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Watching the Committee on Oversight and Reform’s hearing on vaping yesterday was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.
Most of the action was political grandstanding and an apparent total lack of understanding of the issues at stake. Those who desire to ban e-cigarettes, as many states are considering doing, were happy to conflate lung illness with youth vaping. The two may be inter-related but the evidence for that is weak at best.
Former FDA Commissioner and AEI colleague, Scott Gottlieb, tried this morning on CNBC to present the facts and prevent the conflation of the two issues, but failed to mention that the UK, (where all legal products are on sale) has not reported any similar lung illness deaths. Indeed, the UK government (which is at least getting this right if not much else at the moment) continues to advocate for vaping as being far less harmful than cigarettes.
This morning news also broke that the CEO of Juul has resigned. Following his removal, it is possible that the entire company may collapse. Given the intense scrutiny and regulations forced onto vaping manufacturers, many retailers may soon not be able to sell the majority of their products. If you think the lung illness deaths are a problem now, wait until the US removes the least guilty products from the market. The FDA, CDC and other enforcement agencies are simply not going to be able to interdict all the underground web access to these products.
Watching the Committee on Oversight and Reform’s hearing on vaping yesterday was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.
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