We are back with greg collie of the American Vaping Association, and we will talk about the recent Health Concerns related to vaping and ecigarettes, and greg, good morning. Thank you for having me. And lets start out with who does the American Vaping Association represent . Which company . We dont represent any company, and we are a 501 c nonprofit. I began vaping and became an advocate and we are advocating for sensible regulation for vaping product, and we vive the funding from the small and the mediumsized vaping in the industry, and as well as consumers. When you are talking small and mediumsized, the people who make the cigarettes or the vaping products manufacturers, retailers and concerned consumers. Okay. So what is the intended purpose of ecigarettes . Why do they even exist . Sure. The vaping products exist because in 1986 dr. Michael russell said that smokers smoke for the nicotine, but they die from the tar, and die from the smoke. So until these products came out there was no way to inhale nicotine that was pleasurable and eliminating the smoke. The reason that the vaping products were invented by a hong kong pharmacist 14 years ago was to have inveterate smokers to give them nicotine in a much safer way without smoke. We have succeeded and we have had well over 3 million american smokers to make the switch over vaping and everyone, and virtually all in Public Health, and the fda and the academy of science says unless they make the switch, they are not significantly benefiting the health. You said that you use ecigarettes yourself to stop smoking, and so now, do you still use ecigarettes as a pleasure product or something that will only be used for a medical uses . It is not a medical use, but it is a replacement, and Harm Reduction is meeting people where they are. For me, i use nicotine and i enjoy it. When i have previously tried to get off of it with the gum, and the lozenges or the patches, i quickly relapsed when i got off and this is what we dont want to see happen to smokers in the country. We have been seeing the news where people are harmed through vaping. Yes. And so what is your response to these public concerns about whether any type of vaping or ecigarettes can be safe to be used by anyone . The word safe should not be use and it is safer, and Public Health england have estimated vaping to be 95 less harmful than smoking, but what is happening in america over the last seven or eight weeks is that contaminated thc cartridges, and ones made and fill and sold by drug dealers and it is not the thc that is the problem, but it is the thickeners that are added like the vit men e acetate or the pesticides in the weed cartel that ends up like mychol butanol have been saying that very slowly that is what happening in our state is the thc cartridges and not the vaping products. And then finally they came out to say that the case are linked to these elicit products and one particular brand and a fake brand and not a brand that is sold in a medical or recreational stores, but it is vanc vapes. 70 of the patients that are sick were reporting using these products. So back up so we know. Thc. Marijuana. And you extract the thc, the part that gets you high from the marijuana plant and you put it into a cartridge specifically designed for oil. So, explain to us the difference of the cartridge and the ecigarette and explain what is going to be talking about . And oil. Oil inhaled into the lungs with the additives and the pesticide chemicals is what you get lipoid pneumonia and the vaping products are water soluble, and the Propylene Glycol dont have lipids in them, and so dr. Michael seigel a long time antismoking advocate has tried to get the message out there, that it is not the vape prog ducts that is causing people to inhale the oil, but it is the elicit thc cartridges. And so is this a battle between the established companies that are making the ecigarettes that are sold in the stores and bootlegs, and bootlegged cartridges that people are finding out only the streets . Yes. It is not so much a war, but the natural consequence of prohibition. Once you had colorado and california and others legalize these markets, if they are sold in markets that have testing by and large if you are in aed a dult there is not much wrong wit, and no link to the illegal product, but once you have a couple of states that open up and they create the technology, well, people in wisconsin and people in illinois and people in new jersey where i am from, they want to access the products, and they cant buy them legally, so who do they turn to . Drug dealers, and drug dealers dont abide by regulations. Lets have our viewers join in the conversation. If you want to have a question to ask or if you want to have your opinion on the show, we want you to call, and we will open up the regional lines for you this morning. So, if you are in the eastern or central time zone, you can call 2027488000. If you are in the mountain and the pacific time zones call 2027488001 and keep in mind that you can text us at 2027488003 and we are always reading on the social media and on twitter cspanwj and on facebook at cspan. And one thing that the government has been talking about is removing the flavors from the realm, and what is your opinion of that and what if the government includes mint and menth menthol, because those are the ones that the industry is pushing the most back on, and why . One particular company juul that is pushing back on the menth menthol, but the vape shops about 10 of their sales on any given day is tobacco or mint or menthol, and fruit and sweet flavors and the fda Research Shows the most used products by adults despite the rhetoric that they are used to target the youth, the flavors were invented in the products because the consumers in 2009 and 2010 and long before the Tobacco Industry ever thought that the cigarettes were viable, they demanded the flavors and started to creating their own args and the industry responded, and so in fact the adult