The Daily Signal - #545: Is Vaping an 'Epidemic'?

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Youth vaping is a problem that President Trump wants to address. How exactly? One idea is to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Daren Bakst at The Heritage Foundation says that’s not the best way forward. Today, he joins the podcast to discuss the vaping controversy and what can be done to protect kids. Plus: Do conservative students have to lie about their views to make it through college? A new survey says that’s exactly what they’re doing. We also cover these stories: -House panel approves guidelines for an impeachment probe -President Trump welcomes Supreme Court ruling on asylum rule -Ben Carson is cleared of misconduct in furniture controversy The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Release date: 12 September 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, September 13th. I'm Jared Stetman. And I'm Daniel Davis. Youth vaping is a problem that President Trump wants to address. How? Well, one idea is to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Darren Bax here at the Heritage Foundation says that's not the best way forward. And today I'll sit down with him to discuss.

Plus, do conservative students have to lie about their views to make it through college? A new survey says that's exactly what they're doing. Don't forget. yet, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Well, House Democrats have taken their first step toward an impeachment investigation. On Thursday, the Judiciary Committee passed parameters for a potential inquiry, allowing President Trump and his lawyers to formally respond to evidence and testimony presented in the hearings.

The committee passed a resolution in a party-line vote, while Republicans slammed the measure as a symbolic gesture that changed nothing. Here's what ranking member Doug Collins told reporters. I made a point earlier today, these rules are not new. I've heard many reporters today say, well, these new rules look at that. There's nothing new about what we just saw. These rules were already in our rules. The chairman has done these at any time he wanted to.

This is not new. What is new is, like I said, in my old excitement. This is a filter. This is to make you believe something is happening more on what is actually happening. Big United States Supreme Court win for the board. border on asylum. That was President Trump's tweet Thursday morning in response to a Supreme Court ruling allowing the administration to continue restricting asylum seekers at the southern border. The president's policy restricts asylum seekers from passing through other countries

before asking for asylum in the U.S., though it makes exceptions for victims of human trafficking and those who have been denied asylum elsewhere. According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, quote, border patrol has intercepted approximately 350,000 asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in 2019. Well, a new Politico report says Israel may have spied on the White House. The report states, quote, the U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cell phone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to the U.S.

the three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter, end quote. The many surveillance devices can capture the contents of phone calls and user data. One of the unnamed officials in the report says the devices were intended to spy on President Trump and his inner circle, but it's unclear whether they were successful. The report says the administration took no punitive action in response to Israel. A new report released by the Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development cleared Secretary Ben Carson in a case regarding an expensive furniture purchase. In 2017, Carson's wife purchased a dining set worth over $31,000 for his office.

The Inspector General Report said, quote, We found no evidence indicating that either Secretary or Mrs. Carson exerted improper influence on any departmental employee in connection with the procurement. We did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate allegations of misconduct on the part of Secretary Carson in connection with this procurement. Carson said in an interview on Fox Business, quote, I was so disgusted with that story

because they try to claim that I want to buy expensive furniture while I'm trying to take money away from the poor people. There's probably no one in Washington who cares less about furniture than I do. Well, up next we'll talk youth vaping with Darren Baxter of the Heritage Foundation. More and more young people are vaping. That's the new term for using e-cigarettes

to get nicotine without the smoke. President Trump recently spoke to the issue in the Oval Office. We want to have parents understand that we're studying it very carefully. It's, again, very new and potentially very bad. There have been deaths and there have been a lot of other problems. People think it's an easy solution to cigarettes, but it's turned out that it has its own difficulties. The president went on to say he may take strong action on vaping. Joining me now to unpack the issue is Darren Baxed.

He is the Senior Research Fellow in Agricultural Policy here at the Heritage Foundation. Darren, thanks for being back on. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So vaping is a, it's a fairly new technology that we're seeing pop up more and more. And in fact, kids are using it more. And we've actually heard the term epidemic now being used to describe this wide usage among kids. Health Secretary Alex Azar recently said that 5 million kids have tried.

tried vaping. Is it fair and accurate to call it an epidemic at this point? No, and I think what's worse is that the entire narrative is focused on this alleged epidemic. For most Americans, they have been touched in some way, in a negative way, from cigarette smoking through their own health problems or losing relatives. And what we've seen is the private market has provided these really incredible innovative solutions. to help people quit smoking. This is something that we should be celebrating. That should be kind of the headlines

that we should be kind of screaming for the mountaintops. But somehow over the last few years, the scare tactics have dominated the discourse. So instead of talking about this incredible development that can help address this number one cause of preventable death, or instead talking about this one relatively small issue as relates to youth usage, that doesn't mean there's not a concern there,

but that should not make us forget the benefits of these products. So, yeah, zooming out big picture, looking at vaping, talk about some of the unique benefits of vaping as well as the risks. Look, nobody is claiming that vaping is safe or healthy or anything that, you know, we should encourage people to do. However, it is something that has been proven to be less harmful than smoking cigarettes. So in the UK, public health, England, has said that vaping and e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful

than smoking traditional cigarettes. So it's, and the FDA agrees with this, there's really little question that these are much safer than smoking cigarettes. So the focus should be on having smokers choose to get their nicotine through a less harmful path than smoking cigarettes. That's the thing to focus on, and that's why these products are so important. Well, and they also help people transition away from traditional cigarettes, right? Right.

