Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show
Speaker 1: where we talk about all things drugs. But any views
Speaker 1: expressed here do not represent those of I Heeart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an
Speaker 1: inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even
Speaker 1: represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should
Speaker 1: be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any
Speaker 1: type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's subject and guest
Speaker 1: is a return to the issue of e cigarettes and vaping,
Speaker 1: and as many of you know, you know, when I
Speaker 1: stopped running drug policy lines four years ago, probably the
Speaker 1: issue that most engaged me was the fight over e
Speaker 1: cigarettes and jeweling and vaping and tobacco harm reduction. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons was, you know, so much of
Speaker 1: it reminded me about what I'm interested in drug positive reform.
Speaker 1: Back in the late eighties, it seemed like the science
Speaker 1: and the evidence we're all headed one way, but the
Speaker 1: politicians and the media and public opinion or all ahead
Speaker 1: of the other way. And so I began to delve
Speaker 1: into this area, and one of the people I learned
Speaker 1: a lot from is my guest today, Matt Culley. He's
Speaker 1: played an important role in the vape world, the vape
Speaker 1: shop owner world. He's got a web channel which evaluates
Speaker 1: different vaping devices, which I think is the most popular
Speaker 1: one in the world. And he's also been involved to
Speaker 1: some extent in vaping activism. So Matt, welcome to Psychoactive
Speaker 1: and thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me then. I really appreciate it. You know, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I think the way we met was a little over
Speaker 1: two years ago. I had been on somebody else's podcast
Speaker 1: talking about this. You heard it, and you reached out
Speaker 1: to me and said, you know, let's talk, And so
Speaker 1: I gave you a call and I had to tell you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was scribbling notes like crazy because what
Speaker 1: I needed to understand first and foremost was how did
Speaker 1: this whole e cigarette vaping thing evolved. Big Tobacco was
Speaker 1: definitely not the pioneers and all this. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: East sigarette was originally created by a guy named Han
Speaker 1: Lick in China, and there is some other evidence that,
Speaker 1: like Big Tobacco, companies might have been dabbling with some
Speaker 1: of this technology in the seventies and eighties, but they
Speaker 1: never brought a product to market. But anyway, han Legs
Speaker 1: dad died from lung cancer and so that was his motivation.
Speaker 1: He was also a smoker. The whole idea behind this,
Speaker 1: and I think most of our listeners know this now,
Speaker 1: is that nicotine itself is not all that dangerous to drug.
Speaker 1: It closes dependence, but it doesn't cause cancer. Got relatively
Speaker 1: low association with other heart diseases and things like that.
Speaker 1: Although some modest reason for concern would make cigarettes so
Speaker 1: dangerous is the combustion, right, It's consuming nicotine in a
Speaker 1: combustible form, and that basically what the sigarettes are doing
Speaker 1: is is a allowing people to consume nicotine in a
Speaker 1: form that's not burning, it's not combusting, that's not putting
Speaker 1: all these tars and other crap in your lungs. And
Speaker 1: it has dramatically fewer carcinogenic ingredients, you know, not zero,
Speaker 1: but dramatically fewer carcin genic ingredients than does cigarettes. You know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a slow thing where it was
Speaker 1: a really niche internet, grassroots thing where some of these
Speaker 1: devices started coming out of China. Most of them worked
Speaker 1: very good, they didn't perform well whatsoever. And so a
Speaker 1: group of people in the US and in the EU
Speaker 1: kind of started taking them up and then modding different
Speaker 1: parts of them to make them better, creating a lot
Speaker 1: of their own e liquid flavors that they thought were
Speaker 1: better than the ones, you know, coming out of China.
Speaker 1: And and it really started as a small niche thing
Speaker 1: on forums on the internet. But the Chinese are the
Speaker 1: ones who keep making them. So there's this like interplay
Speaker 1: between the people in the US and EU on the
Speaker 1: one hand, and then the folks in China who are
Speaker 1: making it or are people starting to really make it
Speaker 1: in a big way in the U s as well. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean the mass produced products have always been made
Speaker 1: in China. Even you know jewels and and you know
Speaker 1: big tobaccos products, they're they're having those manufactured in China. There.
Speaker 1: Over the years, there have been smaller manufacturers in Europe
Speaker 1: and in the US that usually make more of the
Speaker 1: advanced types of products, something more niche. You know what's
Speaker 1: called rebuildable atomizers where you can build your own coils
Speaker 1: and wicking in them, and they make some of their
Speaker 1: own mechanical mods they're called, but majority of the products
Speaker 1: that you see out in the wild today are are
Speaker 1: manufactured in China. And so what were your entry into
Speaker 1: all this? Well, the first time I ever tried on EAT,
Speaker 1: it was actually probably Owned nine where there was this
Speaker 1: group of people. I think they were traveling because I
Speaker 1: live in Montana. They were here in the summer and
Speaker 1: they were in a bar and walking around trying to
Speaker 1: get people to try these things called X and they
Speaker 1: had this little card that explained what it was. I
Speaker 1: took a puff off of it and never you know,
Speaker 1: thought about it again. But then in two thousand and twelve,
Speaker 1: I got oral cancer squam cell carcinoma, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't one say that it was from smoking, but
Speaker 1: it was right where I laid the cigarette on my
Speaker 1: lip and I don't have HPV, so like the only
Speaker 1: reason for a thirty year old to get something like
Speaker 1: that is probably from cigarettes. So after trying to uh
Speaker 1: quit cold turkey multiple times. Once I had the operation
Speaker 1: on the cancer, um, Vanessa, my fiance bought me an
Speaker 1: eastig from the gas station, and that you know, got
Speaker 1: me googling and doing more and more research, and I
Speaker 1: went down the rabbit hole and got on all the
Speaker 1: forums and and watched all the YouTube videos at the time,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, ever since then, I've I've basically
Speaker 1: been stuck in this rabbit hole. And back in that day,
Speaker 1: I mean, Jewel doesn't come around until or something like that.
Speaker 1: So back then you said, there were these kind of
Speaker 1: what they called signalized or something that we're kind of
Speaker 1: not very effective devices. But then these new things began
Speaker 1: to come along. Like you said, use the word mods,
Speaker 1: what exactly is going on there? Yeah, you had signal
Speaker 1: likes and the original mods were actually called that because
Speaker 1: people are taking things like flashlights and turning them into
Speaker 1: a battery holder. For an atomizer, you basically have two
Speaker 1: parts on an east sig. You have the atomizer, which
Speaker 1: is what you know, heats up and vaporizes the liquid.
Speaker 1: But then you have the battery holder that is what's
Speaker 1: firing that atomizer. And sometimes that battery holder is more complex.
Speaker 1: But yeah, people were taking those early signal like type devices,
Speaker 1: modding them, making more powerful battery holders and mods what
Speaker 1: they called them, to to make it perform better. And
Speaker 1: then the products just kind of incrementally got better. From there,
Speaker 1: you had tank systems. What does that mean? Tank systems
Speaker 1: that's where you put the flavor. A tank system is
Speaker 1: basically something that you fill up with liquid. It's larger
Speaker 1: than something like a jewel pod. And the flavors, I mean,
Speaker 1: who's coming up with all these, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: different flavors. It's started from the users. It was just
Speaker 1: a user driven innovation where you know, most of them
Speaker 1: didn't like tobacco flavor. People have to remember, tobacco flavor
Speaker 1: and ESICX tastes nothing like a cigarette. You can't mimic
Speaker 1: the taste of smoke very well, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: people didn't like this fake tobacco flavor that that started appearing,
Speaker 1: and so they started dabbling with other other flavors and
Speaker 1: making things they liked. And a lot of them were
Speaker 1: just doing this d I Y at home at first.
Speaker 1: And then the whole phenomenon of the vape shops. I mean,
Speaker 1: I assume a lot of these things people were just
Speaker 1: buying inconvenience stores and things like that. But when did
Speaker 1: vape shops start to emerge? You know, I can't say
Speaker 1: the exact time was around eleven and then you know,
Speaker 1: by the time I started vaping in we even had
Speaker 1: one here in Montana where I lived, so like they
Speaker 1: were really growing quite a bit by that time. And
Speaker 1: these are like big chains or these individuals they're there's
Speaker 1: a few larger chains, but the overwhelming majority of ape
Speaker 1: shops are small business. You might have a guy that
Speaker 1: owns two or three in his county. You know, most
Speaker 1: of the business owners are are ex smokers, and they
Speaker 1: kind of started at how I did with they were
Speaker 1: looking for a way to quit vaping work for them.
