Trump doesn’t want the FDA to regulate tobacco

• The title is misleading and sensational. It comes across that the current administration wants less regulation on tobacco when it in fact it may want more. When an author does this you are no longer a journalist but a political activist. The article itself was informative and fair.

  • Political activist perhaps, I think, though, more of a click-baiter. I suspect in journalism these days, one must first click-bait in order to disseminate the article. A lead-in perhaps.

• Speaking of “moronic,”
  The proposal also follows striking comments from the White House’s top domestic policy adviser Joe Grogan, who told reporters in November that it was a “moronic idea” for the FDA to regulate tobacco. He suggested the FDA’s tobacco work was distracting the agency from its more traditional roles, like regulating drugs.
  DUH! Joe, “Nicotine” is a DRUG. It does many of the same things as other drugs to the “reward pathway” in the brain! I think you need a course in 101 Drug Education!

  • Caffeine is a drug. Should the FDA regulate coffee?

  • Anne, Your response sounds like the justification ppl give for not supporting common sense gun laws.
    If it weren’t for FDA, anti tobacco lobbies , and the AMA, we’d still have our government denying that Nicotine is addictive. The fact that it wasn’t too long ago that the industry was knowingly putting chemicals and fiberglass in cigarettes to speed up delivery of the drug, is indicative of the serious coverup as well as the lawsuits which ensued as a result of + 500,000 cancer deaths yearly (US) due to tobacco use, not to mention over 600,000 dying from heart disease and stroke all related to smoking.
    Try looking up the numbers for caffeine related deaths!

  • Try looking up the numbers for nicotine related deaths. They are just as sparse as caffeine deaths. Just because nicotine, caffeine, and the polyphenols in grapefruit are drugs doesn’t mean the FDA should regulate them.

    Your argument that the FDA should regulate something because it can sensibly be called a drug is weak, and you should consider that before calling Grogan a moron on this basis. Maybe you can formulate a more precise reason that nicotine or tobacco should be regulated by the FDA, but semantic distinctions like this are not useful in identifying the costs and benefits of changing complex and expensive regulatory structures.

  • You are correct about nicotine – it is a drug, it is addictive (check the National Institute of Drug Abuse/NIDA and the World Health Organization). It is one of the few if only addictive drugs not regulated by the DEA. While it would be very difficult to overdose on nicotine by smoking, it is very possible to do so by ingesting nicotine directly from bulk refills that are used for vaping devices. The tobacco is obviously spending lots of $$ to prevent regulations on nicotine to protect their business.

  • @Heinzmann
    I agree, but it would be equally easy to kill oneself by drinking Windex or a bottle of Tylenol. Maybe addictiveness is a good criterion for regulation, but how harmful is addiction to vaping? There’s no case there (yet). Vape companies should try to protect their industry. I want to buy their products, and I can’t manufacture a Juul myself.

• Mysterius (not really) E-cig related deaths = 60.
  Not so mysterious tobacco-related deaths = 500,000 p/a.
  Just saying.

  • The tobacco-related deaths occurred after many years of smoking (COPD & emphysema also occur). The vaping/E-cig deaths occurred following very short-term use (mostly in younger people). Immature teens do not understand the potential risks in inhaling vapors that are heated from unknown chemicals manufactured in Chinese factories in a country (U.S.) that does not regulate these devices – they are playing Russian roulette with Chinese chemicals.

  • The deaths caused by “vaping” came from Vitamin E Acetate found in THC black market illegal cartomizers, not from E-juice.

    Like the FDA told the CDC, this is not a new disease, it will always cause lipid pneumonia when you inhale oils. E-juice is water based, not oil based.

• “Now on the kid debate.” It is true than teen will try/do almost anything, even if it is illegal. Adults are supposed to protect teens so that they do not harm themselves while they are teens and grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults. The biggest problem with vaping nicotine is the nicotine – it is an addictive drug. Teens’ brains are still developing into their early 20s. Addiction to ANY drug will change the brain’s development- making nicotine cessation extremely difficult, if not impossible without behavioral and medical assistance. Companies that sell flavored vaping devices (with or without nicotine) make them extremely attractive to teens. The health effects of vaporizing & inhaling flavoring additives are unknown, but probably damaging to the user’s lungs. Federal & state laws should prohibit the promotion, sales, and possession of any nicotine-containing delivery system (vaping devices, cigarettes, pipes, etc.) for anyone under 21 with penalties that are sufficient to deter their use by teens (e.g., suspending their driver’s license, requiring anti-smoking counseling). ALL flavored (including menthol) vaping devices should be banned. It may be useful to restrict vaping devices to being sold behind the counter in pharmacies with signature required to make them less accessible to teens. The bottom line is that America does not care very much about their teens’ health & welfare by ignoring the problem of vaping/smoking nicotine.