The goal is for people to – the way to think about all this is that these are nicotine delivery products, e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes. It's much better to get that nicotine through the e-cigarette than the traditional cigarette. It's also important to note that nicotine is not what causes the cancer. it's the smoking, the cigarettes, the toxins, the tar is what causes the cancer. Unfortunately, there's so much misleading information out there that the public is increasingly starting to think that nicotine causes the cancer. And it's just, you know, what you're trying to do is you're trying to get people away from

the tar and get them to use products like these e-cigarettes. Then they don't have these other risks and then they can get away from smoking cigarettes. and maybe eventually get off nicotine, but if not, at least they're using a far less harmful product. So the age restriction for getting e-cigarettes is the same as normal cigarettes. It's 18 years old. So this problem of youth vaping, it's already sort of precluded by at least the law, right? It's just the problem that underage kids are getting their hands on it when they shouldn't be able to legally. Yes, and it's not like states can't go beyond 18.

In fact, they do. So they could go above that. I'm not saying they should, but they can. Look, there's many products that are for adults that kids get their hands on. Alcohol, for example, we don't prohibit or ban alcohol. We've kind of gone down that path in the past, and that didn't work out so well. What we need to do is just take some practical steps to address the youth usage of these products. I'm not saying there are simple solutions.

However, the right solution is not to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Because these flavors, while it's appealing to kids, at least allegedly, and they are. They're also, most importantly, though, appealing to adults. And they help to encourage the adult smokers to quit smoking by going to these e-cigarettes that have these flavors. Yeah, that's an interesting point because the FDA is expected in the next few weeks to release new guidance on this, which is expected to really clamp down on the sale of these flavored e-cigarettes. And it's something that the president seems to be concerned about and wants to act on.

You know, when it comes to that trade-off between the benefits that this product might have for the public versus the harm that it does and is doing to underage kids, how do you go about weighing those things? One thing I wanted to bring out, maybe it's a little wonky, is that the government is talking about issuing guidance to effectively ban many of these products. And if we're going to make that type of choice, that needs to be done through a kind of a natural rulemaking process, not a guidance document, so which is really informal, which is a concern. It's not something that that's not the way to go about doing it. Also, the Obama administration did a lot, right? They would use your guidance. And they were rightfully criticized.

And the Trump administration and any administration should not be trying to develop major substantive policy by issuing these guidance documents that are just easy to kind of shove down the throats of the American public without having real kind of recourse. But you'd asked, does the benefit of vaping outweigh the harm that it's doing to kids? I think we have to kind of recognize that in normal situation, the company provides a product to consumers, and the government doesn't sit around blocking the sale. You don't have to usually prove that something is actually a benefit to society. So what we're asking these companies to do, these vaping companies, is to prove that their product that is going to help people quit smoking. It's actually something of a net health benefit.

It's going to be really hard for them to prove that because, quite honestly, I imagine it's going to be, first of all, very costly and it'll just be obstacles will be extremely difficult to meet. But getting to that kind of cost benefit. So in other words, I don't even know if it's an appropriate question by point. When we look at the cost, it's important to recognize that the kids that are using these products, first of all, the data that you see, the CDC data, is just, talking about the percentage of kids that have tried these products within the last 30 days. I thought they're regular users, but just that they've tried it. So it's important to kind of distinguish and be clear on what the data is actually saying. The other thing is they're using these products that deliver nicotine.

They're not smoking cigarettes. So we're not comparing an apples to apple situation like, you know, so instead of adults smoking cigarettes, the cost of reducing that is kids smoking. smoking cigarettes. That's not what's happening. We're having youth using and gaining access to nicotine. You're comparing that to the millions and millions of people that smoke and the deaths that exist from cigarette smoking. So you've got nicotine, which is nowhere near the kind of harm that you get from cigarette smoking. So look, we should be more than capable as a country to make it possible for adults to gain access to these products and then take reasonable steps to ensure that

youth don't get access to them. So are there any steps in that vein that can be taken short of banning, you know, these products the way the administration is talking about? Well, the, the products would still exist, they just, these flavors would be banned. And what would have these companies would then have to kind of establish that they, the flavors are kind of prove a net health benefit overall. But what's going to happen as a result of that process is only the big companies will actually be able to go through that process. So all these small companies that are out there in the vaping industry will not be able to afford this costly process, which quite honestly is not even clear what actually will have to be done.

