On this episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour, host Julie Gunlock talks to Lindsey Stroud of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance about the myth that there’s a teen vaping epidemic. Despite recent good news from the National Youth Tobacco Survey that teen vaping has decreased, both the CDC and the FDA are further misleading parents by refusing to share this good news. Julie and Lindsey discuss this public health disaster, why it’s happening, and why keeping parents fearful is a powerful weapon against tobacco harm reduction.


TRANSCRIPT

Julie Gunlock:

Hey everyone, I’m Julie Gunlock, the host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly, their kids. Today I’m joined by Lindsey Stroud. She’s the director of the Taxpayer Protection Alliances Consumer Center, which provides data and analysis to policymakers. Prior to that, Stroud was a State Government Relations Manager at the Heartland Institute. Lindsey recently wrote a piece for Townhall about the alarmism surrounding the so-called youth vaping epidemic. I know that this is a concern for a lot of parents out there, and hopefully we’ll bring you a little reassurance today. In this piece, Lindsey wrote, “The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently published the results from the 2021 national youth tobacco survey. And despite the great news that vaping rates among youth have significantly decreased, both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration are using the opportunity to further mislead and poison the discussion about tobacco harm reduction, and I would add about youth vaping.” So we’re going to get into this and a few other issues on today’s podcast. Thanks, Lindsey, for joining me today.

Lindsey Stroud:

Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to join y’all.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, I have really admired your work in this issue. This is something that I have written on and wrote on a lot more sort of when the Trump administration was really hot and heavy on this issue and that was sort of vaping and the so-called youth vaping epidemic was in the news. But you have really kept on this and really tracking this industry in America. And as you can see, the CDC, the FDA has not reduced the alarmism on the so-called youth vaping. So I’d really like to get into that, and I guess I’ll just start with a pretty simple question here. Is there a youth vaping epidemic?

Lindsey Stroud:

No, there’s not.

Julie Gunlock:

Okay, podcast done. Nope, now we’re done.

Lindsey Stroud:

Well I mean, when you look at the definition of epidemic, Webster’s definition: an overwhelmingly large certain percentage of the population. Unfortunately, with vaping, it really doesn’t end up being that way. Yes, there are kids that are using vaping devices. And yes, it’s really scary when you look at, in the past 20 years, how much youth smoking has gone down and you’ve seen uptick of youth using these devices. But they’re all novel devices, so of course you have youth using them, experimenting with them. But the way that the CDC and the FDA and a lot of other NGOs and public health agencies, the way that they’re manipulating the numbers. For example, when you hear, what’s the latest numbers like 20% are using e-cigarettes or current users of e-cigarettes? Well, that’s defined as using an e-cigarette on at least one occasion in the past 30 days.

Julie Gunlock:

Okay. So I want to slow-roll this out because I think this is the most important.

Lindsey Stroud:

Sorry.

Julie Gunlock:

No, no, no, no. Believe me, I tend to talk quick about this subject because, especially when you write about it, and you’re really involved in this. But when I talk to other moms, moms especially of tweens and teenagers, they hear that number 20%, and they freak out. And then they hear, especially like, okay, cigarettes use is down, but now everybody’s just switching to vaping. It is terrifying. But I think it’s really important what you just said there. You said, but let’s define use. Right?

And so the CDC is basically suggesting to parents that 20% of all teens are vaping habitually. So they wake up in the morning, I think of Hunter Biden, crawling out of bed, looking like he hasn’t showered in five days, and that’s what parents imagine. Their kid is like, they need to hit on their vape immediately. And then they’re vaping every couple hours during the day and it’s every day. But that’s not true. So you had said, talk about that a little bit more about how the CDC is bunching every kind of use into this 20%.

Lindsey Stroud:

Well, okay, so I guess the best way to go back to what they’re looking at. So there’s two big studies that the government funds. You’ve got The National Youth Tobacco Survey, or the NYTS, and then you’ve got the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. And I forget, I want to say the CDC does NYTS and I want to say the FDA does it. And I know the CDC is the one who administers the BRFS. And the NYTS is done every year. The BRFS is done every other year. And I like the BRFS better myself because it actually gives state information. But they just give questionnaires to these students and have you ever tried an e-cigarette? And then the next question is have you used an e-cigarette product on at least one occasion in the past 30 days? And then it goes into — some of them are really weird — I know the NYTS goes into, I think like 20 or more days and then 30 or more days. And then they break it down from that.

