Senior Obama officials had evidence to support banning flavored vape pods, but declined and deleted evidence after aggressive lobbying, according to new documents.
The Los Angeles Times got a hold of a 575-page draft of an Food and Drug Administration tobacco rule along with thousands of pages of surveys and memorandums which showed the Obama administration knew about the dangers of flavored vapes to teenagers but decided against instituting a ban.
When the Obama administration eventually published its rules on e-cigarettes in 2016 after consulting over 100 industry insiders and small business advocates, it deleted 15 pages of evidence showing how flavored vapes helped increase youth vaping.
“It’s as if they looked at each other and said, ‘If we’re not going to do anything about this problem, let’s delete anything that suggests we should.’ It’s a horror story,” Eric Lindblom, a former FDA official, said.
Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior official for the White House Domestic Policy Council involved in decision making for the FDA tobacco rules, defended the agency’s decision.
“We had deep respect for the science-based agencies. In this case, the science wasn’t clear,” she said. “The question was: Is it reasonable to effectively shut down all of these vape shops and businesses when the benefits and harms were still inconclusive?”
After the FDA rules were implemented, Juul sales in retail stores went up 640% in a year, and now 1 in 4 high school teenagers uses a vape with the majority saying they use flavored vapes.
The Trump administration announced this month that they plan to ban e-cigarette flavors. “It’s not a wonderful thing,” Trump said about vaping. “It’s got big problems. We have to find out the extent of the problem.”
Juul’s CEO, Kevin Burns, resigned last week over an erosion of trust by the public over the rise of youth vaping that the new CEO, K.C. Crosthwaite, said he hopes to rebuild.