users of Tobacco Products are likely to still be using, because tobacco flavors areitat cigarette tastes like, and so that leads you back to smoking. And so the flavors are the ones that are used by adults who have fully switched. What type of regulation does the industry think is appropriate at this point . No one is arguing that children should not be using these products at all. What type of regulation does the vaping industry believe should be in place for . The vaping advocates have come around on the tobacco 21 and so when you 18 or 19yearold High School Seniors who can purchase the products and then become dealers at their school to freshmen, sophomores and juniors, that is bad news. Tobacco 21, and then for the past six or seven years we have been advocating for the standards to prevent what should be in the liquid and set a standard, but instead, we have the prospect of near imminent prohibition because of the sky high sevenfigure application cost to ask for permission from the fda to have one product on the market, you have the prospect of one year from now all companies that sell cigarettes as well, because they are subsidizing the science with the products that kill people, and all of the businesses are gone. We will go to telephone lines and talk to michael who sis calling from leland, mississippi. Michael. Caller good morning. How are yall . Good morning. Caller mr. Connolly, i dont know if you remember me, but you came to meet with representative thompsons office here in mississippi and i would say first off, thank you for the advocacy and what you are doing for the industry. I cannot stress to you how important this industry is to current smokers and former smokers as well, because i have thousands upon thousands of stories of customers with whom this has helped. It has done so much for people that have no other, and they have tried everything. When we continue, it is in the same drug category as caffeine. It is a stimulant, and no, it is not if you are asking a doctor, it is not, you know, they dont want you to do anything, but if you lay a pack of cigarettes and a vape down in front of your doctor and you tell them, i am going to do one of these, and you choose, every one of them will choose the vapivape i over the cigarettes, because it has not been out long enough for the long term studies which we do need. But everyday people come in and say, thank you for this. This has helped me so much, and i feel so much better. Food tastes better and i smell better, and my family can tell the difference in just the amount of energy that i have, because i am not coating my lung with tar anymore. Michael, it is sounding like you sell ecigarettes and so do you own a vaping shop . I own a shop and i am a vapor as well. My wife stopped using the vaping about six years ago and she was a pack and a half a day smoker. What is truly special about him is as i can recall he is in greenville, mississippi, and one of the poorest areas in mississippi where 25 plus of the population still smoke, and especially in those areas of the country and certain areas of the country you are down to 10 and below of smoking, those are the areas where the big tobacco is killing people and they need the competition there or people are going to continue to smoke. So thank you, michael. Anne from maryland. Good morning. Caller ah, yes. First of all i wanted to say that i know what i am talking about because i worked for nih, the National Institutes of health. And the chemicals that they put in cigarettes is what is killing everybody, and these new gadgets, vaping that is what is killing people. People need to roll their own. And anyway, and another thing people should watch dont smoke things in general. Dont smoke tobacco. Caller hold it. Hold it. God did not invent tobacco to kill us. As long as you do it moderately, and that i have been smoking tobacco for thousands of years and when it started to killing everybody is when they started to put all of the chemicals in it. And secondly, people should watch a Program Documentary called a wolf in sheeps clothing about saul olinsky made by etn and what is happening in this country. And thank god for donald trump, and you had hillary on this show before this one and Georgetown University was purchased in a private we will not be exactly on topic there. So let me respond to that she seems to think that rolling your own cigarettes would be safer, and you argument is that no cigarette is safe. Yes. So certainly added chemicals to cigarettes as well as spiking the nicotine in order to keep it consistent and let you get a big puff of nicotine to make you keep smoking and smoke more, but ultimately inhaling the smoke into your lungs many times a day is not a good idea and the science and including the people who used to work at nih including the woman who called have stated that vaping remains far less harmful than smoking. Well, i have to bring up the fact that juul Just Announced it is replacing the current ceo with an executive with a Tobacco Company. That seems to be, if you are saying that the two things are not really good, it is why would a ecigarette Company Bring in somebody from a Tobacco Company . Juul sold off 35 of the company to al tree tria who is manufacturer of marlborough. And former philip morris. Yes, and life would be easier in the vaping industry if the large Tobacco Companies did not get involved, but if you want to transform this process of taking us from 36 million smokers down 25, you need the companies to be involved and the fact is that juul by their own actions to a certain extent are under attack, and their current ceo or the former ceo used to run a yogurt company, and knows how to expand and open up a business in new markets, but he did not know how the navigate the complex regulatory business in washington, d. C. But if you have an altria executive, they will try to kill the small businesses, so it is not Michael Bloomberg funding hundreds of millions of sites, but it is going to be the larger