Speaker 1: They got really passionate about it and decided to open
Speaker 1: a vape shop in their area. You know, man, I
Speaker 1: remember about a couple of years ago, there's a very
Speaker 1: good young journalist, Alex Norcia, who was writing for a
Speaker 1: Vice magazine and now he's been writing for the online
Speaker 1: publication Filter, and he did a beautiful piece, I thought,
Speaker 1: and it was about the vape shop owners and describing
Speaker 1: that almost the harm reduction ethos that he found in
Speaker 1: these shops that not like unlike you would find it
Speaker 1: a needle exchange program, except you know that that you
Speaker 1: had people who had stopped smoking by taking up vaping,
Speaker 1: and now they wanted to sort of spread this public
Speaker 1: health thing by setting up a shop that was for profit,
Speaker 1: but where you know, there was a different sort of
Speaker 1: connection to the customer. It sounded like that one has
Speaker 1: in most commercial establishments. Yeah, there's there's quite a bit
Speaker 1: more passion. And it is because a lot of people
Speaker 1: view this as a life saving products. They feel like
Speaker 1: it saved their lives, and they feel like it's saving
Speaker 1: their customers lives. And they're also they kind of become
Speaker 1: more than just a shop owner to their their consumers.
Speaker 1: They're kind of the guide, right. So you have a
Speaker 1: smoker that comes in their overwhelmed, they see all these
Speaker 1: different types of apes and they have no idea where
Speaker 1: to start, and that that you know, a good shop
Speaker 1: owner or a good uh employee of that shop will
Speaker 1: help guide them through the process and you you end
Speaker 1: up kind of creating a bond with your customers and
Speaker 1: the customers build that way about the you know, the
Speaker 1: person that sold him their first vape as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I walked into one of these shops a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I think I was in Manhattan Beach, California,
Speaker 1: and I just started firing a hundred questions at the
Speaker 1: guy who ran the place and then sort of chatting
Speaker 1: up some of the customers. But I was curious about
Speaker 1: questions like, for example, you know who prefers tobacco flavor vapes?
Speaker 1: Like do older forty year smokers? Are they the ones
Speaker 1: more likely to favorite Where do people you know prefer
Speaker 1: to switch right away to non tobacco flavors. You know
Speaker 1: what's so great about vaping is the fact that you
Speaker 1: have all that variety. Now, there has been multiple polls
Speaker 1: and studies on what adults are vaping, and I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say that plus of adult vapors are
Speaker 1: using a non tobacco flavored liquid. But even with um,
Speaker 1: those tobacco flavors, a good portion of those aren't just
Speaker 1: straight tobacco. It'll take a tobacco flavor that's made by
Speaker 1: a flavoring company, and then they'll add a little bit
Speaker 1: of vanilla and a little bit of honey, or a
Speaker 1: little bit of cherry or something um, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of those are more complex than just tobacco. And
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, none of these tobacco flavors truly
Speaker 1: mimic the taste of a cigarette. So when I first
Speaker 1: started vaping, I uh figured that because I was a
Speaker 1: camel light smoker. I would also like a e liquid
Speaker 1: flavor that tasted like camel light. But you do quickly
Speaker 1: get your taste buds back when you quit smoking. First off.
Speaker 1: And also, none of these flavorings perfectly mimic a cigarette,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, because you can't really mimic that
Speaker 1: that smoke taste. You're not you know, when you're smoking,
Speaker 1: you're not tasting what it would be like to eat
Speaker 1: a piece of tobacco. You're inhaling the smoke from it.
Speaker 1: And the liquid flavors that are tobacco based are quite
Speaker 1: a ways off from from mimicking that experience and flavor profile.
Speaker 1: I see, I see because you know, I mean now,
Speaker 1: you know you often so often see that it's the
Speaker 1: flavors which are the issue, because the kids like flavors.
Speaker 1: But what you're suggesting is that the adults like the
Speaker 1: non tobacco flavors almost as much as the kids do.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, as as we sit here, I'm vaping
Speaker 1: a watermelon peach flavor, so um. Like I said, you
Speaker 1: get your taste buds back. And also part of what
Speaker 1: makes vping so successful is having that variety. I do
Speaker 1: like to switch to multiple different flavors. In the summer,
Speaker 1: I like a more fruity, tropical flavor, but then a
Speaker 1: lot of times in the winter, I like, you know,
Speaker 1: something that's a little richer, like some of the desserts
Speaker 1: or bakery types of flavors. And you know, that's what's
Speaker 1: so great about it is everyone has different tastes and
Speaker 1: when they get sick of one flavor, they can find
Speaker 1: something else that fits the bill for them. You think
Speaker 1: most vapors, most people doing this sort of stuff are
Speaker 1: switching flavors and have a variety of flavors they like. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no doubt about it that that majority
Speaker 1: of adults are using these flavored products. That's why you
Speaker 1: see in certain states or cities that when they do
Speaker 1: ban flavors, the vapor shop there is not able to
Speaker 1: survive because the majority of their business was with those
Speaker 1: flavored products, and those consumers go to you know, try
Speaker 1: to find it online somewhere or some illicit means to
Speaker 1: to get it because they don't want to vape the
Speaker 1: tobacco flavor. So most people are going back to say
Speaker 1: between two thousand fIF team, most people are who want
Speaker 1: to wanting to get these things. They're buying them in
Speaker 1: vape shops, or they're buying them in convenience stores, or
Speaker 1: the buying them online or all three or how does
Speaker 1: it shake out? It's all three. So back then, none
Speaker 1: of those gas station etis were really that good. Usually
Speaker 1: what happened is is people would initiate on those it
Speaker 1: would be enough to spark their interest and then they
Speaker 1: would walk into their local lape shop, or they'd start
Speaker 1: watching YouTube videos and buy some stuff online. Now that
Speaker 1: that whole paradigm kind of changed when Jewel came about,
Speaker 1: because Jewel was much more effective. Um, but back then
Speaker 1: it was kind of like the gas stations and comedian
Speaker 1: stories were just a stepping stone into the vape shops.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking more after we hear this. Add there's
Speaker 1: that initial sort of disruptive technology that emerges ten fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago with the first generations of the e cigarette devices,
Speaker 1: the mods and all that, and then Jewel, you know,
Speaker 1: really does something that is a whole new level of stuff.
Speaker 1: So just explain to our listeners what was unique about Jewel. Well,
Speaker 1: the magic sauce with Jewel was that they used nicotine
Speaker 1: salts and so what that does is it gives for
Speaker 1: a smoother hit. So a jewel has I think it's
Speaker 1: fifty six milligrams per m L or they call it
Speaker 1: five point six percent nicotine, which is much higher than
Speaker 1: a lot of other of the refillable types of products
Speaker 1: that came before it, or even some of the cigalettes
Speaker 1: that came before it. And because it was a smoother draw,
Speaker 1: people were able to handle that higher nicotine content. With
Speaker 1: free base it would be so harsh on your throat
Speaker 1: that's it wouldn't be enjoyable. So that was really it
Speaker 1: wasn't the device itself. It wasn't the way they built
Speaker 1: the atomizer inside or the battery. All that's pretty basic,
Speaker 1: although they gave it a cool form factor that we
Speaker 1: didn't really see, the whole thumb drive type look. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but really the number one thing is the nicotine salts.
Speaker 1: That's what makes a jewel effective. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: to deliver a higher amount of nicotine, which would be
Speaker 1: more satisfying to a consumer, although also more potentially dependence causing,
Speaker 1: but to do it in a way which hits the
Speaker 1: back of the throat the way smokers like, rather than
Speaker 1: to feel really rough um the way it would have
Speaker 1: with a high nicotine yield in the old fashioned models.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not that a puff off of a
Speaker 1: jewel is giving you way much more nicotine than a
Speaker 1: puff off of a cigarette. They wanted to get it
Speaker 1: close so that they mimic each other closely. So basically
Speaker 1: one jewel pod is equilled into one pack of cigarettes roughly.