And what you’re seeing with the latest test — three weeks, I think that they did the NYTS 2021 data — that the way that they’re…. I mean youth vaping now is at its lowest level since they started looking at it, but they’re disregarding that and they’re using it, well out of current users so the kids who have used an e-cigarette at least on one occasion, well this percentage of them are daily vapers. And they’re just funneling against the data.

Julie Gunlock:

So again, there’s a lot of acronyms in there and I want to break this down. So essentially let’s just put in real-world terms. Your kid goes to a party, everybody’s standing around, and someone has an e-cigarette. And a kid might take a few drags on it, tries it out. Doesn’t like it. Then he gets this questionnaire where he’s asked if he’s is ever tried an e-cigarette. He says, “Yes.” And then essentially what the CDC is doing is counting them, or again, you mentioned a couple different studies there, surveys there. But essentially what’s happening is they’re collecting all of those people and if a different kid, the one with the e-cigarette who owns it, is like, “Yeah, I use it every day, essentially.” He is a habitual e-cigarette user. But they’re taking that kid who might have used it once, tried it, and they’re putting them all together. And so it inflates, they’re cooking the book, essentially. They’re making it look much worse than it is.

Lindsey Stroud:

And there’s not a lot of data. And they tend to administer these out in the springtime, as well. So especially if you look at high school seniors, most of them have their graduation parties then, and so you’re going to see a little bit more parties going on that you’re right if they, “You went out to the party that month and, oh look, the CDC just came in and decided to go do a survey on you. And look, you’re in this dataset that all of the policymakers are going to go use. ‘Here’s the data. We’ve got a youth vaping epidemic,'” which it really isn’t.

Julie Gunlock:

So I think this is so important for parents to understand because I think parents really do have a capacity to handle a certain amount of rebellious behavior. And look, I feel like my kids are going to listen to this someday and go, “See mom, you’re fine with me trying this stuff.” And look, we know that teenagers do really reckless things and they do bad things and they do unhealthy things. And you want to be a good parent and you want to do the best you can. And you hope that you have these conversations with them and point out why this is bad. And, let’s remember here, youth vaping is illegal. Okay? So it’s not like, okay, they’re driving cars post-16 is legal, but you can’t necessarily guarantee that a child won’t drive recklessly. So you hope you do your best. And I think that there are obviously some legal blocks in the way of kids; it’s illegal to buy them and it’s illegal to attain them. And of course, there are black markets, which is why we should not further regulate these things or make it more difficult. Because, I mean, we don’t have to get into the whole…. That’s how the black market thrives. But really, that is how kids are getting these things.

And so, I think it’s really important that parents understand that this is yet another area where, look, kids might do this and it’s unfortunate. But most of the kids are not then creating a habit. And I think that is so important for parents to understand. Because if you are going to take this logic of, okay, we are so horrified by this so-called vaping epidemic, well then we really need to look at other things like alcohol and driving and other things where kids get in trouble and say, “We should take an item that is pleasurable for adults like drinking alcohol and ban it to save this segment of kids who abuse it.”

Lindsey Stroud:

No, they’re never going to do that.

Julie Gunlock:

Right.

Lindsey Stroud:

They tried that once.

Julie Gunlock:

How’d that turn out? I can’t remember.

Lindsey Stroud:

FDA only wishes it could regulate that.

Julie Gunlock:

You’re absolutely right, but I do you think that it’s really important. But this is the other thing, so let’s talk about another thing: why they use parents. Why do they do this? And I know you know this, and I know I know this, but I’m asking for the listeners. Why is it so effective to freak out parents? What happens when parents think this is an epidemic and all kids are being swept up in this and it’s going to harm a whole generation of kids? Why are parents and why are targeting children in there? I can answer this for you, but I think we both know that this makes people acquiesce to government regulations. Right?

Lindsey Stroud:

Well, it’s interesting now. When I look at the vaping world, what it comes down to, it looks like everyone’s assuming that it’s just big tobacco trying to hook the next generation onto nicotine, and especially in the states and even around the world, and when you look at especially open-system vapor, that’s a lot of consumers. It’s actually an amazing product to look at because, if you look at vaping, it didn’t come from the tobacco companies. It did come from consumers. Of course, tobacco companies got into it later, because they’re losing all their customers. And it’s also just this weird product. If it was any other consumer product in the world, governments would be requiring those manufacturers to be producing the reduced harm product, which they’re not. Because after the MSA, it’s pretty much, we won against big tobacco, which nobody won against big tobacco. And the smokers lost because they’re the ones paying for MSAs and stuff and the master settlement agreement.

