On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, host Julie Gunlock talks to IWF visiting fellow Lindsey Stroud about the myth of a youth vaping epidemic and how the alarmism on vaping distracts parents from the real problems facing teens and young adults today.
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone, I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to this 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 excited to have on Lindsey Stroud. Lindsey, there you are. Hello, how are you?
Lindsey Stroud:
Hello, I’m fantastic. How are you?
Julie Gunlock:
I’m doing great. Lindsey is a visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and she’s the director of the Taxpayer Protection Alliances, it’s a great group, Consumer Center, where she focuses on regulations related to alcohol and vaping. As a parenting podcast, I’m sure you know where we’re taking this today and we’re not here just to have cocktail hour. Hey Lindsey, thanks for joining us.
Lindsey Stroud:
Thank you for having me on. It’s been a minute. I was here last December.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes, it’s time. It is time Lindsey because we’re seeing an awful lot of scary messaging out there about vaping. I’m glad you’re coming on to sort of reassure parents and more importantly give them some good news because there is an awful lot of good news on this issue. I’m just going to start off with asking a very broad question to get this conversation going. Is there a youth vaping epidemic, because they always use epidemic, is there a youth vaping epidemic in America?
Lindsey Stroud:
I’m really glad you asked that question. No, there’s not. Epidemic is the definition disproportionately affecting the majority of the population, not the minority. And we learned from the CDC last week that they have never quit using epidemic actually, even though. All right. Let’s lay down…
Julie Gunlock:
We have a very tiny vocabulary.
Lindsey Stroud:
Yeah, 2019 is when you really saw youth vaping uptick and you saw about 20% of middle schoolers and high schoolers were current users, which is defined as having use of vape product on at least one occasion.
Julie Gunlock:
Okay, I want to slow down. I want to slow down again, because this is important. It’s funny, Lindsey, you and I deal in this issue, we talk about this issue, we write about this issue, you much more than me. And it’s funny sometimes when I read your pieces I’m like, Oh wait, wait, you’re too in the weeds because you write about this and you write to an audience that kind of knows the issue. But there are a lot of parents out there that don’t know much about vaping, don’t understand that it’s 95% less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Some people don’t even understand what is the word combustible showing up here. The thing that really harms you is when you’re smoking a combustible cigarette, think 1970s. You take the lighter, you light the cigarette and then you’re breathing in the smoke. That is what’s harmful. Vaping is a whole different thing, which we can get into later. But tell me again how they measure a member of youth who vapes. They say a kid who’s vaping is what, how often do they do it?
Lindsey Stroud:
On at least one occasion in the 30 days prior to the survey. A kid at a party who vaped and his friend handed it to him, that would be considered a current e-cigarette user if he had done it in the 30 days prior to taking the national surveys.
Julie Gunlock:
And do they use the word habitual?
Lindsey Stroud:
They do break it down for 20-day plus. And that’s where they’re harping on it now with the kids who are vaping and how they’re using it more often and everything. But it’s still 3% of kids.
Julie Gunlock:
I’m asking questions as if I’m not really saturated in this issue as much as you and I are and you much more. I love that illustration you gave. If your kids are at a party and there’s a kid there who actually has an e-cigarette device of some kind and he uses it quite often and another kid walks up and says, I’d like to try this. Based on that one time in the last 30 days he is Well, okay.
Lindsey Stroud:
A current e-cigarette user, yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
Under that measurement, certainly…
Lindsey Stroud:
There’s still a lot less kids that were vaping. I’m looking at the numbers that I just did and they’re on the IWF website. Thank you for letting me publish that. There are 2.75 million fewer vapers that are youth vapers from 2019 to 2021. And you could see the series on the website with looking at these state surveys and it seems that it peaked in 2019 and it was like a fad. I mean, it’s like Beanie Babies, same thing. Oh hey, here’s a new Juul, we’re going to go try it, and they’re over it now.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. You’re saying if the CDC is still using epidemic, I did a quick Google search before I came on with you. These are articles just from the last couple days. New York Times, listen to these headlines. New York Times, “Teenagers Keep Vaping Despite Crackdowns on E-cigarettes.” Even if you don’t read the article, which we know a lot of people today, there’s enough research into, people read the headline, might read a couple lines, and then they’re clicking over to a new [inaudible 00:05:57]. Here’s Washington Post. Washington Post. Gosh, “Kids are Flocking.” They use the word flocking. That’s a good word. That’s a dollar, right?