Speaker 1: There's yes, I mean it's very close. There's been some
Speaker 1: debate on that, but yeah, I would say that that's
Speaker 1: a that's a good estimate. Yeah, although I think in
Speaker 1: in the EU or the UK or whatever, I mean,
Speaker 1: the jewels are limited to a lower level of nicotine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the that's the kicker with a nicotine salt,
Speaker 1: When you do it at twenty milligram, there's almost it's
Speaker 1: almost too smooth. So a smoker or or a vapor
Speaker 1: still likes a little bit of a throw head. They
Speaker 1: want to feel that that vapor going into their lungs.
Speaker 1: But with a twenty milligram nicotine salt, it's so smooth
Speaker 1: that it almost feels like nothing. And I think that's
Speaker 1: part of why it didn't take off as well in
Speaker 1: those lower nicotine concentrations. So when jewel comes along, I mean,
Speaker 1: for smokers who've been trying to quit, who have tried
Speaker 1: cold turkey didn't work. Maybe they try to patch or
Speaker 1: a gum it didn't work. You know, are there folks
Speaker 1: who have been smoking and they find the jewel works
Speaker 1: like nothing before and even works better than the old mods,
Speaker 1: the old open tank systems. Yeah, it definitely helps some
Speaker 1: people that were struggling, especially the types of folks that
Speaker 1: smoke two packs a day, that that are really used
Speaker 1: to a high amount of nicotine. You know, none of
Speaker 1: the vapes out there beforehand really satisfied them. It helps
Speaker 1: them quite a bit. And I think that it fits
Speaker 1: a spot in the marketplace. I never felt like I
Speaker 1: needed that much nicotine for myself. I very satisfied vaping
Speaker 1: twelve milligram out of a little pod system that's refillable.
Speaker 1: But you know, to everyone's different, and it was another
Speaker 1: harm reduction tool out there for people, and and it
Speaker 1: worked quite well. And how did the vapees shop owners
Speaker 1: you know, feel when jewel comes in? I mean, is
Speaker 1: that cutting into their sale of all these other devices? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do they see it as a welcome addition to what
Speaker 1: they're selling. It was a rude awakening for some of them,
Speaker 1: and some of them disliked it. Some of them sold
Speaker 1: it because when you have a bunch of customers coming
Speaker 1: and asking you for the jewel, you need to start
Speaker 1: carrying it. Um Now, you know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people's takes on them is a little more nuanced.
Speaker 1: It's it's not that they disliked the product. They dislike
Speaker 1: some of the things Jewels done over the last few years,
Speaker 1: especially with their lobbying, like Jewel has been for flavor
Speaker 1: bands in some states, and uh, you know that's where
Speaker 1: I kind of stand too, is I think it's an
Speaker 1: effective product. It's helped a lot of people. I have
Speaker 1: nothing against the Jewel, but I'm also not fond of
Speaker 1: some of their their actions that they've taken the last
Speaker 1: few years. Okay, so let's jump forward to nineteen here.
Speaker 1: So jewel sort of takes off and it starts to
Speaker 1: become immensely popular among adolescents, and not just adolescents who
Speaker 1: had been smoking, but also adolescents who had never smoked before,
Speaker 1: and it starts to freak out their parents, oftentimes in
Speaker 1: middle upper middle class you know neighborhoods. You know, parents
Speaker 1: who had never smoked and smoked in a long time
Speaker 1: and think that jeweling is just as bad, and their
Speaker 1: kids are saying they can't quit, and all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And then you have, you know, in late eighteen,
Speaker 1: you know, Jewel, which a year a year or two before,
Speaker 1: had also engaged in a social marketing campaign which peer
Speaker 1: child friendly, which seemed really bone headed at the time,
Speaker 1: and they tried to tighten it up, but they'd already
Speaker 1: done that damage. Late eighteen, they sell thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the company to the tobacco company Altria right for thirteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars, giving Jewel a thirty eight billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 1: And at that point, between the sale to Altria and
Speaker 1: the explosion in east cigarette used it, especially jeweling among
Speaker 1: young people, it seems like everything turns and Scott Gottlie,
Speaker 1: who's the head of the FDA, and they've been sort
Speaker 1: of supportive of tobacco harm reductions, seems to be piste off.
Speaker 1: Members of Congress, politicians start to turn. Anti vaping organizations emerge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just seems like this ship hits the fan.
Speaker 1: And then there's this moment in twent nineteen when two
Speaker 1: other things happen. One is that the activism starts to
Speaker 1: cause all the politicians to start proposing bands on flavors
Speaker 1: and maybe even bands and all East cigarettes. And the
Speaker 1: other thing it happens is this e valley E V
Speaker 1: A l I where the media starts reporting about a few,
Speaker 1: you know, many people landing up in the hospital and
Speaker 1: some dozens of people landing up dead because they're vaping,
Speaker 1: right and and so this all comes as a shock
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, not just Jewel, but I think
Speaker 1: the broader industry is on the defensive. So I mean, Matt,
Speaker 1: you're smack in the middle of this at that time,
Speaker 1: So just describe how that felt from where you were
Speaker 1: sitting in a central place in this whole vape world.
Speaker 1: Oh it was. That was a really tough year. And
Speaker 1: then of course follow that up with COVID. But when
Speaker 1: Scott Gottlieb and the Surgeon General started calling the teen
Speaker 1: vaping issue an epidemic, that really changed the game. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately, while there was a lot of teen
Speaker 1: experimentation at the time, if you really dive deeper into
Speaker 1: the numbers, it's way more nuanced than that. So you know,
Speaker 1: they they really touted this look. Over a quarter of
Speaker 1: teams were vaping and so everybody had this imagery on
Speaker 1: their head that there's you know, one quarter of us
Speaker 1: teams are all just nicotine addicts, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: the future is screwed. But but really that was just
Speaker 1: you know that tried vaping one time or more in
Speaker 1: the last thirty days at the same experience in the
Speaker 1: whole marijuana thing for decades, right that the media headlines
Speaker 1: would say the sensational number, and when you look at
Speaker 1: the details, that's how many teenagers had smoked once in
Speaker 1: the last year or maybe once in the last month.
Speaker 1: And the daily number of consumers would be very low,
Speaker 1: a few percent, but that would only be in the
Speaker 1: small print. And I saw the same sort of media
Speaker 1: coverage happened as you're describing in the in this vaping world.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a recent article out by Ken Warner,
Speaker 1: the former dean of the University of Michigan School of
Speaker 1: Public Health, you know, basically saying that when you hold
Speaker 1: all the very other variables constant, like which teams are
Speaker 1: risk oriented, which teams this, and that, which you find
Speaker 1: is that there's this whole notion of the gateway apothis
Speaker 1: is that kids will start vaping. You know who had
Speaker 1: never smoked and they switched to smoking. Just there's almost
Speaker 1: no evidence to support that sort of stuff. So it's
Speaker 1: clearly an issue, right, parents are seeing this stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's being exaggerated and blowing up by the media in
Speaker 1: much more substantial ways. Well. And one more thought to
Speaker 1: throw in on that too, though, is it can be
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy, like what we saw in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: where once you do ban vapes, you see teen smoking
Speaker 1: go up, and they'll try to say, look, vaping was
Speaker 1: a gateway to smoking. No, it's just you took all
Speaker 1: the access of other safer products away, and more people
Speaker 1: are smoking in your city, teens and adults. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's another another way to look at
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, I know a very good published
Speaker 1: study by a professor at Yale, Abigail Freeman, that looked
Speaker 1: at that San Francisco data and found that when San
Speaker 1: Francisco started banning all that stuff, it's exactly you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: you know, smoking went up, you know, a kind of
Speaker 1: counterproductive result of a semi well intended band from you know,
Speaker 1: coming from a purportedly public health perspective. Yeah, and as
Speaker 1: far as adults go. Um. You know, I think a
Speaker 1: good portion of adult vapors don't really keep on top
Speaker 1: of the advocacy stuff and what's happening in vaping news.
