4 Vaping Lies the U.S. Media Continues to Tell

When it comes to the subject of vaping, telling the truth isn't exactly the U.S. media's strong suit. There are several reasons for the complicated relationship between the U.S. media and the vaping industry, with one of the most prominent of those reasons being the teen vaping epidemic that has resulted in 3.6 million underaged e-cigarette users in the U.S. as of the most recent count. Before COVID-19 lockdowns began, the number of teen vapers was even higher. The teen vaping epidemic has created a strong undercurrent against vaping among non-smoking U.S. parents, and the media - always desperate for clicks and shares - has played on that by using vaping-related headlines to arouse as much panic as possible. It also doesn't help that some of the most powerful individuals in the media - such as billionaire Michael Bloomberg - are decidedly against vaping and would prefer to see it banned entirely. Bloomberg also funds the tobacco control arm of the World Health Organisation, thus giving worldwide amplification to his anti-vaping rhetoric. The problem with the media bias against vaping is that the U.S. is the pipeline through which much of the world's news flows. If you get your news from an aggregator like Google News, you're going to see a highly U.S.-centric point of view, and the perpetuation of vaping lies by the U.S. media has led to the false perception among consumers worldwide that vaping isn't a less harmful alternative to smoking. When our own government needs to publish a press release correcting misconceptions about vaping that the U.S. media has helped to create, that's a real problem. With that in mind, whenever you see a news headline about vaping that's spiked with alarm and clearly designed to bait you into clicking, you should read with a healthy dose of scepticism. Who is funding that headline? Who would benefit if you were swayed by the views presented? It's always wise to follow the money. Does your favourite news source provide information about vaping that's fair and balanced, or have you been influenced by biased media reports that were presented as facts? The phrase "fake news" doesn't only apply to politics. These are the four vaping lies that the U.S. media continues to tell.

Vaping Lie 1: Vaping Isn't Safer Than Smoking and Can Cause Severe Lung Disease

In the U.S. in 2019, people began to contract a debilitating lung illness. In all, more than 2,700 people contracted the illness, and of those, dozens of people died. The only commonality between patients was that they had all used vaping products before contracting the illness. The term EVALI - E-Cigarette or Vaping Product Use Associated Lung Injury - was quickly invented for the illness, causing a sense of panic among uninformed members of the public who already had a negative sentiment about vaping due to the teen vaping epidemic. The problem with news reports about EVALI was that they conflated all forms of vaping as if they were the same thing. As you likely know, though, there are two types of vaping. You can vape nicotine e-liquid, and you can vape cannabis. Guess which type of vaping causes EVALI? The EVALI outbreak was finally traced back to Vitamin E acetate, a substance added to black-market vape cartridges containing extracted liquid THC to make the cartridges look more potent than they actually were.

Public Health England

From the beginning, it should have been obvious to most observers that nicotine e-liquid couldn't be the cause of EVALI. The illness occurred almost exclusively in the United States, but U.S.-made e-liquid is distributed throughout the world. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration froze the e-liquid industry in 2016, making it illegal to release new vape juice products without first going through a lengthy approval process. EVALI, however, didn't appear until 2019. Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb immediately recognised that illegal THC-based vaping products were the only logical cause of the illness, and the research bore that out.

Morning Consult

The lie that legal nicotine e-cigarettes could have anything to do with EVALI has had some serious staying power, leading to the press release from the Government of the United Kingdom cited earlier in this article. In a survey of 2,200 U.S. adults conducted early in 2020, only 28 percent of respondents correctly identified THC vapes as the cause of EVALI, and we have lazy and irresponsible reporting to thank for the fact that this vaping lie still persists today.

The legal vapes have been actively regulated by FDA since Aug 2017. FDA has conducted thousands of inspections of manufacturers and vape stores, published manufacturing guidance, sought product removals etc. These tragedies point to illegal vapes and THC. https://t.co/DYiFGYYxmy

- Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) August 28, 2019

Spotting Vaping Lies on Google

A Google search for URLs including the terms "vaping" and "lung disease" but not "cannabis" - and restricted to articles published in the past 30 days - turns up page after page of results, and some of those results are truly shocking. In fact, new articles incorrectly blaming nicotine e-liquid for EVALI are still published almost every day.

• In his goodbye letter to the U.S. public dated January 20th, outgoing Surgeon General Jerome Adams spoke of the "dangers of youth e-cigarette and youth marijuana use - a combination which merged into the deadly EVALI outbreak."
• In an article dated January 15th, health insurance company Centene published an article about "awareness of vaping" in which the corporation said that "e-cigarettes [sic] liquid containing nicotine, flavourings, and other substances" cause EVALI.
• In an article dated January 22nd, Ashley Mateo of the magazine Runner's World correctly identified Vitamin E acetate as the cause of EVALI but never specifically mentioned the fact that Vitamin E is used to dilute THC oil in black-market vape cartridges, instead referring to it as a substance used to "dilute oils in vaping."

