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From: FAIR <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 10:59 AM
Subject: Media Vapors Over Vaping Cloud Public Health Goals


<https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?e=7cc058db1e&u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=a7325125ef>

[image: FAIR]
View article on FAIR's website
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=786e1eb966&e=7cc058db1e>
Media Vapors Over Vaping Cloud Public Health Goals
Teddy Ostrow
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=c54d355892&e=7cc058db1e>

*by Teddy Ostrow*
[image: NPR: Vaping Related Lung Injuries Climb Past 2,500 And 54 Deaths]

*The "vaping-related" injuries in NPR's headline (12/19/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=f167a840c2&e=7cc058db1e>)
are not caused by e-cigarettes like the one in NPR's photo.*

There's been a moralist war on nicotine vaping
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=1f91b0c0ff&e=7cc058db1e>
for years, despite the scientific near-consensus
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=3499b2e636&e=7cc058db1e>
that it is *far* safer than conventional cigarettes, which kill 480,000
Americans a year
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=b68f818ae4&e=7cc058db1e>.
Flame-fanning, ill-informed media coverage hypes concerns from some sectors
into dangerous misinformation, and does little to improve public or
personal health.

Take the flurry of reports last summer warning of a “mysterious lung
disease,” confirmed as of December to be injuries stemming from vaping
black-market THC oil contaminated with vitamin E acetate
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=ff6c794fda&e=7cc058db1e>.
Media leapt on the case with an urgency that extended months:  “Teen Who
Was First New Yorker to Die of Vaping-Related Illness Named” (*New York
Post*, 12/18/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=98c8cef5bc&e=7cc058db1e>),
“Vaping-Related Lung Injuries Climb Past 2,500 and 54 Deaths” (*NPR*,
12/19/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=d2abcbf4ee&e=7cc058db1e>),
“Michigan 2nd Vaping-Related Death” (*Boston Globe*, 12/2/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=1060c2236b&e=7cc058db1e>
).

*New York* magazine (10/4/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=2ace322931&e=7cc058db1e>)
gave us “The Horror Stories From the Vaping Crisis Are Getting Worse,”
including reference to a *New York Times *article (10/2/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=2d0176d60c&e=7cc058db1e>)
in which the recent lung injuries were compared to World War I mustard gas
attacks.

Vaping, of course, is a system of delivery, not a substance itself.
Accounts of "horrifying" and "terrifying" injuries succeeded in alarming
readers, while leaving them none the wiser about *what* exactly people were
vaping that was putting them in the hospital.

In fact, people vaping black-market THC might have assumed they were in the
clear, as media coverage clearly pointed to nicotine vaping as the
culprit.  Images accompanying stories on the "crisis" (e.g., *NBC News*,
12/19/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=7af9c435b8&e=7cc058db1e>;
*NewsHour*, 9/19/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=27c90b1b94&e=7cc058db1e>;
*NPR*, 9/18/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=28589efc29&e=7cc058db1e>)
were of nicotine vape mods, pens and, of course, the infamous Juul, poking
out of thick clouds of nicotine vapor. It’s no wonder that one poll
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=07a0c1edae&e=7cc058db1e>
at the height of the panic last year showed that close to two-thirds of
American adults—up from just under half in 2018—believe that vaping e-cigs
is not less harmful than smoking combustible tobacco.
[image: NYT: Helping Teenagers Quit Vaping]

*The New York Times (10/14/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=58e2d55719&e=7cc058db1e>)
uses deaths from vaping black-market THC to hype the "urgency" of quitting
nicotine vaping.*

Other articles carried misleading headlines or subheadlines, such as “After
Deaths, Ban on Flavored Vapes to Be Passed by New York City” (*New York
Times*, 11/21/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=8a04271185&e=7cc058db1e>),
implying a logical connection between the deaths and the flavored
(nicotine) vapes being banned; or “As Vaping Deaths Rise, Quitting Has a
New Urgency” (*New York Times*, 10/14/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=064a0f6de7&e=7cc058db1e>),
over a story that leaps from “increasing reports of serious illness, lung
damage and death
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=f67004d872&e=7cc058db1e>
related to vaping” to the need to “help an adolescent or a young adult
shake a nicotine habit.” Most irresponsibly, both cases, and others like
them (e.g., *Wall Street Journal*, 12/18/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=436332a20f&e=7cc058db1e>),
fail to even mention the developing link to black-market THC in the text.

Initially, the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health
authorities advised the nation to cease *all* vaping.  Media dutifully
reported the recommendations, while mostly ignoring skeptics like community
health professor Michael Siegel of Boston University, who put such calls
into perspective (*Rest of the Story*, 9/27/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=e53e2e3530&e=7cc058db1e>
):

This is like reporting a series of deaths from eating Romaine lettuce and
advising people to immediately stop eating all lettuce and cabbage. Except
it's a lot worse, because no harm comes from people stopping eating
cabbage. Severe harm is already resulting from ex-smokers stopping vaping
and returning to smoking, or to the black market.