Speaker 1: But the ones that do are very, very passionate. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm on the board board of an organization
Speaker 1: called CASSA. It's Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association,
Speaker 1: and we have over two members. And uh, when there's something,
Speaker 1: you know, like when Trump almost banned flavors back at
Speaker 1: the end of twenty nine, uh, quite a few people
Speaker 1: uh stood up and played their parts. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's quite a few adults that are are pretty
Speaker 1: passionate about making sure that they have access to these products. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because saw I think that's what c A s
Speaker 1: A A right. But when the Holy Valley thing comes along,
Speaker 1: that must have been infuriating. You know, A lung disease
Speaker 1: that people realize almost instantly is associated with illicit tainted
Speaker 1: th HC cartridges, you know, which some knuckleheads have been
Speaker 1: cutting with vitamin and acetate, which can be safe to
Speaker 1: consume orally, but when you light it up, it splatters
Speaker 1: in your lungs and puts you in the hospital, right.
Speaker 1: But you see the US Center for Disease Control and
Speaker 1: others in the politicians using this vaping disease associated basically
Speaker 1: entirely with illegally produced THHC cannabis vapes, using it as
Speaker 1: an excuse to crack down more on nicotine vaporing and
Speaker 1: nicotine e cigarette seems to be to change the name
Speaker 1: of the thing. I mean, I mean the valley stands
Speaker 1: for et cigarette and vaping use associated lung you know,
Speaker 1: uh injury. I mean they should take out the E
Speaker 1: from it, because people who vape cannabis don't say I'm
Speaker 1: vaping cannabis from an EAST cigarette. The phrase east cigarette
Speaker 1: is almost only used to refer to nicotine. So it's
Speaker 1: fundamentally disingenuous and effect dis honest. And the fact that
Speaker 1: c d C and maybe f d A and others
Speaker 1: and politicians who do know better keep propagating this myth
Speaker 1: and keep saying, well, we're not a certain that there
Speaker 1: might not be a nicotine E cigarette thing, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just find that fundamentally dishonest and and and it
Speaker 1: also is responsible for people dying because by obscuring the
Speaker 1: really accurate evidence there and by letting people who were
Speaker 1: vaping th HC know right off the bat that this
Speaker 1: was about you know, illicitly produced th HC vape cartridge
Speaker 1: is not about not about the cigarettes with nicotine. I mean,
Speaker 1: people did not take the proper precautions in the marijuana
Speaker 1: vaping area. So I mean, you know, obviously you my
Speaker 1: audience can hear me getting passionate about this, but so
Speaker 1: much of this reminds me about the dishonesty that kind
Speaker 1: of refer madness stuff we saw with marijuana. Now the
Speaker 1: same sort of refor madness mentality being employed against vaping.
Speaker 1: And you know how it is to that, you know,
Speaker 1: the first headline is what sticks, and so the damage
Speaker 1: is done. And even though we started to see more
Speaker 1: and more articles that would throw in the you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like this is probably from the right of
Speaker 1: any answer to it was just too late and so
Speaker 1: even to to you know, today, there's still plenty of
Speaker 1: people to think Nick Genie six are what we're killing people.
Speaker 1: And while CDC backtracked somewhat, it's not as if they
Speaker 1: did it very loudly. Well, Matt, let me ask you
Speaker 1: hear about you know, the demographics in politics of this issue, right,
Speaker 1: So I pulled up a chart earlier, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the states which have the highest
Speaker 1: rates of smoking, they're all what we would call red states. Right,
Speaker 1: It's West Virginia is first, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and then finally hit Michigan, a sort of purple state.
Speaker 1: In North Carolina, purple state. And then you go to
Speaker 1: Wyoming in South Dakota. So the states are the highest
Speaker 1: rates of smoking are basically red states. Right. Then you
Speaker 1: look at what are the states with the lowest rates
Speaker 1: of smoking, and at the very bottom is Utah. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a conservative state, but it's because of the Mormons
Speaker 1: and the Holy anti smoking thing. But right from there,
Speaker 1: it's California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Washington, Maryland, New York, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Road is in Colorado, Virginia, Illinois or again, and then
Speaker 1: you finally get to Minnesota and Nebraska. Right. So the
Speaker 1: dozen states that are the lowest in smoking are except
Speaker 1: for Utah, are basically blue states. Now I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: when it comes to vaping, those would probably be similar. Yeah, correct,
Speaker 1: It does seem that there's quite a few more vapors
Speaker 1: in Red states because they started out with more with
Speaker 1: more smokers obviously, but also, um, the Red States have
Speaker 1: been friendlier to vape as far as regulations go to
Speaker 1: so there's more vape shops there as well. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: in some states like Washington, California, they were really flourishing
Speaker 1: with vape shops about six seven years ago, but a
Speaker 1: lot of those have shut down. The regulations have gotten
Speaker 1: harder to uh to navigate, and uh so that that's
Speaker 1: another reason why I think we see less vapors in
Speaker 1: some of the Blue states as well. Well. There's also
Speaker 1: when you look at the rest of the demographics who smoke,
Speaker 1: you see that the highest rates of smoking are among
Speaker 1: Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. The lower rates are among
Speaker 1: Hispanics and Asians, right. And when you see that, it's
Speaker 1: higher than the average is generally among white Americans, and
Speaker 1: especially you see lower income, less educated white Americans. So
Speaker 1: you look at a group which is you know, disproportionately
Speaker 1: smoking at larger numbers and probably disproportionately interested in vaping
Speaker 1: or vaping, right, and also disproportionately supportive of Donald Trump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say so. So and by the way, the
Speaker 1: other group we left out of this, we're the smoking
Speaker 1: way to the highest of all um is among people
Speaker 1: who suffer from mental illness and especially schizophrenia and some
Speaker 1: other things, and also people with anxiety disorders, where you
Speaker 1: see remarkably high rates of smoking. And it's baffling to
Speaker 1: me why the National Association of Mental Illness, you know,
Speaker 1: is not a vigorous supporter of tobacco harm reduction. But this,
Speaker 1: this gets us into the moment with Trump in twenty nineteen, right,
Speaker 1: And as I understand the story, you know, his wife Milania,
Speaker 1: comes home one day and she's a bit freaked out
Speaker 1: because their son, you know, they think he or his
Speaker 1: buddies are vaping and uh. And she says, you know,
Speaker 1: you're the president, you should do something. And Trump goes
Speaker 1: out and and says, okay, I'm gonna you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna crack down on this. And he calls his head
Speaker 1: of health Human Services I think his name is as
Speaker 1: ours are a's are, tells him to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Um And then the politics start to get more interesting
Speaker 1: because in a way, he's addressing an issue that means
Speaker 1: something to his political base. Yeah, and I think obviously
Speaker 1: Milannia played a part, but this is something that I
Speaker 1: think Azar wanted quite a bit as well, and he
Speaker 1: was pushing it, and then when Milannia came on board,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's probably around the time Trump was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do this. And you know, like he did plenty
Speaker 1: of times as president, he spoke very soon on it,
Speaker 1: right after he had the meeting on it, said we
Speaker 1: were going to bay on all these flavors, and then
Speaker 1: didn't really understand all the different political implications or the
Speaker 1: backlash that might happen. And you know, that's when he
Speaker 1: started to kind of get wishy washy and go back
Speaker 1: and forth, and then eventually backtracked and only did a
Speaker 1: partial ban on just pre filled pods products like jewels mango.