Lindsey Stroud:
That’s a great word.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s a great word. “Kids are Flocking to Flavored Disposable E-cigarettes Study Finds.” And then USA Today, “More Than 2.5 Million Middle and High School Students Still Vape Despite Crackdowns.” They love these words crackdowns and still flocking. Tell me what you’re finding? You kind of touched on this about the real numbers of kids that are vaping if we’re going to really talk about habitual use.
Lindsey Stroud:
It was 2.5 million kids that were current, defined as using it in the past month, but it was 3.3% of middle schoolers and 14.1% of high schoolers now. In 2019, it was 5.3 million kids that were vaping currently. And in the past, it was 4.1 million high school students at which 27.5% and then 1.2 million middle schoolers. That was about one in five in 2019, now is about one in 10. It’s been halved. If you look at the numbers on it, and it’s actually really cool to see because you’re not seeing smokers, kids are not smoking. That’s the numbers I am doing is because they kept going, oh, it leads to smoking. No it doesn’t actually. It’s a substitute actually.
Julie Gunlock:
Again, it’s important to reiterate that when we talk about that 2.5 million, that number is coming from this, I tried it once in the past 30 days.
Lindsey Stroud:
Yeah, exactly.
Julie Gunlock:
Again, but do you know the number of kids, because I remember doing some research on this and it was tiny, the percentage of kids who really are vaping? I also want to get to the point of, I want you to talk a little bit about why vaping is safer. I keep saying what’s the real number of vapers? Even if it’s small or we should be really worried about them. I don’t want kids vaping either, but I think parents also need to know the truth about vaping itself, which is like, lots of other things are more dangerous like alcohol use and fentanyl, driving dangerously and fentanyl, which we can talk about later. But I do really want to drive down on that 2.5 million. What do you think the real number is of truly habitual vaping amongst kids?
Lindsey Stroud:
It’s like 2%.
Julie Gunlock:
Right, right, right. We’re having this major existential crisis in the United States. Vaping gets more coverage than fentanyl in my opinion. There’s more money going into these campaigns to stop this mythical vaping crisis that should be spent on more important things over 2 or 2.5% of the youth.
Lindsey Stroud:
Yeah, it’s no more than 3%. Yeah. It’s very minuscule.
Julie Gunlock:
But sadly for parents who don’t follow this as closely as I do, we talked about the media, we’re talking about public health, that’s pushing this. They’re all in agreement. And this is the same thing we saw, it’s amazing Lindsey, how we saw this with COVID. The vaccine, the message, it’s like everybody was on that same talking points memo and then we find out they lied. They all lied, Pfizer lied, CDC lied, everyone was lying. And we’re starting to see this too. You got the media, you got public health, but you also have another important [inaudible 00:09:45].
Lindsey Stroud:
Michael Bloomberg?
Julie Gunlock:
Well, yes, yes. Good old Michael.
Lindsey Stroud:
Sorry, I had to [inaudible 00:09:49].
Julie Gunlock:
That’s where I’m going. Talk about these very respected medical organizations and the philanthropy side of things.
Lindsey Stroud:
They dropped the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey results and what, October 6th. And they did a closed door meeting that was with partners of the CDC. Now, I got in that meeting, I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want to make myself more of a nuisance. And it was really interesting. It looked like they were just, okay, hey youth vaping, if you look at the 2021 to 2022 numbers it pretty much plateaued. But it was like, oh it’s you’re all our talking points. We’re still going to go decry youth vaping epidemic. And the Parents Against Vaping lady actually asked whether using epidemic was appropriate? And that’s where the CDC person was like, we never quit using epidemic. Then I did some research. Michael Bloomberg from 2019 to 2022 has given $10 million to the CDC foundation to specifically do surveillance on youth vaping.
Julie Gunlock:
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. There’s also a lot of money in tobacco free, these tobacco free organizations. And there’s a lot of youth organizations that exist solely to eradicate youth vaping. Frankly, vaping in general, let’s be honest, they don’t give a crap if people go back to combustibles, they want vaping gone. These are respected organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, American Lung Association. My mother, she was a huge giver to the American Lung Association because there was a lot of lung cancer in my family. And she used to give, now she doesn’t give anymore because I’ve told her all about this. They are not truthful on this. They are not truthful on vaping. They carry the lies of these sort of anti-tobacco activists.
