Thread by @VaporAmerican

🔎🤔
Pretty startling example today of the outlandish double standard in how the Wall Street Journal @WSJ and the national press treat liquor companies compared to vape companies. Let’s take a close look.
THREAD 🧵

This is a straight up puff piece, not a word of critique or skepticism. All the dial-a-quote consumer activists who hate liquor – and these are mostly the same people who vilify vaping in the national press – are absent here.

Same with the brickbats the Journal and others use to bash vaping. Comes in kid-friendly flavors! Marketed to youth! Bright colors, easy access! All of that is turned on its head into virtues and praise for this story.

Key takeaways in the piece – adults like flavors, adults like variety, adults want to make choices about their own health, innovation and streamlining market access are smart ideas. Ever seen a story in a national paper on vaping like that? 🤔

Compare that to how this same reporter, @maloneyfiles, covers vape manufacturing. Here, the good ol’ FDA has to crack down to protect the kids from those diabolical flavors, dontcha know.

Notice how these stories are always framed as if the vape companies are rogue actors, skirting the law and predating on the kids. Who rides to the rescue? The government and the press, yeehaw!

But wait a second, all during this time that the Journal was fawningly reporting on FDA’s crackdown, the agency itself knew internally that adults prefer flavored vaping and use it to quit smoking with far higher efficacy than tobacco flavor and any NRT.

Let’s reiterate – flavors not merely to gain market share but to help save the lives of American adults from combustible cigarettes with an efficacy higher than any cessation method ever devised.

Documents we uncovered prove the regulations were based on deceit and that the leadership quashed scientific findings from FDA’s own experts.

Guess how many calls and emails we got from the Journal’s FDA beat writer, Ms. Maloney requesting the source document or a follow up quote from us? That would be zero. Must have been busy with the White Claw exclusive.

Even more strange, the same aspects for which the Journal and other press denounce vaping are ones that didn’t bother Ms. Maloney about White Claw at all. Mango vape = bad. Mango White Claw = ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Or White Claw’s mega-bucks national ad campaign, plainly aimed at a young demographic. No problem – in fact probably good for sales!

But don’t underage consumers obtain alcohol beverages at far higher rates than vape devices, resulting in countless injuries and death that are entirely absent from the vaping market? Hey, ain’t no laws when ya drinking Claw!

Here's the key stats, all entirely unmentioned in the WSJ's bouquet piece on White Claw. These are vastly worse than vaping in every respect -- but you'd never know that from the Journal's slanted coverage.

White Claw pushed viral memes, tiktoks, hashtags and more – even showing a baby being baptized in “the name of the father, son, and the holy white claw.” Actual tag line!
cnbc.com/2021/04/01/whi…

Are you absolutely kidding me?

Can you imagine if a vape company did that? They’d be gibbeted on the FDA lawn and the Journal would get the exclusive photo op.

Here’s the most galling aspect of all. White Claw is not saving lives or “benefiting the public health” as the mantra goes. But there are in fact millions of Americans that rely on vaping *TO QUIT CIGARETTES*, the number one cause of preventable death!

Instead of examining that crucial public health reality, the Journal is focused instead on who’s gonna win the battle of flavored vodka market share. It’s hypocritical and it is truly shameful.