These companies actually have had to go through anything remotely similar have cost tons of money. Basically, this approach will kill off a bunch of businesses, a lot of small businesses, and will make it more difficult for people to be able to get those slavored products. In terms of practical steps, it's something that should be should only thought through. One thing is the government should stop misleading the public in terms of not providing real proper context as it relates to what vaping is, what the harms are, as opposed to, there's just a lot of scare tactics. And the more scare tactics that you use, you almost encourage kids to start using the product. So let's just be honest.

Are they giving misinformation? Yes, there's plenty of misinformation out there. The FDA has embraced this idea of tobacco harm reduction, which is what I talked about, kind of choosing products that are less harmful and see the benefit in that. But at the same time or the last few years, the FDA also, all they've been doing is using scare tactics and focusing on all the harms associated with vaping without ever really mentioning all the benefits of having these products on the market. And look, kids know that vaping is less harmful than smoking, so don't pretend that it isn't.

So just be honest with them. The other thing is, look, there are some bad actors out there. The FDA and states need to enforce the laws and make sure that those bad actors don't sell those products to kids under 18 years old. Right. Well, I was going to ask about that. I mean, say you keep it all legal, you keep it all out in the market, but just raise penalties maybe for any adult who gives this to a kid?

That's a possible solution. But what needs to happen is we need to, thoughtful people need to have a thoughtful discussion about this, recognizing that we need to make sure the adults can have easy access to these. products without the cost of youth having access to it. Now, let's be honest, there's never going to be a situation, really, that you're not going to prevent all youth for getting access to these products, just like we can't prevent all youth from getting access to marijuana or alcohol.

There's always going to be that situation. So let's, let's not treat this product that actually is going to help some many people treat it worse than we would for products that actually don't really help anybody. All right. Well, Darren Baxter, I appreciate you coming in and unpacking the issue of the day. Thank you. Well, as you may know, the Daily Signal is located at the Heritage Foundation, the most influential think tank in America. If you like Heritage and want to follow along with Heritage Analysis and all of the Heritage happenings,

I have an email for you. It's called The Agenda, a weekly email that breaks down the top issues conservatives need to know about for the week. It also brings you the top TV highlights from our experts and alerts you to important events happening right here at Heritage. You can sign up for the agenda by emailing Managing Editor at Heritage.org, that's Managing Editor at Heritage.org, or scroll down to the bottom of www.heritage.org and look for the section that says subscribe to email updates. Conservatives in the closet? Well, that's become a reality on college campuses these days. where liberal dogma reigns. And new numbers back it up. A recent survey conducted by college pulse and published by the college fix found that

70% of Republican college students have withheld their political views in class for fear that their grades would suffer. In addition, those students even say they take liberal positions when writing essays to avoid a bad grade. So, Jared, how do you respond to these students? Are they being cowardly or just prudent? I think they're mostly just being prudent. I mean, quite honestly, if you're a student and you want to get through school, you're trying to get your major done, you're trying to get through glasses.

I can see a lot of situations where you hear some absurd things and you just keep quiet. I mean, especially if you are in a very liberal college campus surrounding, I mean, you are basically, especially at the large public universities, you're basically surrounded by people who, I mean, the prevailing wisdom is left wing. And so you're going to get that with most of your professors. and there's always now, I think, going to be that kind of fear from students. If I open my mouth about certain topics or ideas, I may be singled out. And especially for a lot of students who are trying to get through classes and trying to get the grades, I think that's a problem. I mean, is it necessarily that students will get dinged and lose, get worse grades because they'll speak out?

Not necessarily, but I think if you're just a prudent person, you can say, hey, I don't want to get a lower grade because of my political views. You know, I'm going to keep my political views, but I'm not going to go necessarily in front of the class and say, raise my hand and push back, which is a problem, especially at places we consider institutions of learning. Right. Well, what was your experience on this? You know, I did go to a big public university. I went to a University of California, Davis. And I... Not quite Berkeley. Not quite Berkeley, although I think the politics there actually are about his left wing as Berkeley. I was back and forth.

I mean, I actually did ultimately end up writing a column for my school newspaper where my ideas were, I mean, I think pretty obvious that I was a conservative and I had certain views. I was judicious about it. I mean, I had some good professors and usually that the pressure doesn't just come from the professor. It comes from the student body, which tends to be quite radical. And I think that's where a lot of this pressure comes from peers, not just professors. And professors often don't kind of crack down on some of the kind of extreme, especially, you know, left wing kind of rhetoric in the classroom. And so you get an environment where, look, I mean, I could say there were a few times where I was like, well, I could weigh in on this and talk about it. But it's easier just to get by and do the work and try to get a good grade.