In some ways, the moral panic around vaping echoes earlier media-abetted
scares. But unlike the overt racism of reporting on "opium dens" or
"crackhouses" that saw drug users as sources of societal contagion, elite
media see vaping itself as a scourge, invading and perverting wholesome
(suburban) children.
[image: Time: The New American Addiction]

*Time (9/30/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=31de7765f1&e=7cc058db1e>)
warns that Juul "hooked kids and ignited a public health crisis."*

This is on display in *Time* magazine’s September 30 cover story
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=59c6a4912a&e=7cc058db1e>,
headlined “The New American Addiction”—subtitled “How Juul Hooked Kids and
Ignited a Public Health Crisis”—and in the *New York Times*’ November 23
web feature
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=80214b0b4d&e=7cc058db1e>,
“How Juul Hooked a Generation on Nicotine.”

Loaded terms like “hooked” and “kids”—along with references to an “epidemic
on speed” (*Time*, 9/30/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=92f3ab5ffb&e=7cc058db1e>)
—do a lot of work for reporters. But statistics hardly show
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=e85013e69a&e=7cc058db1e>
that “a generation” (a buzzword for young white people
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=cf5d40e97a&e=7cc058db1e>)
is becoming *addicted* to nicotine through vaping—and particularly not
pre-teens, the age group implied and weaponized by media with the term
“kids,” another word that draws images of white, innocent children
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=fa63e73287&e=7cc058db1e>
in US media. I spoke to numerous public health experts for *The Nation* (
12/27/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=3688b58b06&e=7cc058db1e>),
most of whom insisted that the vast majority of young people’s e-cig use is
experimental.

Genuine concerns, in any event, would be better met by harm reduction than
exaggeration or fearmongering.  The Harm Reduction Coalition defines
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=e65b8ab184&e=7cc058db1e>
it as “a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative
consequences associated with drug use” or other risky behaviors. But a few
op-eds and reports aside, much of corporate media can’t seem to parse
nicotine use from nicotine harm, simply repeating ad nauseum the irrelevant
and obvious fact that vaping “isn’t safe.”

The cognitive dissonance in calling for “more restricted access” (e.g.,
flavor bans) across editorial boards (*Houston Chronicle*, 11/21/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=0ef7aadabd&e=7cc058db1e>;
*USA Today*, 11/25/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=1e9e8bd624&e=7cc058db1e>;
*Tampa Bay Times*, 11/27/19
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=992cd45a73&e=7cc058db1e>)
is unfortunate, because as social and behavioral sciences professor David
Abrams of NYU told me
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=a9503f56c8&e=7cc058db1e>
:

Any smokers at any age are going to be far bigger losers in the unintended
consequences of removing a much more appealing flavored nicotine product
from the market in every mom-and-pop store, while ironically leaving the
most lethal products, which are flavored little cigars and cigarillos and
mentholated cigarettes, on the market in every corner store in the country.

Research suggests that a mass switch from smoking to vaping nicotine could
save 6.6 million lives
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=eefc57d36e&e=7cc058db1e>
over the next decade. And the fruity vape flavors media hold responsible
for youth e-cig use—contrary to the CDC’s own research
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=a132450931&e=7cc058db1e>—have
been shown to be vital tools for adults, having double the
smoking-cessation success rate
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=897f8a87d7&e=7cc058db1e>
as other nicotine replacement therapies.

Journalists like Helen Redmond and others at the harm reduction-focused
magazine *Filter* point out the pitfalls of all prohibitionist measures:
namely, law enforcement inevitably targeting
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=251fc600ed&e=7cc058db1e>
people of color, and poor and working-class people, and the proliferation
of unregulated black-market products
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=99e750cae0&e=7cc058db1e>,
like the illicit fentanyl driving the overdose crisis—or the contaminated
THC oil actually responsible for “vaping-related” deaths.

Little seen in corporate media are the tales of the 3 million–plus Americans
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=b68f778176&e=7cc058db1e>
who have quit smoking through vaping, or the perspectives of the 34 million
current smokers who want to quit. Nor do we find some of the most
marginalized populations
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=ee9099d661&e=7cc058db1e>,
who still smoke after decades of anti-tobacco campaigns, and suffer the
highest rates of morbidity and death. Nor the success stories in the UK
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=0b85072572&e=7cc058db1e>,
where the government actually encourages smokers to switch to significantly
less harmful e-cigarettes.

Panicky, paternalistic media coverage serves neither public nor personal
health. In the case of vaping, it may lead to measures that harm more
people than they are purportedly meant to save.


Read more
<https://fair.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e6457f9552de19bc603e65b9c&id=2a57bb4478&e=7cc058db1e>

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