Speaker 1: I saw a video of the meeting that Trump held
Speaker 1: at the White House um on the issue of vaping
Speaker 1: and what to do, and I was absolutely amazed because
Speaker 1: everything I've seen about Trump, I mean, I have unlimited
Speaker 1: contempt for this human being, and yet there he is
Speaker 1: in the White House and he's got a meeting of
Speaker 1: two dozen people coming from all perspectives on this issue,
Speaker 1: and he's going around the room and asking people what
Speaker 1: they think. And it was almost like this Obama esque
Speaker 1: moment by Trump, and you could see he was torn.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what to do. You know, he had
Speaker 1: his if he had his head of Health and Human
Speaker 1: Services on the one hand, but he had the base
Speaker 1: and it was you know, small entrepreneurs and all this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and he's kind of twisting um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it was really a fascinating moment
Speaker 1: to see him kind of you all a sudden get
Speaker 1: all gung ho on a on a public health message
Speaker 1: and then uh and then kind of you know, get
Speaker 1: confused about it. Yeah, let's not get it too twisted
Speaker 1: here and give him too much credit because behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of politics going on. And so
Speaker 1: there was two different camps. There was the camp that
Speaker 1: thought that, you know, pissing off vapors was gonna lose votes,
Speaker 1: especially in really tight states like Michigan where he had
Speaker 1: only won by by ten thousand votes. And then there
Speaker 1: was the camp that was for the band that we're
Speaker 1: worried about um pissing off the suburban moms. So while
Speaker 1: you know, yes, it was really nice that he did that,
Speaker 1: and and he was he did seem to be interested
Speaker 1: about the subject. The reason behind the scenes, I believe,
Speaker 1: while why there was a lot of going back and forth,
Speaker 1: it was all politics. Yeah, well I saw some pulled
Speaker 1: that suburban soccer moms care about this, but that vapors
Speaker 1: can be one issue voters, and in Michigan or Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: or Ohio or Florida, you know that there's enough people
Speaker 1: who could actually, you know, say we like you, Mr Trump,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna stay home if you screw us by
Speaker 1: banning vaping. And you know that the whole slogan we've
Speaker 1: we vape, we vote right. I mean, that was a
Speaker 1: kind of powerful moment and that I recall. I think
Speaker 1: you were there, Matt Right. There was a demonstration outside
Speaker 1: the White House in November. Yeah, I was one of
Speaker 1: the speakers and helped organize that. I think it was effective. Uh,
Speaker 1: it got media attention. Some of them made fun of us,
Speaker 1: which was fine, but the whole point was to get media,
Speaker 1: media attention. And at the time Trump's helicopter flew right
Speaker 1: over our our rally, and uh, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of information after the fact that he that
Speaker 1: he saw us as he was leaving the White House
Speaker 1: that day, and even it's been written in some books.
Speaker 1: He was talking a lot about the vaping issue behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, trying to figure out what to do and
Speaker 1: not wanting to piss off the vapors, worried about the
Speaker 1: quote unquote vaping vote and and stuff like that. Then
Speaker 1: when Trump softened on it, you know, and and uh
Speaker 1: acted like he cared about the vapors and decided not
Speaker 1: to ban you know, all all the flavored products he
Speaker 1: was going to, I think that that made it even
Speaker 1: more of a political issue than it was. And and now,
Speaker 1: while the left hasn't always been friendly to vaping, I
Speaker 1: think it just it made it that much worse, if
Speaker 1: I'm making sense. Yeah, no, I think he did. I
Speaker 1: have to tell you, you know, I've discussed this. It's
Speaker 1: so galling for me that this issue of the banning
Speaker 1: on flavors, of the banning on all vaping is so
Speaker 1: much being led off in times by Democrats and progressives.
Speaker 1: And that's a community that I consider myself part of,
Speaker 1: and that overwhelmingly I'm generally supportive of. But you know,
Speaker 1: the same political figures, whether you know, around the country
Speaker 1: who were my allies on legalizing marijuana first for medical
Speaker 1: purposes and then for all adults who are supporting needle
Speaker 1: exchange and harm reduction programs and the locks on the
Speaker 1: reduced overdoses, all that stuff. These are the same folks
Speaker 1: who oftentimes have been leading the charge to ban e
Speaker 1: cigarettes or either to ban all flavors or everything but
Speaker 1: tobacco flavors. San Francisco sort of becomes the epicenter of this.
Speaker 1: But it's happening. You know, it happened in Michigan. It
Speaker 1: happened in a range of other states in the Northeast
Speaker 1: as well, and you know, some of that was playing
Speaker 1: off all the fears that happened around the e Valley thing,
Speaker 1: which turned out not to be about the cigarettes and nicotine. Um,
Speaker 1: but it it. I mean, in a way, I analogize
Speaker 1: that I sometimes look back at the you know, the
Speaker 1: if you look historically at the progressive movement in a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, early twentieth century, and you know, they
Speaker 1: played a pivotal role in advancing good things like food
Speaker 1: and drugs, safety, and you know, child labor laws and
Speaker 1: better working conditions. Yet at the same time they also
Speaker 1: are the ones who led the charge for banning alcohol
Speaker 1: for alcohol prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment, you know, which, in
Speaker 1: a way I mean to me is the progressives can
Speaker 1: get most of it right, but sometimes they can get
Speaker 1: something radically wrong. And that's in believing that a prohibitionist
Speaker 1: measure is somehow going to be a good progressive measure.
Speaker 1: And I see the same thing happening today where I
Speaker 1: generally support a lot of what the progressives and Democrats
Speaker 1: are pushing for in the economic scale and a whole
Speaker 1: range of other fronts, But in this front, I just
Speaker 1: think they're going asked backwards. And what's actually bothers me
Speaker 1: a bit is that, you know, I believe that my
Speaker 1: political allies really understood harm reduction deep down, but in
Speaker 1: point of fact, you know, what it makes me suspective
Speaker 1: is that maybe they just don't get the core principles right.
Speaker 1: That they came to the right place on drug policy
Speaker 1: reform for reasons that had more to do with politics,
Speaker 1: with racial justice politics, with anti incarceration politics, but that
Speaker 1: in this issue, you know, I mean, all those things
Speaker 1: go out the window, either because of the fear about
Speaker 1: their kids or because big tobacco is playing in every
Speaker 1: greater role in the vaping world. Yeah, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: multiple factors that that muddy the waters here. And as
Speaker 1: you know, I consider myself a progressive also, but like
Speaker 1: you said, they have kind of a checkered past when
Speaker 1: it comes to prohibition, and uh, sometimes they try too
Speaker 1: hard to save people from themselves. What I think is
Speaker 1: really muddying the waters here is the big tobacco influence.
Speaker 1: But even if it wasn't big tobacco, just other big
Speaker 1: corporations making money off of, you know, nicotine. And what
Speaker 1: I think progressives and Democrats have to accept here is
Speaker 1: that when you legalize drugs, whether it be cannabis, you know, nicotine,
Speaker 1: maybe down the road, you know, we'll we'll, we'll see
Speaker 1: some others. There are gonna be legal businesses there are
Speaker 1: going to step in and some of them may get
Speaker 1: very large. And you know, I know that, like in
Speaker 1: the marijuana world, they're trying to mitigate that somewhat and
Speaker 1: and I applaud that, but you know, once once federal
Speaker 1: legalization happens, you're gonna see some big players pop up
Speaker 1: um and you just have to deal with that. And
Speaker 1: you but you need to still regulate them, hold them
Speaker 1: to account when they do something wrong. But you have
Speaker 1: to accept that people are going to make money off
Speaker 1: of this, and so I think that that's what kills
Speaker 1: it for them is that they look at this now,
Speaker 1: is these big corporations preying on their children. You know,
Speaker 1: they hate the businesses, but then they also don't want
Speaker 1: to criminalize drugs. So like, what do you do? And
Speaker 1: I think you have to accept the lesser of two
Speaker 1: evils in this case, and that is legalization. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I mean you see this. You know, a few decades ago,
Speaker 1: the kind of tobacco control was united in opposing big
Speaker 1: tobacco and trying to reduce smoking. And then when all
Speaker 1: these tobacco harm reduction devices emerge, e Cigarettes and a
Speaker 1: whole range of others. Um, you see that community split
Speaker 1: right where one group begins to say harm reduction is
Speaker 1: the way to go that you know for people who
Speaker 1: can't switch quit smoking, that east cigarettes and these oral products,
Speaker 1: that these are all harm reduction things that can really
Speaker 1: badically reduce both smoking and the negative consequences of tobacco nicotine.