But I think it’s just this notion, especially using the parents, that this is big tobacco coming in. We won against them before. Now we’re going to go after them again and we’re going to feel victorious because we beat them. Which I think big tobacco should be producing these products. If I was a dictator, I would be requiring them to do that. But that’s just me.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, I also think that there is something, so I think that there’s a really legitimate reason for these products, obviously harm reduction.

Lindsey Stroud:

Yes.

Julie Gunlock:

And for those listening who don’t know — and have to keep saying that, Lindsey, because this isn’t a vaping podcast; this is for parents, and I don’t think a lot of parents really understand what even harm reduction means. But harm reduction, for those who don’t know, are things like methadone clinics or condom distribution in areas.

Lindsey Stroud:

Seatbelts.

Julie Gunlock:

Seatbelts, yeah, another great example, or needle exchanges. These are where the harms are so great to using infected needles and there’s like a debate because some people say, “Well are you basically assisting addicts?” and stuff like that. But there is this really interesting world of harm reduction — and again, for people who don’t know, vaping is 95% less harmful than conventional cigarettes. Because again, what I don’t think a lot of people know is the combustion, it’s the smoke that kills you. And water vapor with nicotine in it does not cause the sort of lung harms, and we know this. There is a huge amount of scientific evidence showing that the lungs are not harmed through vaping. And so it is much better method of nicotine delivery. And so when you talk to people about this, lifetime, and I know, Lindsey, you spend a lot of time talking to this industry and people in this industry, but also former smokers who’ve really been rescued by these products, and there’s some really inspirational stories.

People say, “Oh God, I’ve tried for 30 years and I couldn’t stop smoking. I smoked two packs a day and then I went to vaping and it really helped me.” But then when you bring in this kid thing, when you bring in this great harm to children and it’s an epidemic, it is really a way to get good people to not care about smokers who need these products. It’s amazing to me. I watch good people, literally it’s like a switch goes off and they no longer care about addicts who need these products to get them off of combustible cigarettes. So that’s why I think the CDC uses this. It’s wildly immoral, but it works.

Lindsey Stroud:

And I think the best example with the CDC was the vaping-related lung injuries or what they call EVALI. And I hate using that term. So I knew it was the THC cartridges. I’ve seen them. I’m in Illinois. And so in August …

Julie Gunlock:

Back it up, back it up. Talk about what happened. This happened what two years ago now?

Lindsey Stroud:

Yeah, so August 2019, the CDC started raising the alarm about how health departments across the country were seeing an increase of the vaping-related lung injuries, persons that had vaped and were coming in with lung problems. And they pretty much took that and ran with it. It ended up being like 2200 cases maybe and less than a hundred people that had died, when it was all said and done, because they quit tracking it. So they started tracking it from like August 2019 until like February 2020, because then COVID came in. But it was just this alarmism from the CDC National.

And what I was doing, I was with the Heartland Institute at that point, so I was literally every weekend going onto the state health department pages and seeing what they were saying and just tracking it. And you were seeing with some of them, and it was interesting because it was red and blue states, so like California and Wisconsin were providing really good data versus some other red and blue states that were not providing really good data and kind of aggregating it as far as what you were seeing as early as August was you were seeing the big similarity between all of these patients is that they were using illicit vaping products that often contained tetrahydrocannabinol or THC in it. And I actually, I knew about Dank Vapes out here in Illinois and I knew it was this fake weed brand is what I’ve always told people that’s what it was. And I actually had found that you could go on Amazon and buy fake Dank Vapes packaging, and you could all go buy your own little fake cartridge that you could go put into a vaping device and just fill it with whatever you want and then go sell it to people on the black market. You can’t find them anymore on it.

And so I started calling out Dank Vapes back in August 2019. It wasn’t actually until December 2019 that the CDC did come out, and over 50% of the patients that had reported vaping-related lung injuries, they reported using that Dank Vapes brand, which is not an actual legitimate brand. But they kept going on, oh it’s vaping. Refrain from vaping, even though you’ve had legal vaping products, regulated vaping products on the market since they came into America in 2007. And then 2019, so 12 years later, you’re having problems with these. And the CDC just kind of, it was almost like they were like, “We finally have problems with this. Awesome. We’re going to publicize it as much as we can and scare the crap out of the public.”