Tell us a little bit about their role in this, because I do think that it’s important people understand. You’re going to hear it from everyone, from the media, to the CDC, to these medical organizations, they’re all on the same script. And I want to counter that with some of the research, particularly out of the UK that it really shows that vaping is a very useful tool for people trying to quit smoking. And the fact that it’s far less harmful, which is a whole other issue. But tell me again a little bit about these philanthropic organizations that exist to keep us healthy and give us good advice. And they’re not doing that.
Lindsey Stroud:
No. It’s almost as if they want combustibles still going on. And I’m getting my tin hat on and stuff because there’s a lot of money to be made in treating smoking-related illnesses. I’ve watched at the hearings, I’ve watched, oh I just lost my headset, I’ve watched the dentists come out against it. And it’s, this is way better for your gums and everything. I don’t know why this is a problem for you guys. You brought up the UK. The UK embraces our reduction. They embrace alternatives to smoking. They’ve subsidized vaping for low-income people. They have vape shops in hospitals.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes, that is amazing.
Lindsey Stroud:
I was talking, I have an international fellow who’s based in South London and for you to bring a new product to market, you just have to get approval and you’re just following the set of standards. Make sure you don’t have these ingredients that you can’t have. In order to bring a new product to market in America. If you look at the FDA, they’ve only approved 23 products from three companies applications. E-cigarettes have been in the states since 2007. And that was in the past year that they authorized those ones. I think that…
Julie Gunlock:
Just to give an anecdote on that at what Lindsey’s talking about here, I think it’s important. I know one company that wanted approval of their product and in order to get it had to submit, I’m not kidding you, 4 million pieces of paper, they printed it off and it was 4 million pieces of paper. Can you imagine transporting that? And that was for one product and one part of the process. It wasn’t even the whole process. But go on.
Lindsey Stroud:
Yeah, the process is messed up too. I mean you have safer products. We know the science shows that these are less harmful than combustible cigarettes. But you have to get the original pre-market tobacco application and then you have to spend another billion dollars to get the modified risk tobacco product that where you can actually market it as safer. Now the FDA did give an MRTP to combustible cigarettes that had low nicotine, the 20th Century Group.
Julie Gunlock:
And you think about also how this stifles innovation. Obviously the big tobacco companies who are switching over to vaping can afford the 4 million pieces of paper, just imagine going to Staples and saying I need 4 million pieces of paper. And can afford all the legal fees and the legal analysis and just all the work that goes into producing that. Think of people who are looking at innovating in the e-cigarette space. Again, this is a product that is 95% less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Nobody can do that. That’s why this is a big smoochy kiss to big tobacco because they’re the only ones that can go through this approval process. For consumers looking for new products or new flavors or new systems to kick the very dangerous habit of smoking, they’re limited to just those products from big companies that can afford to go the process.
And again, I think we’ve switched over frankly to harm reduction in a clumsy way. I want go back to that and explain why Lindsey and I, Lindsey’s a genius at this and she’s incredibly prolific in her writing on this issue. The reason we care about this is not because we’re fighting for the right teens to vape. None of us want teens to vape. I’m always, I don’t want my kids to vape.
Lindsey Stroud:
Here’s your Juul, kid.
Julie Gunlock:
Exactly. Yeah. I give them out at Halloween. No, the reason I want these products out there is because it is very hard to quit smoking. It is extremely difficult to quit smoking. And Lindsey and I can go on and on and talk about the psychology behind it. It’s really actually fascinating when you look at the methods by which people quit smoking. And some people are fine with the patch, some people are fine with a patch. I am a person who [inaudible 00:16:35]
Lindsey Stroud:
Three percent of the people is the patch.
Julie Gunlock:
Is that the statistics? Is that it?
Lindsey Stroud:
Yeah, it’s about 3%. Yeah. It’s like 3 to 5% that were successful at quitting.
Julie Gunlock:
If you’ve never smoked, and I hope my mother does not watch this, she still does not know that I smoked in college. But if you’ve ever smoked, there is a habit to it. There is a physical habit. There’s also, I’m thinking back to the nineties, you always went outside and there was a group of friends or something you did when you went out. When I was actually starting to wean off, I might have one with a drink at a bar or a concert or something like that. But for me it was, there was a time and a place. And it’s still funny, even to this day, sometimes if I’m out and I smell a cigarette, I’m like, oh gosh. And I was a college smoker. But there are people who’ve been smoking for 20, 30, 40 years and they want to kick it. They really want a better life. And vaping mimics that. Vaping mimics the actions. There is an inhaling. In one of the vaping products there’s heat, you can feel the heat.
Lindsey Stroud:
Oh the heat. Yeah. Heat-not-Burn. I wish we had them in America.