When a nation's health publications and insurance providers - and even the head of the public health system - can be so misinformed, it's hardly surprising that so many citizens have fallen for the lie that legal nicotine e-liquids have anything at all to do with EVALI.

Vaping Lie 2: Flavoured E-Liquid Encourages Kids to Start Vaping

As you've learned from reading this article, the U.S. has a serious problem with teen vaping. Although the estimated number of vaping teens dropped by about 1.8 million in 2020 - likely because the COVID-19 pandemic forced so many people to stay at home for extended periods - 3.6 million is still an extremely high number. That's around 19.6 percent of all high school students and 4.7 percent of middle school students. The teen vaping problem, however, is something that's unique to the United States. Research suggests that the problem simply isn't happening in other developed nations.

• A 2019 ASH survey found that about 1.6 percent of British teens are regular vapers.
• A 2019 document from the University of Queensland suggests that about 1.8 percent of Australian teens are regular vapers.
• A 2019 document from the University of Otago suggests that about 1.8 percent of teens in New Zealand are regular vapers.

An additional detail worth noting is that, in all of the nations named above, the vast majority of the teens who do vape are previous tobacco smokers. They're vaping because they're trying to quit smoking.

Flavours do not cause teens to start vaping. (ASH UK)

So, what's unique about the United States that has caused teen vaping to become such a serious problem? Politicians are quick to blame flavoured e-liquids because flavours can be legislated out of existence. Anti-vaping sentiment in the U.S. is common. Banning flavours is something that politicians can accomplish quickly, thereby showing the voting public that they're "getting tough on vaping." They've "identified the problem" and "fixed it." Thanks to the COVID-19 lockdowns, those same politicians can even point to the reduced teen vaping rates and pretend that their solution worked. The problem, though, is that the idea of flavoured e-liquids attracting teens to vaping is a complete fallacy. If flavoured e-liquid caused teens to start vaping, then the teen vaping epidemic would be worldwide problem - but it's not. The thing that really attracts teens to vaping isn't flavours - it's youth-oriented marketing. One e-cigarette brand achieved worldwide notoriety with its lavish 2015 launch. The brand held expensive parties in trendy locales. The brand's imagery featured attractive and very young-looking models. The launch also included an extensive social media outreach campaign in which the brand targeted many influencers with young followers. The marketing onslaught resulted in that brand claiming the vast majority of e-cigarette sales in conventional U.S. retail outlets by the end of the 2010s. Meanwhile, the U.S. teen vaping epidemic continued to grow - but although people spoke of it as a "vaping" epidemic, the fact was that the vast majority of those teens were using just one brand. The brand, of course, was JUUL.

One of many, many lawsuits alleging JUUL intentionally marketed its products to teens.

The controversy over JUUL's marketing tactics forced the brand to clean up their act, and although JUUL hasn't engaged in youth-oriented marketing in other regions of the world, the damage in the United States has already been done. Given the strong correlation with teen use, it remains to be seen whether the FDA will grant JUUL approval to remain in the U.S. market permanently.

Stanford University

The idea that flavoured e-liquid attracts kids to e-cigarettes is perhaps the most persistent lie of all, and some people believe that Big Tobacco could have a hand in perpetuating it. If you look at the various e-liquid flavour bans that have happened around the world - such as when the Trump administration banned most flavoured pre-filled vape pods and cartridges in the U.S. at the beginning of 2020 - you'll notice that the Big Tobacco e-cigarette brands are always first to voice their support for those bans. That's because cigarettes have never been able to compete with vaping on flavour. Every e-liquid flavour ban is a blessing for the tobacco companies because it gives them a competitive advantage. Big Tobacco companies don't want to sell e-cigarettes and wouldn't care if people stopped buying them. They want to sell tobacco; that's where the profit is.

Spotting Vaping Lies on Google

For just a small taste of how sinister this vaping lie is, search for the phrase " flavors hook kids " - use the U.S. spelling - on Google. You'll find a network of websites and social media accounts bearing that slogan and broadcasting their message to cities and states across the U.S. Now, visit one of those websites and scroll to the bottom to see the site's list of sponsors. You'll see the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Guess who funds the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids? It's Michael Bloomberg. Surprise!

Vaping Lie 3: We Don't Know What's in E-Cigarette Vapour

One of the common lies that you'll read about vaping in the U.S. media is the idea that we don't know what e-cigarettes contain. Some people even go so far as to claim that vaping isn't regulated by the government and that e-liquids have no labelling standards. Both of those statements are completely false.

• In the U.S., the FDA issued its regulations for vaping products on May 10, 2016. Compliance deadlines for various aspects of the regulations have been staggered through the years since, with the final deadline for compliance with all regulations finally arriving on September 9, 2020.
• The deadline for all e-liquid makers to submit their ingredient listings to the FDA was November 8, 2018. The vast majority of e-liquid companies started printing ingredient lists on their labels long before then.

