Since I won’t be streaming really this month.  I’ll be posting my commentary on vape news here at GrimmGreen.com. Hope that’s cool, also punctuation mistakes galore, now then

In a November 2019 Press release Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren made her stance on e-ciggs and vaping very clear.  While not amazing news,  it’s less terrible than others.  Elizabeth Warren has always seemed like Bernie Sanders “lite” to me which is to say,  She is much more realistic.  She doesn’t say “FREE COLLEGE FOR EVERYONE” she supports Clinton era tax brackets, 30% on individuals making $1,000,000 or more per year, and wants to use that money to help pay off student loans.  This doesn’t bother me literally at all.

Her official stance on vaping is as follows and the such as

• Submitting questions for the record to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner nominee Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, raising questions about the Trump administration’s reversal on its plan to remove certain flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods from the market and asking what steps the FDA will take to combat youth e-cigarette use and the spate of vaping-related illnesses plaguing the nation.

See how easily the youth use issue and the lung illness issue go hand in hand now? all under the umbrella of “vaping”.

• Urging the FDA to move immediately and aggressively to review e-cigarette products and act to protect children and the public’s health.

AKA Urge the FDA to create burdensome regulations on vaping to protect public health.  That is lunacy IMO.

• Writing to the FDA regarding reports that e-cigarette use may be correlated with the occurrence of seizures, and urging the agency to swiftly conduct a public health review of e-cigarettes.

This is honestly something i’m glad she wants to investigate because I know what she will find at the end. Pure hogwash and misinformation from FDA.

• Sending a letter to then-Acting FDA Commissioner Norman Sharpless recognizing the ten-year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act — legislation that gave FDA sweeping authority to regulate the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of all tobacco products — and urging the FDA to act quickly and decisively to protect kids from dangerous tobacco products.

Look, no one wants kids that don’t smoke to vape.  Hopefully she is talking about actual combustible tobacco products here,  but there’s no way to tell.  Since vaping is considered a “tobacco product” one can easily just blur those lines.

• Calling on companies such as eBay, Alibaba, and Craigslist to crack down on listings for e-cigarettes and vaping products on their marketplace that provide youth an avenue to purchase these products without any age verification.

This is a great start, but Elizabeth Warren needs to learn about SnapChat and TikTok as well which is where the illicit Vitamin E Acetate THC Carts were being sold to kids.

• Demanding answers from the heads of the FDA, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on their actions to address the health impacts of e-cigarette products, as illnesses and even deaths are increasingly linked to vaping.

There’s that “vaping” word again.  No deaths or lung illnesses are linked to nicotine vaping. Not even with a JUUL.  She is conflating the issues seemingly on purpose.

• Requesting that Senate Appropriators include a $100 million investment in the final, bipartisan appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2020 to boost public health data infrastructure as the nation’s public health system struggles to adequately monitor and address the ongoing outbreak of vaping-related illnesses.

“vape related illnesses”  again…. No deaths or lung illnesses are, or have ever been linked to LEGAL NICOTINE VAPOR PRODUCTS, NOT EVEN JUUL.

• Urging HHS to take long-overdue steps to stop the youth e-cigarette epidemic.

How about we start with proving the youth vaping “epidemic” Elizabeth?

• Writing to JUUL Labs and Altria regarding their companies’ role in fueling the youth vaping epidemic and probing the recent corporate marriage of JUUL Labs — an e-cigarette company primarily responsible for addicting millions of children — with Altria, a large manufacturer of traditional tobacco products, including Marlboro cigarettes and Black & Mild cigars.

This is truly and honestly the stupidest one to me.  From a business perspective, Altria is a big company with lots of money and lots of distribution.  They invested in JUULlabs for a percentage, then utilized their distribution and reach to grow the brand.  Altria also manufacturing cigarettes really has nothing to do with it.  Having it be more available and more accessible in c-stores, made it more available to youths as well.  This isn’t super difficult to see.

She might want to ask Scott Gottlieb why he drug his feet on doing anything at all about JUUL.  While at FDA he saw the spike in youth vaping and did nothing, essentially saying “If we see this spike AGAIN next year, then we will have to act swiftly”.  Lets basically wait a year and see if this trend continues before we do anything, it could just be a fluke you know?

*tin foil hat*

It feels to me like Altria invested in JUUL in order to grow the company quickly, make it the “bad guy” of vaping, and then basically sank it by banning themselves  because “hey we can always sell cigarettes”

*tin foil hat off*

So there it is, she is more or less anti vaping.  Nothing about low youth smoking rates, nothing about millions of US citizens quitting, nothing about harm reduction.  Just lots of conflating of terms and issues and an overall basic lack of understanding.

She did recently speak again about vaping, offering a desire to legislate based on what the science says.  As for me? I would not say that Elizabeth Warren is on our side, or the side of harm reduction and I hope she gets her science from anyone but the CDC or Stanton Glantz.

-Grimm