Deceptive headline, half-truths and a whole lot of scaremongering. @USATODAY's @Mary_Walrath just wrote maybe the most irresponsible anti-vaping story we've ever seen. Let's do the fact-checking her editors should have done before publishing this train wreck. THREAD 🧵 Reporting on a study from @EmoryRollins, Walrath's piece veered off the rails immediately with the headline. There isn't a shred of evidence (in the article, the study or anywhere else) to support the claim that vapor poses a risk "like secondhand smoke."

🔎 This is horrendous. In a forum at @SMPAGWU yesterday (on misinformation!) @DrCaliff_FDA once again misleads Americans with the false notion that vaping is just as dangerous as smoking — thus deterring people from switching to a vastly safer alternative. 1/ Here's the verbatim remarks. Notice the false equivalence and the bunk gateway theory and how he lumps vaping in with lethal diseases -- even though vaping has injured or killed precisely no one and in fact saves lives.

🧐 Can we just talk for a second about the crayola math that @FDATobacco is using to rationalize its attack on open-system vape products? As @Vaping360 reports, the agency showcased an erroneous figure in its own press release.
1/🪡 And as our @GregTHR notes, the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey reported that 7.7 percent of middle and high school students had used an e-cig in the prior 30 days. AMONG THOSE respondents, 11.3 percent said they used a Smok product — which is 0.87 percent of total respondents.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

Blistering ruling against @FDATobacco just dropped in the 5th circuit vape case. Here's our statement, along with analysis.
THREAD 🪡 Here is a link to the full ruling, which is chock-full of hard-hitting language that rebukes FDA's methods, duplicity, and the horrendous outcomes it has caused.
theavm.org/s/bb9i.pdf

🔎 👀
Here's a crucial piece just posted in the prestigious Chronicle of @Philanthropy by renowned journalist @MarcGunther. It examines the blinkered intransigence that is blocking progress on tobacco harm reduction. Let's dive in.
THREAD 🧵 The piece centers on Cliff Douglas @cdoug, a conscientious voice in this debate who has tried mightily to foster an open and principled discourse on the most effective ways to help people quit smoking.

Sponsored content site @statnews is hyping a “scoop” that Biden officials…met with people they wish to regulate. In other news, the sun came up. But the piece also peddles intellectual dishonesty that deserves a closer look.
🔎 THREAD 🧵 @NicholasFlorko is on the byline, natch, and he complains about how big bad “tobacco industry allies” used ulterior influence to oppose flavored vape bans.

The bureaucrats @FDATobacco boast about authorizing just 23 vaping products out of the 26 million applications they've reviewed, rejecting more than 99.9% of them. To illustrate how absurdly low this is, let's take a look at some other outcomes with similar odds. THREAD 🧵 Killer tornadoes are, thankfully, relatively rare. Your odds of fatality are about 1 in 13,000,000. Nevertheless, you are more likely to get swept away by a twister than get a flavored vape product application through FDA.

The @washingtonpost often complains about the spread of "misinformation." But then they gobble up spoon-fed, vape-bashing clickbait even when it's contradicted by leading health authorities and their own prior reporting. Let's examine. THREAD 🧵 The Post recounts the experience of a young man named Davey Bauer, who developed severe influenza and needed a double-lung transplant. His doctors devised a novel stop-gap measure to save his life.

@FDATobacco honcho Brian King talks a big game, like when he said he would authorize more vape products if the industry would only show him "the science." But in reality, he keeps reciting the same tired talking points and recycled analogies. Let's examine.
THREAD 🧵 "As far as I am @FDATobacco director," King declared last winter, "we will continue to make decisions based on science, not ideology." (NB: King's own staff told Reagan-Udall “decisions of scientists are being overridden” by him and that there was a “got-to-get-them” culture.)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1639060070062526464

🔎 Insightful piece here by Dave Dobbins, former COO of Truth Initiative, in the Journal of the Food and Drug Law Institute. All about @FDATobacco's chronic intransigence, or what's commonly known as Calvinball. Here are some highlights:
fdli.org/2023/06/sugges… Dobbins zeroes in on the staggering disconnect between the number of submitted new tobacco product applications (26 *million*) and the number of approved products (only 23).

Politico finally features a nicotine manufacturer angry at the failure and incompetence of the federal government. Objective journalism at last? Nope, it’s the fire-starter of that very same regulatory arson, Mitch Zeller.
THREAD 🧵 The interview is behind a $10,000 paywall (health equity, FTW!) but AVM lassoed the key excerpts. First up, the feds must do more to help folks quit smoking, says the architect of the ban on the most effective smoking cessation method of all time.

