The teen vaping “epidemic” was never real; it was a passing fad, blown out of proportion by anti-tobacco zealots (here, here and here).  There is no question that past-30-day (i.e., current) high school vaping increased from 12% in 2017 to 27% in 2019.  However, by 2021, the high school vaping rate had plummeted to 11%, and smoking rates sank from 8% to 2% during those four years (here).  The “epidemic” may have been fake, but the concocted crisis led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to […]

  Mitch Zeller, former director of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, provided valuable insights on the war against tobacco harm reduction in a May 19 presentation at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.  His slide presentation is available here. Zeller justifies tobacco regulation primarily on perceived industry misdeeds, which he illustrates with quotes from the 1960s, 70s and 80s from industry documents: “Tobacco products uniquely contain and deliver nicotine, a potent drug with a variety of physiological effects,” “Nicotine is addictive,” “Think of […]

  FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf on May 27 tweeted a grossly inaccurate statement (here): “I worry that our academic centers & professional societies are not activated enough on the tobacco issue.  Almost 500,000 Americans will die this year from tobacco related illness and millions of teenagers are becoming addicted to nicotine through vaping.” There is no evidence that vaping is enslaving “millions of teenagers.”  The number of high school students who reported vaping in the past 30 days in 2021 was 1.72 million (here), a 58% […]

  Last week I reviewed the FDA’s evidence concerning menthol’s possible role in furthering addiction, as discussed in the agency’s proposed menthol ban.  I noted that the FDA rationale “is primarily based on nicotine and menthol experiments on rats and mice, plus laboratory tests on tissue samples.  The FDA presents no evidence for menthol’s effects on actual smokers.” One individual responded to my post by arguing that evidence shows that menthol can enhance addictiveness in humans; they provided a link to a single study. There is, in […]

Commenting on the FDA’s proposed rule banning menthol cigarettes, a recognized tobacco policy expert argues that while a menthol cigarette ban was justified, the agency ought not prohibit menthol in smoke-free tobacco products.  Clifford Douglas, director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, writes: “Menthol also interacts with nicotine in the brain to increase addiction.”  I was under the assumption that the addictive action of menthol was still questionable, so I explored the topic. The FDA’s proposed rule includes this evidence passage: “In addition to its […]