Thread by @VaporAmerican

🔎🧐🔍
Hidden documents prove @FDA has known for years that vaping is safer than cigarettes and helps smokers quit—but misled the public on those facts. Next, let's dive into FDA's blatant deceits on flavors and the supposed vaping-to-smoking "gateway." THREAD 🧵

Activist groups like @truthinitiative have argued for years the only relevance of flavors is they're somehow aimed primarily at kids. @FDATobacco has also amplified the same narrative, for example, in this Jan. 2020 tweet.

But, surprise! FDA’s internal research painted a very different picture. Most adults, not just youth, prefer flavored vapes. Moreover, adult smokers who used flavors were more likely to quit smoking or reduce their cigarette consumption.

The studies cited in the above screenshot span from 2013 to 2019. So, despite years of research showing that flavored vapes help adult smokers quit, @FDATobacco has authorized just a handful of tobacco-flavored products as of 2023. Insanity.
https://t.co/2dXF3jzUzdfda.gov/news-events/pr…

This includes a de facto ban on menthol-flavored vapes, because they supposedly appeal to teens. Here's @FDATobacco making that very claim just days ago.
https://t.co/KqIjuzI8GTfda.gov/news-events/pr…

Yet FDA’s own analysis that we obtained shows that menthol vapes appeal largely to adult menthol smokers—and help them quit cigarettes with higher efficacy.

Even FDA's own scientific staff recommended approving certain menthol vape products last year. Outrageously, those findings were quashed by agency leadership and dissenters suffered retribution, as they detailed in the Reagan-Udall audit.

FDA quotes the NYTS data like its gospel, but here's what @CDCgov's results really show: plummeting teen use of *any* nicotine product, flavored or otherwise.

We agree with FDA that teens should not vape. The point is, you don't ban products that you know could save adults from an early death because kids obtain it illegally. Instead, you prohibit underage sales and enforce the law. It's not complicated.

Speaking of youth tobacco use, we come to the much ballyhooed vaping-to-smoking “gateway.” On March 13, 2019, FDA claimed that teens who vape are more likely to progress to cigarettes.
https://t.co/eNuB9FLXnOfda.gov/news-events/pr…

But FDA knew the studies behind the gateway hypothesis were unreliable garbage. The papers FDA refers to here were published between 2017 and 2018—in other words, the agency fully understood this while it was deceiving the public about youth vaping and smoking in 2019.

Perhaps that's why FDA's chief tobacco bureaucrat distanced himself from the gateway hypothesis when @alli_vapes and @GregTHR grilled him about it last month. But FDA should have dropped the gateway rhetoric years ago.

All this FDA-sanctioned chicanery has deadly public health consequences. The whole time the agency was exaggerating the risks of vaping and discouraging smokers from switching, they knew the number of Americans who perceived vapes to be as harmful as cigarettes was increasing.

Shameful behavior from an agency that claims to help Americans get "the accurate, science-based information they need..." Perhaps @FDA can explain how this deception helps achieve the agency's mission. We eagerly await an answer.
https://t.co/5jHFM3VId0fda.gov/about-fda/what…