• You realize that the CDC knew All along that the mysterious vaping illnesses were caused by black market THC cartridges, right? Also, the CDC has done nothing to get the word out. People think that the illnesses were from nic vapes, especially JUUL.

• It has always been my hypothesis that Gottlieb was pushed out as FDA Commissioner due to his attempt to more aggressively regulating tobacco and nicotine products. There are certain elected officials from certain states with large tobacco interests. Most are Republican. They get heat from donors who pass that along to the White House. Seems like the most plausible explanation given Gottlieb’s assertion that he had no intention of resigning just weeks prior to his resignation.
  So this strikes me as a continuation of recent efforts to protect these industries. A new regulatory entity? That doesn’t get filled with industry lobbyists? In this administration? That’s funny.

  • Due to the MSA signed between states and tobacco companies the interests of those states and tobacco companies intertwine. The majority of funds for “anti-tobacco” groups including the American heart association and American Lung Association comes directly from tobacco companies. These groups, some of which are ran buy the spouses of the marketing companies working for Big Tobacco attack vaping. There are many anti-vaping adverts on social media but when was the last time you seen an anti-tobacco one?

    There is no “Big Vaping”, Trump’s regulation of closed systems effectively locked tobacco companies out of the vaping industry. All that is left are small to medium sized e-juice manufacturers and small business shop owners. Nearly all of the devices are made in China due to their use of cheap like slave labor making the costs unprofitable for US manufacturers.

• A separate entity to address nicotine / tobacco / vaping addictions seems to make sense. Releaves the impossible load now on FDA shoulders. It would have to abide by very similar rules and goals, though. And its “staff” must be absolutely infallably un-corruptable by the powerful, selfish, unscrupulous, criminal Tobacco companies and Lobbyists. This then however begs the question : would this new entity be at all viable ? trustworthy? in the USA?

• Tobacco should not be regulated but totally ban. I had relatives dying due to cancer because of tobacco smoking.

  I am not sure why we complain about climate change, etc. But right in front of us is a sure killer in form of tobacco, yet for decades they are allowed to sell this poisonous product due to tobacco company lobbying. Of course some people seems like they can smoke forever and not get cancer, unfortunately I only heard about this people on internet. So whether they are true or not remain to be seen.

• This would be a very bad policy to implement under the current administration, as it disregards scientific data when making policy decisions and regulations. Scientists, the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), addiction specialists, and social scientists should be heavily involved with any policies or regulations on nicotine use, since it as an addictive drug that causes respiratory and CV diseases. Science and health outcomes should ‘trump’ politics when it comes to regulating nicotine, vaping and tobacco products.

• Idk if this is good or bad for the vaping industry. I hope they see sence because if used correctly vaping will help you to quit smoking! I should know I haven’t touched a cigarette since 2014.

  • Way to go man!

  • Hell yeah. I’m going on years 2 myself. I actually bummed and tried a cigarette for the 1st time in over a year, this passed summer. (Same brand I used to smoke and it was so disgusting that I couldn’t even get through half of it). I am in no way saying this is true or the same for everyone that has made the switch, because I know there are some that vape to reduce there traditional cigarette intake, (while still continuing to smoke), but it’s funny, current policies wanna treat vaping as a cessation device, but then don’t want to officially label it as such, even though the millions of testimonies stating that this has been a godsend to getting off the stinkies, compared with all the other failed attempts with the officially listed FDA approved cessation products (including chantix which according to most does way more harm than good).

    Now on to the the whole kid debate. I get it that there are teens vaping. But the law currently doesn’t make this legal. As any adults know, when you wanna do something when your not supposed to as a kid, chances are there gonna do it anyway. So instead of passing the blame on to these vaping companies that don’t intend for underage use, but how about we make the penalties for adults that enable kids by buying them for them and even harsher for the kids that are choosing to break the law. Oh but it’s not the kids fault, because they wanna put any product into there body just because it’s called unicorn poop, gimme a freaken break. You punish the kids so severely, trust me when I say they will start second guessing if they wanna continue to break the law. So instead of making up these stupid views that’s it’s all the adults faults because we obviously are holding a gun to these kids heads and forcing them to break the law, c’mon… go eff yourself and to the parents that don’t wanna admit that’s it’s either there own fault (for not knowing how to parent) or heavens no, the actual kids causing there own problems by choosing to do something that is already illegal… Idk my 2 cents I guess.

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