If you’ve been thinking you missed the White House rollout on banning flavored vaping fluids, it may be because it never happened. Aborting the ban just hours before the scheduled Nov. 5 signing, the White House instead promised future meetings that will also take into consideration the impact on vaping industry jobs.
This is of course another hackneyed, Trump staffers’ wink-and-nod to corporate interests, donors and in this case vaping voters for whom the issue is a deal breaker.
Indeed, given Trump’s well-established pattern of policy flips, it’s easy to imagine this pivot was made in accord with whichever lobbying firm had last dibs with his campaign coordinators.
Yet, while somebody gets screwed each and every time Trump et. al. play to the money- grubbing worst in us, it’s particularly heinous when that someone is our kids. (Straight up, how much compartmentalization must a policymaker possess in order to ignore the impact of their decisions on children?)
The answer is a lot.
But all is not lost in the matter of vaping, for at least some on the right understand the health risks posed by an unregulated product (see nicotine delivery system), so readily accessed yet so under researched and regulated; and some on the left are willing to take to the courts to save lives.
In response to the decision to delay the ban, two staunchly conservative women’s organizations — Eagle Forum (EF) and Concerned Women for America (CWA) — joined with former Trump White House advisor Katy Talento, in crafting a stay-the-course letter to Trump. The letter is strong, but no less the language in CWA’s online affirmation of Trump’s original stance:
“The bottom line is this: No one in the halls of government should be allowing easy access to the very chemical that could be injuring and killing our young men. Shame on any leader who caves to the demands of big business over the health and well-being of his or her constituents. Now it’s time to issue the guidance as soon as possible and give investigators and medical professionals the opportunity they need to discover what’s killing our young men.”
Given such statements could have been penned by Bernie Sanders, there is an obvious feel-good element when far-right groups unexpectedly transcend the party line; but if flavored vaping fluids (think candy, mint and fruit) are to be removed from the shelves and online outlets, we’ll need more than letters. We’ll need progressives in high places to apply legal pressure.
The leader in producing e-cigarettes, vaping fluids and accessories is San Francisco-based Juul Labs (now owned by the former Philip Morris Company, Altria). With a market share of 72% as of last year, profits were so large Altria rewarded it’s 1,500 employees with a shared total of $2 billion.
Given the high stakes — and Juul’s aggressive marketing in youth-friendly products — the company is in the legal crosshairs in the wake of at least 42 vaping-related deaths. Led by New York and California, a handful of progressive and proactive states attorneys have filed suits against Juul, alleging it deceived customers — especially teenagers — by claiming vaping is a safe alternative to tobacco.
In its lawsuit filed earlier this month, New York laid out what could be a template for other states seeking to hold the vaping companies to account: “Juul took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook by engaging in deceptive business practices when marketing and advertising its products, and illegally sold its products to minors through its website and in third-party retail stores throughout the state, causing large numbers of New York youth to become addicted to nicotine.”
There are other suits underway, as well as bills raising the age for buying e-cigarettes from 18 to 21. And the US House Energy and Commerce earlier this month approved legislation banning flavored vaping fluids.
But given a corporate-friendly US Senate and several libertarian groups (including “I Vape I Vote”) are willing to politicize the issue, it’s not clear how many state officials will take the hits and stop experimenting with vaping, with our young as the lab experiments.
Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2019
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