Speaker 1: And so from a public health perspective, we have to
Speaker 1: embrace harm reduction. And then there's another group right which
Speaker 1: has got the upper hands right now, which essentially is
Speaker 1: saying our number one objective is to put a stake
Speaker 1: through the heart of big tobacco, right, and that if
Speaker 1: allowing big tobacco to sell e cigarettes and these other
Speaker 1: things is going to keep them alive, then we have
Speaker 1: to be against it, right, And they're exercising enormous influence.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Michael Bloomberg is a major donor
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars going to try to ban
Speaker 1: you know, vaping and flavored vaping and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, giving money to the c d c S Foundation,
Speaker 1: giving money to W h O's Foundation. So you see
Speaker 1: a kind of um, you know, where the original public
Speaker 1: health objectives and ideals of tobacco control have almost become
Speaker 1: secondary because of this passionate you know, opposition to big tobacco.
Speaker 1: And as you said, that dovetails to the broader liberal
Speaker 1: view of kind of you know, multinationals, big industry is
Speaker 1: inherently bad. So therefore if they might benefit in some way,
Speaker 1: you know, we got to oppose it. Well, just one
Speaker 1: thing to say about tobacco control. You're not quitting the
Speaker 1: way they always planned for you to quit, So you're
Speaker 1: kind of you know, a wrench has been thrown into
Speaker 1: their plans. These people have had these plans for decades, right,
Speaker 1: and they've seen that the smoking rates lower even before
Speaker 1: vaping came along, and so they think, you, oh, great,
Speaker 1: you know now nicotine is here to stay. Even with
Speaker 1: the pro vape researchers, they still show if you listen
Speaker 1: to sometimes or read some of their literature, they still
Speaker 1: show these kind of puritanical glimpses of themselves where their
Speaker 1: end goal really still seems like to eradicate nicotine completely. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: we we were for e siggs as a harm reduction
Speaker 1: quitting tool, and then eventually they'll get off the stiggs
Speaker 1: and then you know, new generations just won't use any
Speaker 1: of it. So we we need to only let the
Speaker 1: smokers vape and make sure the kids never get it.
Speaker 1: And eventually the smokers are going to die off where
Speaker 1: they're gonna you know, quit you know, vaporing, and nicotine
Speaker 1: is gonna die with them. So even if you look
Speaker 1: closely with some of these people that we both like,
Speaker 1: they still are a little more puritanical than probably you
Speaker 1: or I are on the subjects where you know, I
Speaker 1: think nicotine's here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, how it's ingested me evolve. But we need
Speaker 1: to stop thinking of it as like winning the war
Speaker 1: is uh by eradicating nicotine. In my mind, winning the
Speaker 1: war is you know, saving lives, right, regardless of what
Speaker 1: they're using. Yeah, I think you're right. You could snap
Speaker 1: your fingers tomorrow and all of the thirty million smokers
Speaker 1: in the US and the billion plus smokers around the
Speaker 1: world were to switch to e cigarettes or other tobacco
Speaker 1: harm aduction devices, it would probably be one of the
Speaker 1: greatest advances in public health and human history because these
Speaker 1: devices tend to be, you know, less dangerous than smoking cigarettes. Right,
Speaker 1: A world with dramatically fewer smokers even have involved dramatically
Speaker 1: more vapors, you know, is a much healthier world with
Speaker 1: people living much longer lives. But the fact that it's
Speaker 1: going to put money in the hands of big tobacco,
Speaker 1: the fact that people are gonna be dependent upon this,
Speaker 1: the fact that many people are going to become dependent
Speaker 1: while they're still teenagers. That all raises moral and you know,
Speaker 1: ethical issues and all this sort of stuff. But I
Speaker 1: think it blinds us to the bottom line public health
Speaker 1: thing which is what's most gonna save lives and extend lies.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: is ultimately where the debate is gonna go. The other
Speaker 1: part is that some of the folks in harve reduction
Speaker 1: think that if we can reduce smoking enough in this country,
Speaker 1: you know, froment of the adult population down to five
Speaker 1: four three percent, you know, well, then let's band cigarettes,
Speaker 1: or let's cut the nicotine in them so low that
Speaker 1: nobody even wants to smoke anymore. But I think if
Speaker 1: you do that, you're going to see a black market
Speaker 1: emerged in cigarettes that could well dwarf the black market
Speaker 1: we've seen with heroin, cocaine, meth amphetaman with all the
Speaker 1: mass incarceration and global black markets and and organized crime
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. And I think that
Speaker 1: many folks in tobacco reduction don't take that possibility seriously enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've corrected quite a few people that have said something like,
Speaker 1: let's ban cigarettes. That's absolutely a horrible idea. And you
Speaker 1: you and I both know what communities that's going to
Speaker 1: disproportionally affect, and who the first people are going to
Speaker 1: be arrested from it. It would create a huge black market.
Speaker 1: There's already multiple states in this country that have massive
Speaker 1: cigarette black markets because of owners regulations. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about it. I mean, if we go to
Speaker 1: the point of banning cigarettes, I mean, you remember the
Speaker 1: case of Eric Garner. You know who the cops you know,
Speaker 1: landed up, you know, killing um. This guy was selling
Speaker 1: Lucy's in New York, you know, individual cigarettes, and you
Speaker 1: can see the Eric Garner phenomena increasing dramatically. We know
Speaker 1: that when markets become more listit like that, you know,
Speaker 1: it presents opportunities for people who don't have better better
Speaker 1: chances in poor communities and poor black and brown communities.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you something else. I also think there's
Speaker 1: another possibility here, which is that given the extent to
Speaker 1: which smoking is disproportionately concentrated, oftentimes in poor, white, Trump
Speaker 1: leaning communities, the ones who don't trust the government, the
Speaker 1: ones who are gun friendly, the ones who don't buy
Speaker 1: the stuff on COVID, all of this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and who basically believe that smoking is a basic human right.
Speaker 1: On some level, they're right about it being a basic
Speaker 1: human right to put in your body what you want.
Speaker 1: I could easily see the emergence of black markets in
Speaker 1: which you begin to see white nationalists, you know, organizations
Speaker 1: playing in every bigger role and traffic in this stuff,
Speaker 1: growing it, you know, smuggling it, you know, and and
Speaker 1: really seeing themselves is not just making money illegally, but
Speaker 1: also doing this in a way that almost feels political.
Speaker 1: So I know, I'm kind of you know, jumping into
Speaker 1: the future with this thing, but if you look at
Speaker 1: where the country is going in terms of polarization and
Speaker 1: radicalization and what's happened with COVID and the anti mass stuff,
Speaker 1: I could easily see an overly aggressive tobacco policy playing
Speaker 1: into that mix. Yeah, I agree. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of outcomes that that could come from from a
Speaker 1: cigarette bandon and none of them look very good. And uh,
Speaker 1: you're much better off allowing cigarettes to exist, but having
Speaker 1: a government that gives their citizens the proper information. And
Speaker 1: that's what we see in the UK. The UK has
Speaker 1: some dumb regulations. They have a nicotine cap, they have
Speaker 1: uh a, some regulations on the size of tanks they allowed.
Speaker 1: There's some silly stuff there, but people are switching to
Speaker 1: vaping in the UK and sticking with it because they
Speaker 1: also have that support from their government, telling them the
Speaker 1: giving them the proper info, telling them you know that
Speaker 1: it's harm reduction, telling them, you know, the rail College
Speaker 1: of Physicians is still doubling down and saying vaping is
Speaker 1: at least safer than smoking. That means a lot. So
Speaker 1: if we had something like that in this country, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd see a shipload more vapors than we
Speaker 1: have today. Let's take a break here and go to
Speaker 1: an ad So, Matt, let me I see this. In
Speaker 1: early mid October, the f d A basically allowed UH
Speaker 1: its first e cigarette um to be sold. You it's
Speaker 1: called views solo, right, It's not very popular device, but
Speaker 1: it's opened up the door, right, And now you and
Speaker 1: I are talking the day before Thanksgiving. So it's possible
Speaker 1: that the FDA begins to give approval for Jewel or Enjoy,
Speaker 1: which is the one of the bigger of the independent companies,
Speaker 1: or some of the other companies, to sell their products
Speaker 1: as well, um, you know, without giving them a stamp
Speaker 1: of approval, but basically saying we've determined that they're safe
Speaker 1: enough and that the benefits to adults in terms of smoking, sexation,
Speaker 1: cessation exceed the possible harms to young people in terms
Speaker 1: of uptake of aping. But it's also important to note
Speaker 1: that two years ago, you know, the f d A
Speaker 1: gave a kind of qualified to green light to stuffs, right,
Speaker 1: which is that oral nicotine thing that was enormously successful
Speaker 1: in Sweden a Norway in reducing smoking rates among adult
Speaker 1: men to the lowest in the world. And then you
Speaker 1: know last year in July. Um in July, they gave
Speaker 1: a kind of qualified green light to icos, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a heated tobacco products, so like an East cigarette,
Speaker 1: but it works somewhat differently. So we see some of
Speaker 1: these other products being approved and maybe more down the road.
