruption:
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Carlo begins dealings with the tobacco industry.
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The Safe Smokeless Cigarette:
RJ Reynolds Tobacco and the other major cigarette companies all had R&D programs trying to get around the cancerous properties of minute chemical traces in tobacco smoke, while still selling a product which delivered the addictive substance, nicotine.
The most advanced of these was the Reynolds Premier cigarette (later re-released as 'Eclipse'). It was essentially a heated tube which vaporised nicotine, and during the development stages it was known by a number of code names: Project Q, Project Alpha, Project SPA. All documents related to these developments were numbered and stamped SECRET.
In the months before the first release of the Premier cigarette, selected and trusted scientists and academics were treated to a conference at Boston's Gradient Corporation, and provided with a monograph
Another restricted conference was held in Washington, followed by a San Francisco conference which appears to have been used as a training ground for contracted consultants who were being commissioned to speak up in support of the new product.
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1988 June 13:RJ Reynolds Secret document on the release of Project Alpha lists selected scientists who they plan to brief on this 'smokeless-tube cigarette' (later known as the Premier). The first list includes both known tobacco scientists and some obviously chosen for their professional prominence.
- Ian Munro (then the Director of the Canadian Centre of Toxicology, Uni of Guelf) is listed as one of the Key Scientific Consultants doing the briefings in Canada.
- George Carlo was one of the few non-academics invited to the Gradient Seminar (Gradient are a Boston science-for-sale outfit).
Carlo also received a monograph about the coming cigarette release. He is listed under the heading of Gradient Conference Attendee.
[The deletions appear to indicate trusted scientist who have already been briefed.]
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1988 July:Publication of Cancer mortality of workers involved in chemical manufacturering, Plant Cohort : A Strong. Healthy Worker Effect. Contracted study report.
The Dow Chemicals/RJ Reynolds lobbyist Matt Swetonic wrote in an August 1992 memo that [during this 1988-89 period] George Carlo worked for the chemical industries:
As recently as three or four years ago, he had a working relationship with EBH (E Bruce Harrison Co/Hill & Knowlton) doing joint projects for various chemical industry clients. In short, we know Carlo very well....
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1988 July 21:Carlo was involved in the panel discussion "The Presentation of Epidemiological Evidence" (in the courts). This was at a symposium run by for science-witnesses and experts by District Court Judges Sherman G Finesilver and Carl B Rubin
George Carlo made a reported comment at the symposium on the subject of "guilt-by-association and attacks on your credibility":
"From a professional perspective, testifying as an expert witness is potentially perilous to one's career. Some of those difficulties have to do with whether or not you're being retained as a testifying expert or as an non-testifying expert. The epidemiologist is one of the first lines of keeping spurious cases from getting to the point of having to go to court, particularly when you are retained as a non-testifying expert."
[Source now missing]
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1988 Aug 10 - 30:RJ Reynolds has now extended its series of secret conferences promoting its 'Project Alpha' ('Premier' cigarette) the tube nicotine delivery system. This document includes lists of attendees — both Politicians and Scientists and is another numbered (ie checkable) RJR Secret Document.
They have conference lists for
- Washington DC — for East Coast scientists and academics from Philadelphia, Florida, Texas, etc. This list of 27 academics only has one which registers as an obvious tobacco consultant/grant-taker (Susan Wonnacott)
- New York — for those from New York State, New England, Philaelphia, Canada, etc) This list of 16 academics only has two who work for tobacco companies (Frederick Seitz and Andrew Sivak)
- San Francisco — West Coast.
There are 27 on the list from all over the country, and at least half are known consultants to the tobacco industry. This appears to be a special group with many well-known and well-established tobacco consultant scientists and science-for-sale entrepreneurs — including that of George Carlo.who lived in Washington DC at this time.
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