Julie Gunlock:
I know. Thank you. Thank you free market actually.
Lindsey Stroud:
It wasn’t the FDA that shut them down. But I saw them actually in North Carolina. I actually saw the sticks and I was like, that is so cool. I feel like I’m in Europe right now and stuff. And it was right before they had to pull everything back and…
Julie Gunlock:
They’re all going to be in jail, no I’m kidding. But I have a friend that [inaudible 00:18:10]
Lindsey Stroud:
I think it’s going to revolutionize it.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s amazing.
Lindsey Stroud:
I think you’re see more people quit smoking with using the heat, especially the old school, I’m never going to use a vaper. And it’s, well here, use this heated tobacco product. It’s almost a cigarette.
Julie Gunlock:
I have a friend who was just like that who said I will never. He switched to the Heat-not-Burn product and then they got rid of the sticks. He’d have to, oh, who has an extra $4,000 hanging around so he can go to Japan to get them, because they’re still available in Japan and in some European countries. But I watched him go through that process knowing that he only had a couple cartons left, and meanwhile his breathing had improved, he felt much better. And again, Lindsey and I of course are dipping into this language where we speak because we follow this issue. But this was a different kind of technology rather than water vapor. It was heating the tobacco. What is it? Is it the same thing that it turns into vapor? I can’t remember exactly the technology.
Lindsey Stroud:
No. It’s still combustion. It’s not a combustion, it’s still smoke, it’s not a vapor. But they have a heated plate, it just heats the heat stick, which is a little cigarette bit, is what I kind of called it. It’s got a filter on it and everything. They’ve got a newer one too, but they can’t bring it into America until they get FDA authorization on that one.
Julie Gunlock:
Heating not burning is another way of… It’s a delivery system for nicotine. That’s the other thing to remember, that this is a delivery system for nicotine, that the heating and not the burning, you’re not getting tar and smoke and all those other things that are actually carcinogenic. That is what’s so important. I think one thing I want, and you have to be really careful here because people will go, you’re saying vaping is fine for kids and I’m not doing that but I’m saying I want parents to put this in perspective. If your kid is vaping, have the conversation with them, ground them. Do whatever you need to do. Take the car keys, take the phone, whatever. It’s not good. We don’t want that. But your kid is not doing something like fentanyl, alcohol abuse or combustible cigarettes that actually could kill them. Okay.
Lindsey Stroud:
Well, I would go more into, they didn’t give the 2022 results but in the 2021 they asked why kids vape? And overwhelmingly when they first asked, it was other reason, my friends or family and then flavors always came up third. 2021, they asked, I was feeling anxious, depressed, or stressed. And that was the number one on both current e-cigarette users and kids who had just done lifetime e-cigarette use. And I think that’s where we need to get back to the conversation. No, what came first? Your kids’ anxiety issues or the vape? No, anxiety issues came before the vape. And there’s a lot more problems when you look at the fentanyl. I mean, kids are just taking pills because they’re anxious and well you just took a pill that killed you.
Julie Gunlock:
But you didn’t mean to, you didn’t mean to.
Lindsey Stroud:
Exactly. Yeah. [inaudible 00:21:09]. Poisoned.
Julie Gunlock:
No, you hear this word laced. Laced with fentanyl. That’s a really great point Lindsey. And I think, you said in 2021 they asked different questions. It’s like what was going on in 2021? I can’t think of what was going on. The COVID stuff is going to… We are going to be connecting these dots back to COVID for a lot of years. And yet we’re still seeing a decline in vaping and a deep, deep historic decline in cigarette smoking.
Lindsey Stroud:
Yes. Thank God for that one. Even in young adults, there’s no smoking. I love it.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s funny because I said sometimes when I smell it I get this sort of nostalgic because I never smell it. It’s not like I’m walking around constantly smelling cigarettes. To be honest with you, if I smell cigarette smoke, I’m like, who’s smoking?
Lindsey Stroud:
Smoking?
Julie Gunlock:
I expect to see some 90 year old who…
Lindsey Stroud:
I didn’t know people did that anymore.
Julie Gunlock:
Right. And they frankly made it really inconvenient to do it. You can’t even smoke outside now in certain areas. But this is a thing that bothers me, Lindsey, parents are overwhelmed right now. Kids are really having a hard time in this country. We see so many signs that all is not well. The kids are not okay. And yet we have these very powerful philanthropic organizations, the media and the actual public health organizations that are pushing this as something parents should really focus on. This ain’t it folks. This ain’t it.