Speaker 1: They're all harm reduction devices. They all present dramatically fewer
Speaker 1: risks to people's health, and does smoking some of them
Speaker 1: maybe even safer than ease cigarettes. What I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is when you go back in your vape shop world,
Speaker 1: I mean, are the sniffs products, the oral products. There's
Speaker 1: something called zen which is a nicotine pouch that people
Speaker 1: are also finding useful to stop smoking. Do those all
Speaker 1: fit into that mixer they all integrated, or are they
Speaker 1: seen as another world? Um. Some shops sell that, some
Speaker 1: don't you know myself, I'm a th hr to tobacco
Speaker 1: harm reduction absolutists, like I'm for any products that's gonna help,
Speaker 1: you know, reduce harm, regardless of what someone wants to use. Um,
Speaker 1: I've seen more and more a lot of these vape
Speaker 1: shops that were once maybe predominantly vape shops are now
Speaker 1: almost like a head shop where there's also selling some
Speaker 1: you know, CBD products, and they're also selling snooze and
Speaker 1: and maybe they're even selling cigars which are combustible and
Speaker 1: you know, could cause health problems to people. But let
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them have had to span
Speaker 1: out just to keep their doors open. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously E Valley and everything hit them hard, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's scared people off. You had a lot of people
Speaker 1: that were we're already vaping that went back to cigarettes
Speaker 1: once they read the read those original headlines. And then
Speaker 1: you had smokers that would have become vapors that didn't
Speaker 1: become vapors because of that. And so they have had
Speaker 1: to expand and the little carry different types, you know,
Speaker 1: more various products now than they did before. M hmm.
Speaker 1: You know that it brings up the question, so you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't really talked about very much THHC and cannabis
Speaker 1: and CDD, but obviously that's a hugely booming world. And
Speaker 1: we see cannabis, you know, both th HC based products
Speaker 1: and CBD products and others emerging, you know, but also
Speaker 1: in edible forms and drinkable forms and patches and gums
Speaker 1: and you name it, right, I mean, how much interaction
Speaker 1: has there been? I mean, I think, for example, you
Speaker 1: go back historically the guys who created jewel, Adam Bowen
Speaker 1: and James Mondsey's. I met those guys ten years ago
Speaker 1: because they had created packs which people were using for
Speaker 1: for vaping um cannabis. Right. It was one of those
Speaker 1: kind of heat not burn things. It wasn't an oil
Speaker 1: at that point. It was something where you heated up
Speaker 1: to cannabis to a point short of burning, so it
Speaker 1: was a relatively less problematic way to consume it. And
Speaker 1: I remember talking to those guys and not even fully
Speaker 1: appreciated that they were working on this nicotine stuff that
Speaker 1: was going to become their major business and then bring
Speaker 1: them all sorts of grief. Right. But I was also
Speaker 1: at visiting. I spoke a couple of years ago at
Speaker 1: the Emerald Cup. It's one of these, uh cannabis conventions,
Speaker 1: and I remember being struck. I went to a panel
Speaker 1: on cannabis vaping and there was virtually no discussion of
Speaker 1: the nicotine vaping and oftentimes here almost nothing about cannabis
Speaker 1: when I go to the tobacco Harmony dunction things. Now
Speaker 1: you're sitting in a more sophisticated place about this. Is
Speaker 1: there a growing marriage between these two? I think there's
Speaker 1: some crossover. I know of some different manufacturers that make
Speaker 1: a liquid and then they also got into the hemp
Speaker 1: space and they're you know, making different cannabioids and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Or there there's some people that you know,
Speaker 1: ended up having their own cannabis farms. Um. I do
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, nicotine has definitely become the outcast
Speaker 1: of the drug world, and uh, you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people in marijuana kind of want to
Speaker 1: to make sure they're separated from us because we've had
Speaker 1: so much scrutiny over the last few years. But there's
Speaker 1: there's definitely some cross over there. Well on the consumer side,
Speaker 1: I mean, can one usually a jewel to vape cannabis oil? Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is that cannabis oil is a lot thicker
Speaker 1: than most eloquids. You could I've heard of people doing
Speaker 1: that with the jewel, but it probably isn't gonna wig
Speaker 1: very well, and you know you have to kind of
Speaker 1: jury rig it and open it up, you know, crack
Speaker 1: open the pod, which you're not supposed to do, and
Speaker 1: try to fill it with that. So, while the products
Speaker 1: are very similar and there is some crossover as far
Speaker 1: as the atomizer goes, um usually they need to be
Speaker 1: more specialized for a certain liquid. I mean, it looks
Speaker 1: there's good reasons to avoid the marriage of these two industries.
Speaker 1: You know. Buddy of mind, Steve Bloom, who's been a
Speaker 1: journalist in the marijuana field for a long time for
Speaker 1: High Times and now um for Celebrity Stone or I
Speaker 1: think it's called, but he wrote an important piece. It's
Speaker 1: almost a Maya culpa, he said. You know, he gave
Speaker 1: a lot of publicity to the emergence of blunts, right,
Speaker 1: of people hollowing out these kind of mani cigars and
Speaker 1: filling them with cannabis or combining cannabis and tobacco in
Speaker 1: a way, which was very common in Europe because people
Speaker 1: would smoke cash there and they would roll it in tobacco,
Speaker 1: but he was saying, hey, everybody stopped doing that because
Speaker 1: there's you know, any number of people who mostly like
Speaker 1: cannabis then started mixing it with tobacco and began to
Speaker 1: develop a tobacco dependence that way. So let's keep these
Speaker 1: worlds separate, you know, and let's not have people. We
Speaker 1: don't want to see people vaping nicotine and cannabis together.
Speaker 1: Not a good idea. And you know, you see in Canada,
Speaker 1: where you have federal legalization, I think not just but
Speaker 1: big alcohol, but even big tobacco have begun to buy
Speaker 1: into the cannabis companies for all sorts of obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: So I mean, do you think that this marriage or
Speaker 1: merger between the two is sort of inevitable? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think you're talking about two different things here. Like
Speaker 1: obviously there is it's problematic to mix nicotine and th
Speaker 1: HD together because if it's a THD user that doesn't
Speaker 1: have much experience with nicotine, they could potentially, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: create a habit for that nicotine as first that, I
Speaker 1: don't think that the two industries are ever going to merge. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's this other possibility of people talk about
Speaker 1: what you already hearing reports of, which is people using
Speaker 1: vaping devices to take not just cannabis or nicotine or CBD,
Speaker 1: but even to begin to take other illicit drugs. And
Speaker 1: there are obviously some significant benefits, especially to the extent
Speaker 1: that the newer devices control the amount, right. So some
Speaker 1: of the davating devices, I think, both in nicotine and
Speaker 1: in the cannabis area, you know, they can limit how
Speaker 1: much you're getting in each each puff, right, and they
Speaker 1: can sometimes automatically turn off after you've taken a certain
Speaker 1: number of puffs. So there's a harm reduction element to these,
Speaker 1: not just in terms of getting rid of the smoked
Speaker 1: and burnt matter, but also in terms of controlling and
Speaker 1: keeping track of consumption. That could play a positive role.
Speaker 1: Um yet, on the other hand, might make some of
Speaker 1: these more risky illicit substances even more appealing. You have
Speaker 1: you already, Yeah, I mean, I think I think some
Speaker 1: of that is kind of you know, it's from the
Speaker 1: same camp that tells people to be careful of Halloween
Speaker 1: candy because it might be mixed with drugs or something.
