All Things Considered / NPR (10/2/19)
NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Emily Baumgaertner about how the FDA tried banning vaping flavors, but the Obama administration rejected it.
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FDA Tried To Ban Child-Enticing Flavors Years Before Current Vaping Outbreak But Top Obama Officials Bent To Lobbyist Pressure
By Emily Baumgaertner
Los Angeles Times (10/1/19)
Unicorn Vomit. Cotton Candy. Gummy Bear. Skittles.
Some teenagers who tried these playful vaping flavors thought they were just inhaling water vapor — not also nicotine, a chemical considered as addictive as heroin and cocaine.
Now, as a mysterious vaping-related lung disease has doctors and parents urging the nation’s 3.6 million young users to quit, many are finding that they physically can’t — they’re hooked. It’s exactly the kind of youth addiction crisis the Food and Drug Administration had warned of four years ago, when it tried to ban flavored fluids for e-cigarettes.
If the FDA ban had gone through, the kid-friendly vaping liquids would have been pushed off store shelves.
Instead, over the course of 46 days, a deluge of more than 100 tobacco industry lobbyists and small business advocates met with White House officials …