I wish there was this amount of attention on tech, on the things that kids are saying, on the fact that they are literally… I drive my kids to school every morning, the school’s far away from our house, but there’s a bus stop that we go by. And there’s usually a dozen kids, none of them are talking to each other. Because it’s this hard intersection, I often get to observe them, like a weirdo, but I watch these kids, they literally never talk to each other. They do not. And they all are like this. Now, believe me, when I was in middle school and early high school, I would’ve killed to have a little device to stare at instead of having to interact with the people around me. But this isn’t good. We know in our hearts that this isn’t good. We know that the rates of fentanyl abuse are just terrifying.
Lindsey Stroud:
The fentanyl one scares me. I’m sick of talking to lawmakers about vaping, especially when I wrote it for IWF. When you look at the youth overdoses increased by a hundred percent between 2019 and 2020. But we’re still talking about vaping even though that’s decreasing. And if I had a child right now, honestly, I’m not endorsing teen vaping, but I wouldn’t care if my kid was vaping. I’d care more like, hey, you go to a party, do not take any pill, man, at all.
Julie Gunlock:
I almost cussed on my own podcast, which I mean, I guess I can, it’s my podcast.
Lindsey Stroud:
It’s your podcast.
Julie Gunlock:
I was about to say no shit. And then I was like, oh, but I guess I can say that. But the point is, yes, this is the thing kids’ parents need to worry about. And also Lindsey, I keep going back to the tech. What are they seeing online and at what age?
Lindsey Stroud:
[inaudible 00:24:28] just sued Snapchat by the way.
Julie Gunlock:
No way.
Lindsey Stroud:
Actually they’re suing Snapchat over fentanyl. I followed this lady because she’s been pretty big since her 14 year old died, overdosed or poisoned by fentanyl and stuff. And yeah, they’re suing Snapchat. I was waiting for that to happen. I know that they’ve been going after Snapchat and dude, you got to do something. You have drug dealers on your platform.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s right.
Lindsey Stroud:
They’re not paying taxes.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah. I get so angry that these organizations are pushing this, let’s keep using epidemic and yeah, let’s keep going up to Congress and Senator Durbin can weep with us about this vaping epidemic. When we’re ignoring fentanyl. And I mention alcohol. I’m as free market as they come on alcohol also, by the way, it’s still illegal. It’s illegal for kids to purchase vaping products. It’s illegal for kids to buy drugs. It’s illegal for kids to buy alcohol. There’s limits to what the government can do to make this, but parents have a lot of control here. It’s not the government that has to come in and take away vaping products from adults trying to quit smoking in order to save kids where they’ve already made it illegal. The answer here is perhaps we need to look at a more rigorous parenting role here. But when parents are so distracted by non epidemics like vaping, they’re not maybe going to focus on things that are maybe not seen. Your kid taking a pill at a party that’s laced with fentanyl is…
Lindsey Stroud:
And they die.
Julie Gunlock:
And they die. Or drinking too much at a party and getting in the car and killing themselves. These to me are the issues. And your kids getting on these platforms where there are drugs being pushed or just seeing things they shouldn’t see. These, to me are the concerns parents should be having right now. And it enrages me that these organizations that make money off keeping the vaping epidemic thing alive. You always have to follow the money and that makes it even more sickening. I feel like I could go on and on and ask you.
Lindsey Stroud:
We could talk for hours on this one.
Julie Gunlock:
I know we really could. Well Lindsey, listen, keep up the great work. I want everyone to know that Lindsey is tracking youth vaping rates on the IWF blog, so check her out there. She really is worth a follow. You have to read everything Lindsey writes. She is relentless in following this issue and really I think is one of the most important voices on this issue. And she really gets into the weeds, she really gets into the data. And frankly, as parents, sometimes we need that level of granularity to make us feel better. Lindsey, where can people follow you on social media?
Lindsey Stroud:
@Lmstroud89 at Twitter and I do prolific things on there. I campaign for, Tobacco Free Kids blocked me on there, where you know you good things. Yeah, that would be the best way. And then IWF, the blog series, that as the states come out with the data, we’ll be publishing those. And I also do a 50 state analysis with TPA that will be coming out in January.
Julie Gunlock:
Okay. That’s great. Well, Lindsey, thank you so much for joining us and we won’t make it a year for your next visit.
Lindsey Stroud:
We’ll talk in March after all the state sessions.
Julie Gunlock:
That’s great, that’s great. All right. Thanks Lindsey.
Lindsey Stroud:
Thank you.