Tobacco Companies in the future. And looking to what the hhs secretary said earlier in the week. It also shows that the youth are drawn to flavored ecigarettes including mint and menthol. Currently about 8 million adults use the ecigarettes, but 5 million children are using ecigarettes. This is exceptionally harmful to our children. An entire generation of children risk becoming addicted to nicotine, because of the attractiveness, appealability, and availability of these vaping products. So with the president s support, the food and Drug Administration intends to finalize a guidance document that would commence enforcement to require all flavors other than tobacco flavor would be removed from the market. This would include mint and menthol flavoring as well as candy flavors, bubble gum flavor, fruit flavor, alcohol flavor, and you get the drift. So once the fda would finalize this guidance, we would begin the Enforcement Actions to remove all such products from the marketplace. We would allow tobacco flavoring to remain subject to their filing, the manufacturers of the tobaccoflavored ecigarette products filing for premarket tobacco approval with the food and Drug Administration. Is that a fair statement by the hhs secretary . No. Because the secretary azar has long been opposed to vaping and seen it kind of an annoyance and not interested in the topic except to try to ban it. When it is coming to flavors, yes, the youth say that the flavors are a driving factor, but the same is true for adults and especially the adult smokers who have switched. Very few adult smokers have fully switched to tobacco, because it is reminding them of how good an actual cigarette would taste. So what the secretary azar is leaving out is what the former commissioner Scott Gottlieb has been talking about it on twitter. It is not an ecigarette problems, but it is the devices delivering a head high and that is what the youth is after and why the 2019 Youth Tobacco survey showed that mint is the most popular flavor among the youth, and the problem therein is juul that delivers the head high if you misuse it is also a fantastic product to get heavy adult smokers and even schizophrenic smokers off of cigarette. The fda is saying Menthol Cigarettes and marlboros, that is not our problem, but vaping, we will remove 80 plus products on the market and we wont do a study to determine how many smokers will relapse, and how is this going to impact the number of smokers interested in switching to the product while smokers keep smoking, and three, the illnesses from the black market thc cartridges and this is going to create a multimillion dollar black and gray market, and youth as they obtained marijuana and alcohol, they will be finding the products on the black and gray market. And we go to james who is calling from pickerington, ohio. James, good morning. Caller good morning. Greg connolly, i would say thank you for your tireless efforts to defend the rights of vaporing adults across the u. S. Youre welcome. Caller and i want to echo what mr. Connolly said about the flavors, because in the state of ohio, we know that 95 of the adult consumers ages 18 and up use the flavor ed eliquid prod t products and they do not want to use tobacco, and the kids are not using products like juul for the flavor, but they are using it for the buzz. So we need to get those two misconceptions out in the open, or those two facts out in the open. In ohio, since the talk of a flavor ban has been announced and all of this issue with the elicit drug market, we have lost over 23 stand alone brick and more or the vape stores that are owned by small independent businesses, and think of what happened if we took a flavor ban nationwide. It is going to annihilate an entire industry, and have an Economic Impact of over 24 billion and people are forced back to smoking cigarettes that we know kill 480,000 people a year. It is disgusting what we have seen from the cdc in the last two months. Your comment . I dont think that i could say it better, and what you are seeing across the country is because of the the lung illness scare. And hopefully now that the cdc came out yesterday and said many, most, 77 plus of the people who have this lung illness admit, key word admit, to using thc vapes. And there are multiple doctors and state Health Department representatives that have given quotes to the National Press saying that many teens in particular are reluctant to admit that theyre using thc. But the news media, unfortunately, hopefully until the cdcs statement yesterday will change things. It has sent a message to the public where a poll came out last week finding that about twice as many americans, 32 , say thc vaping has zero to do with the lung illnesses. So theres a misunderstanding out there and hopefully we can begin to correct it because you have adult smokers who are continuing to smoke, because they think when they pick up a juul, because they think, oh, i could go to the hospital next week. At least i know cigarettes arent going to kill me for 30 years. Thats a daengerous for people o believe. The caller product up Financial Impact. I want to make sure i run the number by you. So if the flavored ecigarettes are pulled off the market, what will be the Financial Impact that you see on the american industry . So assuming people do not exploit loop holes, which is kind of the american way, if the government is saying you need to shut down or you need to exploit a loophole in the law, but if every vape store abided by this, you would have 10,000 to 14,000 vape shops across the country, 500 plus manufacturers close their doors. Thats over 100,000 jobs that would be lost like that. So its more than an economic issue even and more than a Public Health issue. Its also an election issue, because with donald trump, President Trump, he won states like michigan by 10,000, 15,000 votes, wisconsin, and theres 500,000 plus vapors in those states. Weve been trying to get through the message that this flavor ban, rather