Julie Gunlock:

Yep, yep. And again, they said that this was, it was almost gleeful. It was almost like, “Oh goody, goody, goody. We finally have the evidence. You’re going down.” I remember just this sense of victory that, and again, they were having sort of victory parties. I’m not kidding about that. It was like absolutely lethal tweets and comments from the CDC. Very slow, very slow to actually say, “Well, hey guys, let’s, let’s slow down. Let’s figure this out.” It was pretty much agreed that this was some general role harms caused by …

Lindsey Stroud:

All vaping devices.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes, all vaping devices and what was regulated and what was already on the market. And so it was incredibly frustrating for people like us because of course that ramped up the parent panic and there was no reassurance. There was no, “Hang on people. Let’s figure this out.” None of that. So again, you had another sort of round of parents panicking. And look, we know how this works. The news cycle gets all ginned up. I always feel like it’s like some grizzly murder and then when the autopsy comes back, nobody cares anymore about what actually … I feel like I keep bringing up true crime stuff and images of Hunter Biden. This is not nice imagery that I’m giving people. But I will tell you, it is true that when they kind of knew that this was all because of this illegal things that people were loading into e-cigarettes, these homemade devices that they had made, then the news cycle had passed and there wasn’t as much coverage. So very frustrating because I still hear that from people. I still hear that from concerned moms that I talk to. “Well, all those harms that it caused to the lungs a couple years ago.” And I have to sort of correct them, but that is another thing.

Lindsey Stroud:

Oh, it’s brought up in every piece of legislation now. Especially every state legislation, they always bring this up and it’s just like, “Okay, and you’re advocating for a black market, which is only going to …” That’s the interesting thing about it is that their solution is just to make it, “Okay, let’s just ban all of them.” So it’s like, “Whoa, we already had problems with the black market products, but yeah, let’s go do that, guys.”

Julie Gunlock:

Let’s offer to strengthen that or solidify that black market. Yeah, it’s a complete disaster. Now tell me about the situation with the vaping industry now. Look, and I ask you and then I’m talking, but just a quick review as we’ve had, there’s now no more Juul flavors. I think they only do what? They took off mint, even. So now it’s just tobacco flavor and what’s the other one?

Lindsey Stroud:

Menthol.

Julie Gunlock:

Menthol and tobacco.

Lindsey Stroud:

And they also, Juul was pretty preemptive. They actually pulled their flavors before the federal government took out the pod-based flavors.

Julie Gunlock:

Right, but there’s been some good news. We now have the FDA actually recognizing the harm reduction qualities of one other e-cigarette. Tell me a little bit about that. Am I getting that wrong?

Lindsey Stroud:

Yeah, the first one they approved was the View Solo, which is a cig-alike. It’s one of the first. It’s an archaic product, actually. So the PMTAs were due back in September 9th. Several weeks after, they started issuing their marketing denial orders. And it looked like they went after the open systems and the e-liquid. So there was big mods and people refilling them. They went after the flavors with them. And so the first one that they approved a few weeks ago was the View Solo. They only approved their tobacco one. Menthol’s still on review. And they denied all the flavor ones. But per the federal government in 2020 banning all the cartridges, they weren’t even allowed to market, anyways. And then just this week, they approve some oral tobacco product that use the pre-market tobacco application pathway for approval. And that product’s actually been discontinued by the manufacturer. So the FDA is really on top of it.

But since parents are listening to this, disposables are on everybody’s mind. Background on the PMTA, FDA came down, in like 2014 they really wanted to go, well, they’ve been trying to regulate e-cigarettes since they came into the U.S. market in 2007. 2014 is when they really went after it. They had authority to regulate it as a tobacco product. The deeming regulations went in place in 2016, and under those, no new e-cigarette product could be manufactured on market if it came out after August 8th, 2016. The majority of disposables, if not all of them, did come out post that deadline, and FDA has not regulated those. The perfect one is Puff Bar, where you’ve already had Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has already told the FDA, “Hey, this came out in 2019. Why aren’t you getting it off the market?” And it took the FDA to give them like six months before all they did was issue a warning letter to them.