Speaker 1: So I think some of it is just kind of fearmongering. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've never encountered people saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I got a th HC card off the street and
Speaker 1: somebody puts some fentinel in there or something like that,
Speaker 1: but I have her. And about scientists like you you,
Speaker 1: I think you were alluding to talking about potentially using
Speaker 1: vaping as harm reduction for some other drugs. So, like,
Speaker 1: there was an article recently about, you know, somehow implementing
Speaker 1: vaping into crack use, and could it potentially be a
Speaker 1: safer delivery method for crack users than you know, what
Speaker 1: they're using now. So I mean, there might be something
Speaker 1: to that, but obviously that's something that like shouldn't be
Speaker 1: something that just somebody's experimenting within their basement. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about safer crack use, it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. I remember a couple of decades ago
Speaker 1: when we were doing grant making, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that some of the harm reduction projects were doing
Speaker 1: was giving out these little, um kind of rubber. I
Speaker 1: think it was rubber that that crack users could put
Speaker 1: on the pipe because one problem that people had with
Speaker 1: smoking crack, apart from the consequences of the crack itself
Speaker 1: was that the pipe, the crack pipe would heat up
Speaker 1: so much that they would burn their lips, and then
Speaker 1: the burnt lip would become a point of transmission for
Speaker 1: you know, sexually transmitted disease or other sorts of things.
Speaker 1: And so by putting a kind of you know, just
Speaker 1: like the way you put on a hot coffee cup
Speaker 1: something to keep it from burning your hand, the same idea,
Speaker 1: but one could actually see that working in this area. Well, look, Matt,
Speaker 1: last question here, Um, So the politics of this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had the opportunity, because of my contact
Speaker 1: sometimes to give some of the Democratic politicians I know
Speaker 1: and earful about tobacco harm reduction, and it's clearly unwelcome
Speaker 1: knowledge to many of it. Many of them just don't
Speaker 1: even know better. They're going along with it. And we
Speaker 1: see this as a political issue where the Republicans are
Speaker 1: kind of mixed and divided, and some are anti vaping,
Speaker 1: but others are pro small business and others are pro
Speaker 1: individual rights and all this sort of stuff. Um But
Speaker 1: among the liberals and progressives, even Russwath of Democrats, you
Speaker 1: really see just this amazingly backward thinking. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: what's gonna change that right now? Um? You know, I
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I mean you're in Montana. You
Speaker 1: know you still have Democratic politicians there. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: your sense is or any hope on the Democratic side
Speaker 1: for opening up their eyes on this stuff. I think
Speaker 1: there's hope. I've I've had conversations with quite a few
Speaker 1: staffers and politicians and a lot of them are very
Speaker 1: receptive behind closed doors, and they end up getting it.
Speaker 1: But you know, they don't word it this way. But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is is like, are you willing to
Speaker 1: stick your neck out and spend the political capital to
Speaker 1: stick up for vaping? You know what I'm saying? And
Speaker 1: and and so everyone's just kind of following along and
Speaker 1: they're keeping their mouth shut because there's no upside there
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah. I mean Dick Durbin, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's a deputy leader of the in
Speaker 1: the U. S. Senate. Good guy. I've been good on
Speaker 1: a lot of drug policy reform issues. But he stands
Speaker 1: up there and says, my parents died, you know, from smoking.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm against vaping. And I'm thinking, damn, I mean,
Speaker 1: my dad died prematurely, and his packet day habit almost
Speaker 1: certainly played a role in his premature death of the
Speaker 1: age of fifty eight. But for me, I imagine that
Speaker 1: there's a chance my dad might have been able to
Speaker 1: switch from cigarettes to vaping, and that might have significantly
Speaker 1: extended his life. So I'm kind of baffled by the
Speaker 1: Durbans of the world and and kind of piste off too.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me that when you have almost
Speaker 1: half a million Americans dying each year prematurely from long
Speaker 1: term smoking, and when we now have these sort of
Speaker 1: technological breakthrough innovations that can dramatically reduce those numbers. Um,
Speaker 1: this is an issue which you know, progressive Democrats, all Democrats,
Speaker 1: and any Republicans who still say they believe in science
Speaker 1: and in science driven policy, you know, just ultimately, well,
Speaker 1: let's not forget how stigmatized smokers people who smoke are.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's we don't talk about it often, but
Speaker 1: they are very stigmatized. And I think sometimes people have
Speaker 1: even more sympathy and empathy for someone when they overdose
Speaker 1: on another drug than a smoker dying from from lung cancer.
Speaker 1: It's a new permittive stigmatization. I mean, I'm in a
Speaker 1: world of illicit drug harmonduction, drug policy form where we
Speaker 1: talk about all the harms that result from stigmatization. But
Speaker 1: in a way, now people who moke and even to
Speaker 1: something extent, people who have vape, those are the people
Speaker 1: who it's now okay to stigmatize, okay to feel no
Speaker 1: compassion for. And people literally will make the argument, you know,
Speaker 1: better that five smokers die ten years prematurely than that
Speaker 1: one kid gets addicted to vaping nicotine and that sort
Speaker 1: of trade off. You know, in the same way that
Speaker 1: the war on drugs for a long time was justified
Speaker 1: as sort of one great big Child Protection Act. The
Speaker 1: reason we couldn't legalize medical meri wanta leaves wellize we
Speaker 1: couldn't medicalize, we couldn't legalize merri wana. More broadly, the
Speaker 1: reason we could allow needle exchange method on the locks
Speaker 1: on you name it. Well, I mean that's same. You know,
Speaker 1: the Great Big Child Protection Act is legitimizing, you know,
Speaker 1: allowing huge numbers of people to die who presumably, you know,
Speaker 1: you would think the decent minded, progressive, good Democrats would
Speaker 1: care about. Yeah, it's it's unfortunate. Well, It's been great
Speaker 1: catching up with you and talking about with you, and
Speaker 1: I really I think our our audience will have learned
Speaker 1: a lot from this. It's obviously a world that many
Speaker 1: people interested in drunk policy don't know about. UM. But
Speaker 1: it's a type of uh, you know, for a form
Speaker 1: of harm reduction that can save more lives than all
Speaker 1: the illicit drug harm reduction put together, so hopefully, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm trying hard to do is
Speaker 1: to get more and more of my allies in illicit
Speaker 1: drug harm reduction and drug policy reform to embrace tobacco
Speaker 1: harm reduction as part of their agenda and to try
Speaker 1: to prioritize it, because many of them get the principles UM,
Speaker 1: but it's been a tough issue for them to fully embrace. Definitely,
Speaker 1: And thanks so much for having me on. And I know,
Speaker 1: you know, vapors have really appreciated you taking interest in
Speaker 1: this subject over the last few years. Psychoactive is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted
Speaker 1: by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Katcha Kumkova and
Speaker 1: Ben Kibrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick for iHeart Radio, and me Ethan Nadelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blusian and especial thanks to
Speaker 1: Avivit Brio, Sep Yanka Grimshaw and Robert Beatty. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to share your own stories, comments or ideas, please
Speaker 1: leave us a message at eight three three seven seven
Speaker 1: nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho zero. You
Speaker 1: can also email us as psychoactive at protozoa dot com
Speaker 1: or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. And
Speaker 1: if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the
Speaker 1: information in the show notes. Tune in next week for
Speaker 1: my conversation with Steven Jackson, one of the better ball
Speaker 1: players in the NBA for many years, outspoken about the
Speaker 1: issues of marijuana, sports and longtime friend of George Floyd.
Speaker 1: I went the long road to get to the NBA,
Speaker 1: you know, China for eighteen teams, breaking both on my feet,
Speaker 1: dealing with death to my older brother, and a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that can have you mentally disturbed, you know,
Speaker 1: and as a kid dealing with so much. The cannabis
Speaker 1: and basketball help me escapes. When I played basketball, I
Speaker 1: was able to escape from the world that what's going on.
Speaker 1: As soon as I leave the court, I'm back to
Speaker 1: the real world, where the only way I could escape
Speaker 1: and keep myself sane was cannabis. Subscribe to Cycleactive now
Speaker 1: see you don't miss it.