Is @nytimes simply printing @truthinitiative press releases? The journalism could hardly be more slanted and error-filled if they were. Let's take a close look at this latest agitprop disaster.
THREAD 🧵 Times pop culture scribe Callie Holtermann recites the long-debunked youth-vaping mythology: that our industry uses pretty colors and flavors to market to teens. We don't, and that's clearly reflected in the latest @CDCgov, @US_FDA data—which shows youth use at all-time lows.

Here's why it is crucial to document how the @nytimes and @By_CJewett willfully slant vaping coverage by routinely excluding harm reduction voices. She rarely interviews anyone in THR and never any actual Americans who quit smoking with vaping, the heart of the issue.
THREAD 🧵 We've cautioned Jewett about prohibition causing black markets and how FDA bans drive people back to cigarettes and how law-abiding American small business is getting crushed. Yet this recent piece blows through all that guidance and urges yet more crackdowns on vape products.

The new NYTS stats from @CDCgov and @US_FDA are trouble for the anti-vaping zealots: just 2.5% of teens vape daily in 2023. Let's see how the Bloomberg-funded busybodies are trying to spin the results to excuse their assault on our life-saving products. THREAD 🧵 From @BloombergDotOrg's @drkellyhenning and @TobaccoFreeKids: the "take credit where it ain't due" gambit combined with "the crisis continues."

AVM has obtained the full video and transcript of the recent Potemkin Moms conference, featuring members of congress and federal officials genuflecting to these Hamptons dilettantes with promises to outlaw the most effective smoking cessation method ever known.
THREAD 🧵 Remember, this whole thing is a charade. PAVe is a pure, astroturf front group with virtually no organic support. They are influential only because they are backed by a man worth $100B and they provide the manufactured pretext for prohibition policies.

https://twitter.com/VaporAmerican/status/1702763609171034274

Not satisfied by simply bribing established news organizations to push his prohibition agenda, Michael Bloomberg @Bloombergdotorg has launched a new outlet called The Examination @examinationnews as a mouthpiece for his puritan obsessions. Let’s have a look. THREAD 🧵 The Examination launched last month and by pure coincidence, the editor would have you believe, it has a dedicated focus on three distinct issues that have been longtime fixations of Michael Bloomberg.

Something's missing from the press hype on FDA's pending menthol cigarette ban. The agency's own metrics for success hinge on smokers switching to menthol vapes—and @FDATobacco has outlawed all such products. Why are reporters ignoring this central fact? Hint: 💰💵💰.
THREAD 🧵 Everyone knows demand for menthol-flavored nicotine won't disappear when menthol cigarettes are banned. But FDA-funded research projects that hundreds of thousands of deaths can be prevented *if* smokers have access to low-risk menthol alternatives.
reason.org/commentary/the…

Remember the coziness we detailed from insider emails between @FDATobacco and @maloneyfiles? Here is that disgraceful collusion once again on brazen display.

https://twitter.com/whycherrywhy/status/1712541436858741267

@FDATobacco @maloneyfiles Maloney of course does her sycophantic part, even claiming (without evidence) that Vuse is "increasingly popular among children." Zero THR voices or FDA critics are included, naturally. FDA science staff whistleblowers? Hahaha, fat chance.

There is a serious, highly divergent debate in public health over vaping policy. But @By_cjewett at the New York Times doesn’t want readers to know that, because she is on the side of hang-'em-high drug warriors. Let’s examine her latest piece.
THREAD 🧵 Here are the various takeaways from both Jewett and her entirely one-sided, hardliner sources.

What does it mean when we say that @FDATobacco is politicized? @Andrew_Langer exposes the horrendous corruption behind the agency's dreadful nicotine policy in his latest for @realclearpolicy. Let's take a look. THREAD 🧵 As a federal agency "responsible for protecting the public health," FDA should always enact evidence-based policies. End of story. These days, however, the bureaucracy is more inclined to follow the political whims of Congress than the science.

In our thread last week, we mistakenly conflated two FDA communications personnel, Alison Hunt and Allison Hall-Jordan. It was Ms. Hunt who had the email dialogue with the WSJ, not Ms. Hall-Jordan. We have corrected that thread here accordingly and regret the error.
⬇️🧵 The press corps covering FDA vaping policy has long been failing in its public duty to scrutinize that agency. We obtained emails between FDA and WSJ’s Jennifer Maloney that raise serious questions about that hidden collusion. Let’s examine.

THREAD 🧵