Trading lives of young vapers for votes
If the gasping victims of shredded lungs were laboratory rats or rabbits, they would have their own vociferous lobbying groups and the president might not have been so quick to thwart the ban on flavored e-cigs.
Even as The U.S. House of Representatives heard testimony that President Donald Trump was trying to trade political gain for military assistance to Ukraine, the president was trading political gain for taking the heat off manufacturers of e-cigarettes. Before that it was gun reform.
Presidents are doing nothing unconstitutional when they cater to the opinions of specific lobbying groups within the United States; Trump’s about-face on a ban on flavored electronic cigarettes is not illegal. It is not a matter for impeachment. But it is cynical in the extreme, given the evidence of 40-plus deaths and thousands of life-threatening injuries to people who have vaped, many of them teenagers and young adults. That the president would kowtow on such an issue, despite his wife’s plea as the mother of a teenager, makes it clear that nothing is sacred to Donald Trump when votes are at stake.
Vapers have been functioning as human guinea pigs for a relatively new technology and its blackmarket offspring. Electronic cigarettes hit the market after it was demonstrated that inhaled nicotine, minus the tobacco, could satisfy cravings without the cancer-causing chemicals. The devices remain useful for that purpose by adults who are addicted to nicotine. Yet, as has happened with other newly introduced products, health risks emerge when a large enough group is exposed for long enough to the substances in the total package. A whole new — mostly young — market is getting hooked on nicotine. The opioid epidemic is a tragic example of the same phenomenon, different addiction.
If the gasping victims of shredded lungs were laboratory rats or rabbits, they would have their own vociferous lobbying groups and the president might not have been so quick to thwart the partial ban he promised in September at the urging of First Lady Melania Trump; his daughter, Ivanka; and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The first urgent call for regulation of sales and marketing to teenagers came from his former FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, who called teen vaping “an epidemic.”
As of now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified vitamin E acetate as the primary culprit, although they continue to look for other factors. The acetate is used in e-cigarettes that deliver THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana. It is sticky, like honey, and adheres to the interior of the lungs. Its effects on lung tissue have been compared to the mustard gas used in World War I. Mustard gas has been banned from international warfare by the Geneva Protocol for almost a century.
Yet, on the eve of announcing a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, the president completed the retrenchment he had started within days of his promise to regulate sales. He heard the opposition from industry lobbyists, anti-regulation groups and vaping fans, and heeded the political advice of campaign staff. He pulled the plug on FDA plans to take the flavors popular with teens off the market unless the manufacturers got authorization from the agency. That would have meant simply that the devices had to go through the normal Food and Drug Administration approval process.
In the aftermath of the decision, the American Medical Association has urged a ban and more states have joined suit against the leading manufacturer, Juul Labs, claiming a public health emergency. If Juul were to stop or be enjoined from producing products that appeal to teenagers, the THC vaping devices being produced by smaller enterprises would still be available the way drugs always have been, on street corners and under the counter. The problem would not go away , but fewer people would be showing up in emergency rooms.
The president could not have ended the health crisis with a swipe of his pen, but he could have changed the game. The CDC will continue to conduct research and the lab rats will probably be deployed after all. But the devices remain on the market, more people will be injured, and Donald Trump has shown, again, that he makes executive decisions based not on the public good, but for his own political gain.