Thread by @VaporAmerican

She’s pals with billionaires and bigshots. She gets more (fawning) news ink on nicotine policy than all THR voices combined. Her astroturf anti-vape group is routinely splashed with cash by deep-pocket foundations. What explains Meredith Berkman's magnetic personality?
THREAD 🧵

Ms. Berkman has no scientific or medical background and has never run a business so far as we can tell. But when she started a DIY activist group at her kitchen table called Parents Against Vaping, she somehow became a national authority on nicotine regulatory policy.

But this isn’t the first time Berkman has launched a self-aggrandizing scheme. Unlike the reporters who credulously quote her, AVM did some research into Berkman’s track record. Turns out her fixation on wrenching the legal system to suit her personal whims goes back many years.

Back in '02, Berkman says she couldn't keep her 2-year-old from eating Pirate’s Booty. Yes, the popular snack. Yes, a toddler. Unable to clear this immense hurdle, Berkman instead filed a $50 million lawsuit against the manufacturer, a small independent company. Sound familiar?

It’s all so absurd that it seems made up. But oh no. She also embarked on a nationwide publicity tour for herself. Here’s the write-up that appeared in just one national daily paper.

Even Berkman said her booty crusade sounds absurd. But she still inflated herself to the Times as the champion of consumers everywhere, fighting a “life and death matter.” Her husband gets the picture even if the journalists happily play along.

Here’s another report on her lawsuit where she talks about her mental issues arising from the traumatic discovery that Pirate’s Booty had more fat content than the small print on the label indicated. https://t.co/C6rjK3lkSBnypost.com/2002/04/13/die…

Read that again. Mental anguish. Forced to perform extra exercise. Because she ate too much Pirate’s Booty. That’s who we are dealing with. That’s the person who is the most-quoted voice on nicotine policy in the news media.

Oh there's so much more. Check out this excerpt from an article Meredith wrote about why one of her "domestic help" quit after just one week. 😬

But Berkman obviously learned a key lesson from her booty shake in the national spotlight: Journalists will gladly jettison common sense if a rich, obnoxious mom wants to attack a popular consumer product. And she’s right! That's one of the media's go-to narrative framings.

Scaring the daylights out of American parents is a core formula of the network morning shows, consumer reporting, and even FDA beat writers. See, the Washington Post knows the score.

https://twitter.com/VaporAmerican/status/1679612054284513280

Just look. One of the many articles on this lunacy called her the “Erin Brockovich” of low-fat food. (Hmm, is it a red flag for reporters when a source runs around lecturing complete strangers on the moral imperative for suing Pirate’s Booty? Answer: ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

Even when the lawsuit was torched by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show, she kept getting coverage. Leno said, “Here’s a tip: If the snack you’re eating contains the word ‘booty,’ you’re probably not going to be losing much weight.”

So when Berkman found it too daunting to persuade her teenage son that he shouldn’t use vaping products, she already had the playbook for turning that into a publicity bandwagon and philanthropic bonanza for herself. Especially when she got connected with this guy. Ka-ching!

Not only is she now a routine dial-a-quote for vape-bashing journalists, she’s also got the ear of the very top public officials in our nation’s government. Here she's with Rep. Krishamoorthi who once bragged to PAVe about how he had strong-armed FDA on vape policy.

Here she is with Andrew Cuomo when he was crushing small vape businesses in New York at her request (and before he was exposed for lethal incompetence and being a serial sex pest).

Here is Berkman just last month with the mayor of New York City announcing a lawsuit – her favorite! – against four small vape companies.

Imagine the thrill that must be for a tireless crank like Meredith. Usually people who exhibit behavior like hers get a check-up from the neck up. But she’s got a seat at the table with the very top public officials in America, all dutifully listening to her parenting manias.

Her knack for injecting herself in the national press even included somehow getting on 60 Minutes in April, 2020 to chat about her experience contracting Covid. Is this some publicity-driven version of Munchausen Syndrome? Not feeling well, must appear on television immediately.

Shop the look! Meredith's stylish sweater goes for a mere $380 at this trendy NYC boutique. Comes in cashmere!

Hmmm, suddenly tempted. Should we splurge? Wait, let's get back to the thread at hand.

@CDCTobaccoFree has designated Meredith an official “partner” and here she is recently cajoling the agency to continue stressing the word “epidemic” in describing teen vaping – despite the manifest, consistent, and precipitous *drop* in vaping among that age cohort.

Even FDA’s Brian King says THERE'S 👏 NO 👏 EPIDEMIC 👏 and that the label should not be used. But here is Dr. Linda Neff, Chief epidemiologist in CDC's tobacco office, explaining how she and Meredith collaborate in private and “help” FDA keep talking about EpiDeMiCs.

We did a full shredding of that particular, contemptible CDC session – but god knows how many times or for how long they’ve been in cahoots with the prohibitionists to alarm and mislead the American public.

https://twitter.com/VaporAmerican/status/1578213322474008576

For more on the irresponsible negligence of CDC and Dr. Neff, we can recommend this trenchant and thorough analysis by @michelleminton. (Don't touch your plate, it is still very hot).
cei.org/wp-content/upl…

When Meredith falsely claimed on national TV that vaping caused lung injuries, an actual physician, Dr. Michael Siegel, a career-long and highly respected expert in field of tobacco control and public communication at Tufts Univ. School of Public Health absolutely posterized her.

Remember, there is no real grassroots support here. PAVe gets virtually zero engagement on any of their public campaigns or social media. We’ve done several threads exposing this charade, and it’s why we call them the Potemkin Moms.

https://twitter.com/VaporAmerican/status/1623698289358151686

When PAVe does its public-facing online events, they have to turn the comment threads and engagement OFF because the only viewers who show up are vapers and THR advocates fact-checking them and urging them to sober up.

https://twitter.com/VaporAmerican/status/1496609075316015109

Is it unfair to criticize Berkman this way? Let’s remember this is the same person who told the New York Times that our industry is “deliberately driving their trucks of poison,” bent on harming children. She has been vilifying our work and marginalizing our customers for years.

And these are the same journalists who preen as champions of equity. Yet they constantly parade a multi-millionaire who lives in a Central Park penthouse while she disparages small businesses and deprives low-income Americans of their fundamental right to switch to vaping.

Behold, a woman-owned vape shop in Harlem helping low-income, minority customers to quit cigarettes -- driven out of business by the state and federal regs that Meredith demands.
filtermag.org/war-vaping-eas…

Here's PAVe co-founder Dorian Fuhrman and her husband, also a Wall Street mega-millionaire, in front of their waterfront mansion in the Hamptons. But yeah, equity. Or something.
(Should we do a whole thread on Furhman too? 🤔)

Somehow these two leisure-class rich ladies of uptown NYC and the Hamptons get constant attention in the New York Times (news section and op-ed page!) while that paper entirely ignores working class people who rely on vaping to quit cigarettes. Must be all that equity. 😐

So to recap, Ms. Berkman has now dragged the NY Supreme Court, NY appeals court, various AGs and governors, the US Senate, US House, FDA, CDC, Surgeon General, and the New York City Mayor’s office into her pet causes – all because of her shortcomings as a parent. Just great.

Memo to the wine stand proprietors in the Hamptons: If you see this lady pull in the driveway, ya might want to close for the day. /