But if you look at the NYTS and you look at how much youth use of disposables has increased, parents should be blaming this federal agency at this point for not following their own regulations. And especially now, they’re just shutting down a lot of businesses who are not selling to kids. The mod systems are the least used by youth, as it is. And even the pod systems, they went down. Now it’s all disposables. Which for the record, don’t use it disposable unless you trust your source. A lot of them are coming from really crazy places in China.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Look, I think I want to end this podcast on a happy note and that might not be possible. I always try to, but that might not be possible in this. What do you see as the future for vaping? And I mean for adult smokers looking to switch because, let’s not forget, that is sort of the point. And I do want to say that that is where big tobacco is going. Look, they are switching to these systems. They have these long-term plans to eventually reduce the production of combustible cigarettes and switch to an e-cigarette model. So we know big tobaccos plans. But tell me what you think are, for these mom and pop shops, these are the ones when you’re driving along and you look over and there’s a big green vape sign or sometimes it says tobacco and vape products here. What’s the future? What’s your prediction?

Lindsey Stroud:

Well, the one thing I’ve learned about the vaping industry and especially the mom and pop vaping industry is they’re so resilient.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes.

Lindsey Stroud:

And I love, okay, so outside of the smoke and vape shops, most of these vape shops that you go into, they’re former smokers themselves.

Julie Gunlock:

Yep.

Lindsey Stroud:

They quit smoking, and they just want to go share it to the world.

Julie Gunlock:

They’re evangelical about it.

Lindsey Stroud:

Yes. Yeah, they are kind of, they’re definitely like the knocking on your door, have you heard about vaping and stuff. And also, the vape shops are really good at preventing youth use. When you go through the FDA compliance checks, it’s overwhelmingly C stores. Now don’t get me wrong. I think C stores should be able to have e-cigarettes as long as there’s combustible cigarettes. But right now I know that the industry is moving towards synthetic and most of them are going to reapply. They have a blueprint now when it comes to the FDA regulations and hopefully with a little bit of congressional nudge with raining in an agency, but it’s going to be interesting to watch over the next couple years on how the FDA is actually able to enforce their regulations, seeing that they’ve done a really poor job of doing it since post-August 8th, 2016, when all of it was supposed to be regulated.

But I think it’s still going to be there. It’s unfortunate, with the EVALI  scare, you saw a lot of people drop out on that. The COVID misinformation, if you smoke and vape you’re more likely to get COVID. It’s not true. There is actually no data to actually support that. So just trudging on, but they’re still there. Even though right now, they’re all getting hit double-teamed between the federal excise tax, the PMTAs, and then now the USPS regulations.

Julie Gunlock:

Lindsey, you do great work in this area and I want people to be able to find where you write in case they do have additional questions about this. And I know that you do focus on youth vaping some. So where can people find your writing and your podcasting or whatever else you do?

Lindsey Stroud:

Yeah, if you just go to protectingtaxpayers.org or look up the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and see all the work that I do. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, it’s @LMStroud89. And then I also have the website thr101.org, but I haven’t been updating it.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, get to work. Get to work because people are going to go see that if they listen to this podcast because you really are a wealth of knowledge and reassurance. And I think parents really need to know that youth vaping while unfortunate, we certainly don’t want kids vaping, that’s why it’s illegal, people. There’s a lot of reassurance for parents out there about when you really dig into these numbers. And that is what Lindsey does at TPA. That’s her job. She provides the data and analyzes the data. And that is what sadly is not being done by public health. In fact, they are sort of cooking the books and they’re inflating these numbers to scare parents. And that is why it’s really bad when public health starts to push an agenda, particularly a political agenda.

I hope, Lindsey, you’ll come back and talk to us about this. This is, again, something that parents really need to know about. And thanks so much for your great work on it.

Lindsey Stroud:

Thank you.

Julie Gunlock:

Thanks, everyone, for being here for another episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. If you enjoyed this episode or like the podcast in general, please leave a rating or review on iTunes. This helps ensure that the podcast reaches as many listeners as possible. If you haven’t subscribed to the Bespoke Parenting Hour on iTunes, Spotify, Google player, wherever you get your podcast, please do so you won’t miss an episode. Don’t forget to share this episode and let your friends know that they can get Bespoke Episodes on their favorite podcast app. From all of us here at the Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for listening.