And I think that's the mentality that people have. Did that mean saying things you didn't believe or writing things you didn't believe? I would never say or write something I didn't believe in. I know that especially when people comes down to taking tests and things like that, I mean, sometimes you're in a class and the answers are basically what you're kind of given, so to speak. Again, I don't think that's a good thing. I think it's hurting our quality of education in this country that you can't really, you don't feel like you can really speak freely.

I mean, I don't know how that's really perpetuating thought. I imagine that the experience may be different in a lot of the hard science classes versus the human where I think this problem is far worse. Not that it doesn't creep into the hard sciences, but this problem is far worse than the humanities where I think there's a certain point of view. Did you feel like as a conservative on campus, you had to at least be on your game a lot more than a liberal would?

Like you know, like that you couldn't just make reckless statements. You couldn't just, you know, say whatever you wanted. You had to be almost better than the other side in order to, you know, be taken seriously. A hundred percent. I mean, you had to be more judicious. I mean, if you bring up things that seem very, maybe obvious to you, you have to think of what that sounds like. I mean, I had one class in which, you know, the students didn't want to classify Nancy Pelosi as hard left. They wanted to classifiers of moderate.

They actually squabble with the professor over this and said, oh, she's a moderate. Kind of like AOC is now saying that Nancy Pelosi is moderate. She's part of the old guard. And we need to just get rid of any Democrat in Congress who's old, basically. Exactly. I mean, I was in California. So, I mean, as much as that seemed absurd to me, you know, now it's becoming the norm because I think the left is going very far to the left, kind of like how it is in California. I think that's kind of the left in general.

But as a conservative, you do have to be much more careful because the ideas that you bring up will be seen as, I mean, I hate to use the word, but heresies. I mean, they will be seen as heresies in these institutions that there is a certain dogma that pervades on college campuses and it takes place in most. Look, we have some very good schools in those countries, some good colleges. But the pervasive problem, especially on our big public universities, there is a certain dogma that prevails. And whether or not it's actually literally enforced, I think it's enforced by some of the, certainly the peer pressure, certainly how different speakers are treated on campus, who's invited to speak at the campus. It's very obvious. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I had a very different college experience, went to a Christian liberal arts college, although there were definitely some liberals there and some professors.

even who were, you know, more liberal leaning on some issues. But I think, you know, it was a very open context. You could have an open discussion and debate. And there was no kind of heckling really ever. But, you know, what's interesting is when I was in high school, I went to, you know, a secular high school and had liberal teachers. I don't think I had any conservative teacher. Maybe my math teacher was conservative, like a fiscal conservative.

but this was also before things got really woke. I mean, this was like the late 2000s. Like I graduated high school in 2010, and so I just feel like a lot of students didn't, they didn't care or they weren't into the wokeness the way they might be now. And so, you know, I was always a minority student in terms of my views,

but I feel like the teachers almost appreciated that I was interested in what they were, you know, teaching and wanted to engage. So I think there really is a way to have, and this is where, you know, Dennis Prager distinguishes between liberals and leftists and how liberals are kind of the old liberals who are like just, you know, they disagree with you, but they want the debate. And they are a shrinking breed because, you know, the left's sort of Olinsky-type left people now just want to shut down debate. Really, it's just about, are you okay with debate? Yeah, I think that that seems to be a big part of it. And I do think you're right that it's getting kind of worse by the generation.

I think that especially the youngest generation, I think this is much more common in schools now. I mean, it was already creeping in when I was going to school, when you were going to school. But I think it is getting worse now. I mean, that's a real problem. Yeah, now they have school walkouts, you know, for gun control. Exactly. And our schools are being turned into political activist organizations. And we, I mean, we really have to think in this country.

I mean, you know, we believe in something called, you know, higher education. and a lot of our humanities departments are kind of poisoned with an ideology that is hostile to free speech, is hostile to the rights of Americans. And that's a big debate in this country because obviously they're to a certain extent depended on taxpayers who ultimately keep these institutions going. And of course, they have huge endowments and all these kind of things. You know, what's the future of these institutions if they just go down the rabbit hole of left wing dogmen? And they make it impossible for somebody who has any view that's not. different to speak their mind or, you know, make an impact there. I mean, that says a bad thing about our schools.

Yeah. Well, Jared, I'm always amazed that you ended up conservative. I mean, growing up in Oakland and then going to UC Davis, I mean, you sort of slayed the dragon there. Survived. We will leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud.

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