What does the FDA stand to lose if vaping succeeds?
Not funding. Not authority.
What it could lose is credibility.
If vaping continues to prove itself as a significantly lower-risk alternative to smoking, many Americans will ask why public health agencies spent years blurring the distinction between combustible cigarettes and smoke-free nicotine products.
Critics argue the FDA has often prioritized fear of youth vaping over the potential benefits for millions of adult smokers trying to quit cigarettes.
The result? Many smokers now mistakenly believe vaping is just as harmful—or even more harmful—than smoking.
If harm reduction ultimately saves millions of lives, the toughest question won't be whether vaping was risk-free.
It will be: Did public health provide smokers with accurate, balanced information when it mattered most?
Smokers deserve facts. Not slogans. Not scare campaigns. Facts.
#Vaping #HarmReduction #PublicHealth #FDA #Smoking #TobaccoHarmReduction #Nicotine #QuitSmoking
It’s super fun living in a post truth, post facts world. Anyone can just say anything about anything without ever having to prove it, or back it up with science and data.
This says it all! The weird opposition towards nicotine vaping products has created a steady alliance between those who claim to "protect" youth and those who sell, or benefit from cigarette sales. Vaping is the resistance, and people like @LisaCiarlone make all the difference.
It certainly seems that way, at least from my experience.
Rhode Island has had legislation for two years in a row that would allow flavored vapor products only in licensed, regulated 21+ vapor specialty stores. One of the reasons I was given for why the bill would not be supported was opposition from the heart and lung associations.
What I find troubling is that lawmakers are elected to represent their constituents, not advocacy organizations. More than 64,000 Rhode Island adults about 7% of the adult population use vapor products. These are voters, taxpayers, parents, veterans, business owners, and former smokers whose voices deserve to be heard.
We're constantly told these policies are about protecting youth. We hear repeatedly that nicotine can affect the adolescent brain. Yet youth vaping is at or near a seven-year low both nationally and in Rhode Island.
Rhode Island's own data show youth marijuana use is roughly double the youth vaping rate.
Yet I don't remember seeing the same level of opposition, if any, from these organizations when it came to marijuana legislation, whose products come in every imaginable flavor.
To be clear, I'm not criticizing marijuana legalization or suggesting it should be prohibited. I support adults having choices. I'm simply pointing out what appears to be a glaring inconsistency.
Another inconsistency is that flavored nicotine gum, lozenges, and nicotine toothpicks are widely available to adults. Fruit flavors, mint flavors, cinnamon flavors, and other non-tobacco flavors are considered acceptable in those products. Yet when adults choose a flavored vapor product instead, the response is often prohibition rather than harm reduction.
Meanwhile, our proposal was a tightly regulated adult-only model limited to licensed vapor specialty stores, and the heart and lung associations fought against it. Lawmakers listened to national advocacy organizations instead of the more than 64,000 Rhode Island adults directly affected by these policies.
Cigarettes remain the deadliest legal consumer product ever sold. They are still sold on virtually every street corner in America and continue to kill about 480,000 Americans, approximately 1,900 Rhode Islanders, and 8 million people globally every year.
Those adults matter too. They deserve more options, not fewer. Adults trying to move away from cigarettes deserve options, not policies that drive consumers across state lines, to the internet, or to unregulated markets.
The way I see it, the opinions of a few advocacy organizations carried more weight than the voices of tens of thousands of Rhode Islanders and the needs of adults trying to move away from cigarettes.
If harm reduction, adult choice, and evidence-based policy are valid principles in other areas, why do they seem to disappear when the subject is nicotine, when cigarettes remain the number one preventable cause of death and kill approximately 1,900 Rhode Islanders every year?
Why doesn't anybody seem to care about those people?
@DrMarthaGulati@JAMANetworkOpen@American_Heart@ACCinTouch@ASPCardio Comparing 2021 with 2024 (2020 had a change in the definitions), when you multiply the proportion of monthly vapers by the proportion of daily vapers (of monthly) you end up with an overall population estimate of 2.9% of youths daily vaping in both years.
Maybe, just maybe, you should focus on "protecting" children from particulary smoking and NOT creating illicit nicotine markets targeting the young? Your call. But in the end, consequences are very real.
A very timely and valuable exchange with 🇪🇺Commissioner @OliverVarhelyi on two urgent public health priorities: the #Ebola response and tobacco control.
I thanked the European Union for its strong financial and humanitarian support to the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and for its close cooperation with @WHO and national authorities to help contain the outbreak, support communities and prevent further spread.
We also discussed the upcoming revision of the EU Tobacco Products Directive – a critical opportunity to protect young people from nicotine addiction and ensure regulation keeps pace with new products, flavours, packaging and digital marketing.
Grateful for the Commissioner’s leadership and the EU’s continued partnership for health.
Jag och säkert många med mig, vill ha alternativ till cigarretter och därmed slippa återgå till rökning. Svindyra apoteksprodukter funkar bara som dränering av ekonomin. Den som inte förstår det har aldrig kämpat.
Inse vad Sverige har lyckats med! 🙈🙉🙊
@papaioannoy@DavidSweanor and @papaioannoy talk about how vape shop owners cannot legally share scientific facts about relative risk without risking 18 months in federal prison and/or a $500,000 fine
@DavidSweanor references declining trust in authorities globally and asks rhetorically: #GFN26
"Do people say, 'the health authorities are wrong on vaping, but I trust them on everything else'?"
Ayer en @LaRevuelta_TVE el Dr. Diego González Rivas (@dgonzalezrivas) equiparó el vapeo con el tabaco y dijo que da exactamente igual.
Un medio público dando información contraria a la evidencia científica que pone en riesgo la salud de más de diez millones de fumadores en España. En este vídeo explico por qué esto es gravísimo.
¿Qué opináis? #LaRevuelta #Tabaco #Vapeo
Very true! It is one of the most frustrating parts of all this. And you notice it when speaking to people, especially smokers, the click-bait propaganda is very much affecting their views on harm reduction and vaping. And they just keep on smoking.
One of the funniest parts of being a vaping advocate is watching people read a clickbait anti-vaping headline and immediately appoint themselves as experts.
They don't read the study. They don't check the data. They don't understand the methodology. But somehow, they're suddenly FDA field analysts, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and public health experts all rolled into one.
A headline isn't a degree, but you'd never know it from the comments section.
#thinkingoutloud #Vaping #HarmReduction #PublicHealth #fda #whitehouse #junkscience
Nu stoppar vi EU från att höja skatten på snus!
Jag har lovat svenska snusare att vi inte ska låta EU chockhöja skatten på vitt snus och nu infriar jag det löftet. Jag kommer alltid att sätta svenskarnas intressen först, andra länder bestämmer inte över vårt snus.
Awesome news! @LynneDawkins research and educational lectures on the relative harms between vaping and smoking has been a fundamental to my own journey, as well as hundreds of vapers I've connected with and educated in the past 10 years. She has saved lives! @GrimmGreen
Asanda Gcoyi talks about the well-intentioned ban on tobacco/nicotine products in South Africa...
Which resulted in a near-overnight takeover by the illicit market, which has not only failed to reduce use, but is supplying products at 1/10th of the legal cost. #GFN26
@ReemAmirIbrahim on prohibition: "Either the legal market will supply nicotine products, or the illicit market will. There is no third option where nobody supplies it -- because demand still exists." #GFN26
Carissa Düring discusses why Sweden's smoking rate is so much lower than Finland's, despite being similar counties: Finland bans snus. #GFN26
Bans have a negative effect on social attitudes, risk perceptions, etc. which keep people smoking