Republicans are wary of Democratic efforts to regulate e-cigarette makers, arguing that the spike in vaping-related deaths is caused by illegal products derived from marijuana, not legal tobacco products.
House Democrats are seeking to advance a bill written by Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey that would raise the minimum tobacco purchasing age to 21. It would also place marketing restrictions on e-cigarette manufacturers to prevent teens from buying the products online or in stores, measures geared at combating what public health officials have termed an “epidemic” of teen vaping.
Republicans, however, say they should be concerned instead with black market THC e-liquids, vaping liquids made with the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, believing they are the real culprit for the outbreak of vaping-related illnesses, which have resulted in 1,299 vaping-related lung injuries diagnosed and 26 deaths nationwide.
House Democrats have said their bill should be one that both sides can support.
“We deal with nonpolitical issues and this one certainly is, because it’s a largely unknown hazard to kids,” Jan Schakowsky of Illinois said Tuesday. “I’ve been pretty surprised and gratified at how fast the concern has risen about e-cigarettes.”
Republicans are uneasy about countering the vaping epidemic by placing more regulations on the tobacco industry, however, rather than going after THC producers.
“It’s a significant problem and we need to do something,” Virginia Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith said about nicotine vaping at Wednesday’s Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Pallone’s legislation. “The question is, is this the bill?”
Griffith said America has “a split personality thing going on,” in that it is simultaneously attempting to regulate tobacco while also looking to deregulate the sale and use of products derived from marijuana, such as gummy bears, brownies, and others that appeal to kids, just like flavored tobacco products.
“We don’t know what the long-term effects are [from e-cigarette use], but the American public is demanding we make recreational marijuana legal. And while I support medicinal marijuana, I’ve never been convinced on recreation and part of it is I don’t know what the long-term effects are,” Griffith said.
Indeed, the vaping injury epidemic does appear to be mostly a product of people using marijuana. Most of the patients diagnosed with lung injuries resembling internal burns had used bootleg THC vaping liquids purchased off the street — about 76%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said many had revealed they were regular nicotine users and it will not rule out nicotine as a contributing factor, but THC products contributed to most of the injuries under investigation.
Still, both lawmakers and federal agencies are trying to crack down on the legal substance, nicotine, by enlisting the Food and Drug Administration, which gained regulatory power over e-cigarettes in 2016.
President Trump announced a proposal to ban all flavored tobacco products in September, although the agency has not yet released final guidance for the ban. Republican members of Congress, meanwhile, believe the FDA should turn its attention to cracking down on marijuana, which is still federally illegal.
“In this bill and the federal government, we don’t even mention THC in this bill,” Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter said. “Here we have an example of the inaction of the FDA and Congress of not reclassifying marijuana like we should so research can be done on it. Here we have a national crisis on our hands as a result of that.”
“I don’t think [the bill is] going to fix the problem we think we’re fixing,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess told the Washington Examiner after Wednesday’s hearing,
Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo of Connecticut was frustrated by the discord in the hearing, saying, “I heard a lot of conflation relative to marijuana, but this is about how highly addictive e-cigarettes are and how we need to monitor them.”
Thus far, the bill has only one Republican cosponsor out of 71 total cosponsors.