Here in the U.K., we actually go a step further because the Tobacco Products Directive requires e-liquid companies to perform emissions tests on their products before bringing them to the market. So, we don't just know what's in the e-liquid; we also know about any other compounds produced when the e-liquid is used. In testing, e-liquid makers are required to test their products for emissions of acetaldehyde, acrolein and formaldehyde. Hardware makers must test the vapour emissions for aluminium, chromium, iron, nickel and tin. Manufacturers of both hardware and e-liquid need to test for diethylene glycol, ethylene glycol, diacetyl, pentane 2,3 dione and tobacco-specific nitrosamines. The truth, then, is that we actually know far more about what e-cigarettes contain than we do about what's in tobacco cigarettes.

Spotting Vaping Lies on Google

How far has this vaping lie spread? A Google search of pages containing the word "vaping" and the phrase "don't know what's in" turns up over 60,000 results. Here are just a few of the more ludicrous ones.

Entirely false. (Spectrum Local News)

• In October 2019, The Healthy - an offshoot of Reader's Digest - published an article claiming that "vaping is causing serious lung diseases and death," that vaping products aren't regulated by the FDA in the United States and that vaping "brings unknown chemicals into your body." Amazingly, the article was reviewed and approved by an actual medical doctor who really should have known better.
• In 2020, the American Journal of Managed Care interviewed Dr. Martha Gulati of Banner - University Medicine Heart Institute. In the interview, Dr. Gulati said of e-cigarettes, "I don't know what's in them. In general, none of us do."
• In December 2019, Spectrum Local News in San Antonio, Texas published an article about the efforts of the state's senators to "combat the vaping crisis." The article claims that nicotine e-liquids cause EVALI. The article also features a quote from a completely uninformed senator - Lois Kolkorst - who claimed that we don't know where e-cigarettes are made or what's in them. Kolkorst even claimed that vaping products have no labelling requirements. Not a single word in the senator's quote was actually true.

Vaping Lie 4: There Is No Evidence That Vaping Can Help You Quit Smoking

The purpose of e-cigarettes has always been to give adult smokers an alternative method of nicotine consumption that's more satisfying than traditional nicotine therapy and more closely mimics the act of smoking, thus providing an easier way to quit. As e-cigarettes became more widely available around the world, millions of smokers switched to vaping and found that they were indeed able to quit smoking successfully. Despite the growing mountain of anecdotal evidence, many medical professionals in the United States were hesitant to recommend vaping as a means of helping smokers quit - and even as the anecdotal evidence turned to clinical evidence, many refused to backtrack on their misinformed opinions. Is there any evidence that switching to vaping can help you quit smoking? As a matter of fact, there is. If you commit to switching completely to vaping and not vaping and smoking concurrently, your chance of quitting successfully is excellent. If you receive counselling, your chance improves even more.

NHS

• In 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study in which 886 people who requested smoking cessation help from the U.K. National Health Service were randomly given either a refillable vaping system and free e-liquid or a three-month supply of traditional nicotine replacement products. All participants also received face-to-face counselling services. After one year, 9.9 percent of those who used traditional nicotine replacement products had quit smoking successfully, while 18 percent of those who used e-cigarettes had quit.
• According to the NHS , there's "growing evidence that [e-cigarettes] can be effective" in helping you quit. The NHS also says that e-cigarettes "carry a small fraction of the risk of cigarettes."

Spotting Vaping Lies on Google

When it comes to smoking cessation, many health experts apply a strange double standard to vaping. In studies not funded by pharmaceutical companies, the success rate of traditional nicotine replacement products in helping smokers quit for one year is only around 8-10 percent at best, depending on the study. Health experts see those statistics - which are actually pretty dismal - and they say that nicotine replacement is "effective" even though the vast majority of those who use nicotine replacement products do not quit smoking. When those same people claim that we don't know if e-cigarettes are effective in helping people quit, it makes no sense - until you begin to examine the backgrounds of those people. Those who would say that e-cigarettes can't help you quit often have a strong financial incentive to encourage you to choose Big Pharma's smoking cessation products instead. Likewise, insurance companies almost universally discourage people from using e-cigarettes for smoking cessation because they have no financial stake in the sale of vaping products.

• Johns Hopkins Medicine says that people who are considering using e-cigarettes to help themselves quit smoking should first weigh the risk of EVALI (!). A member of Johns Hopkins Medicine's leadership is on the Merck Board of Directors .
• A. Care Health Plan says that vaping is "more dangerous than you think" and that it "won't necessarily help you quit smoking." The website also says that vaping causes EVALI.
• Mayo Clinic doesn't recommend that people use e-cigarettes to quit smoking and suggests that people use "effective" FDA-approved medications instead. A former Mayo Clinic CEO has also served on Merck's Board of Directors.

Merck's Board of Directors also includes people from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard Medical School. Merck is developing smoking cessation medications and also has a medication for lung cancer patients that costs $150,000 per year to take. What do you suppose would happen to the sales of that $150,000 per year medication if every smoker in the world switched to vaping?