than helping President Trumps reelection as Kellyanne Conway seems to believe, that its actually going to do great harm and could cost him reelection. Are you saying that you think that if the government bans flavored ecigarettes, that will cause people to vote against President Trump . More so stay home. It will make people who already are inclined to believe that both parties dont give a damn about the american public, that would underscore that for him. All they have to do is simply stay home and this issue, when you have people who have switched to the product after years and years of smoking, decades, and theyre so proud of themselves, and they should be for getting off of cigarettes finally. And then you have the republican president who campaigned on were going to deregulate, were going to fight bad regulations, were not going to be like the Obama Administration was. And you see that well, on this issue theyre all the same. They will stay home. Lets talk to lavinia who is calling from virginia beach, virginia. Good morning. The traditional cigarette, the Secondhand Smoke is harmful. As far as vaping products, is the smoke harmful to people around them . So no. The vapor thats produced by a vaping product, there was a Drexel University professor, a well respected toxicologist that published an extensive review of all the science on secondhand ecigarette aerosol, and his conclusion as a toxicologist, and he has a specialty in pregnant women, is that the levels of exposure are so tiny when youre in a room with someone who is vaping, that there really is no worry. Of course that doesnt mean that people should be rude. They shouldnt just blow clouds wherever they are, but we dont think that vaping bans telling businesses that they cant allow people at a bar on midnight on a saturday night to vape instead of go outside and wake up neighbors to the bar, we dont think thats good policy. Lets go to hubert calling from florida. Good morning. Good morning. I would like to make a comment. First of all, i stopped smoking five years ago. I dont vape. I think any type of smoking is detrimental to your health. Secondly, only in america can Companies Make products that could be harmful to hurt or kill people all in the name of capitalism, all in the name of profit. Thats just wrong. Cigarettes are available in every country around the world. Caller thats not the issue. The issue is that the cigarettes are killing so many people each other and we have the National Academy of science and fda and physicians all indicating that adult smokers that switch to the products, its not farmfree or riskfree, but it is far less farmful than smoking. When you have about 50 of smokers who are on the trajectory to smoke until they die, until theyve caught a disease and cant turn back, we need to make sure we know that alternatives are far less harmful than smoking. Thats important. Caller thats not the issue. Its doing it to our children. And evidently you people dont care. We do care and we want to take measures to lower youth vaping. But when in this country has prohibition ever worked . It didnt work for alcohol and it didnt work for marijuana. Lets go smart regulations like tobacco 21. Caller so its okay for a company to produce products to hurt people . No, and theres no evidence that vaping products are hurting everyone. Theres evidence its helping Public Health by helping smokers switch away from combustible cigarettes. Lets go to richard who is calling in from roanoke, alabama. Caller good morning. How are you doing . Im doing great. Its great to be on cspan. As a political nerd for many years. Caller first of all, thank you for everything you do for the industry. Its not for the industry. It is to keep this technology around for 36 million american smokers. But thank you. Caller absolutely. Ill try to make this quick. I started smoking when i was 8 years old. I smoked for 18 years. Three of which were making my own cigarettes. In 2011 i switched to vaping and ive been vaping since 2011 and i have never felt better in my life. Because ive been smoking since i was 8 years old. This is a very helpful product. I cant say that its safe, because we cant say that its completely safe. But it is safer than smoking. Thank you for calling. Whats truly remarkable is some of the people who have smoked for 30, 40, 50 years from when they were a smoker and then they switched to vaping, and as long as they havent reached the point where they have copd and they cannot reverse the progress, what the evidence shows is that theres great lung harm reversal. The same lung harm reversal that happens when you quit smoking and nicotine entirely. That same reversal happens when you switch to vaping. And thats what smokers need to know across the country. Whats the next thing we should look for in the entire conversation between vaping, thc and federal regulations . Whats the next thing we keep our eye on . What you have right now, multiple governors are trying to ban these products unilaterally, so there are lawsuits out there against michigan, new york, soon to be massachusetts and there are going to be more governors targeting the products, even though they should be going after drug dealers selling these contaminated thc cartridges. We would like to thank greg conley for being with us today. Greg, thank you so much. A look at some of todays coverage. At 4 00 eastern on cspan, former ambassador to the united Samantha Power talks about public policy. And later this afternoon, democratic congressmanwoman alexandria ocasciocortez will hold a town hall in new york. Cspan will have live coverage of that starting at 5 45 p. M. Eastern. You can see them on our website or listen with the free radio app. And tonight this week at 8 00 eastern, were featuring African American history programs. Tonight working the 400th anniversary of savory in the u. S. Scholars discuss culture and institutions and how they have survived despite slavery and discrimination. Watch tonight at 8 00 eastern on cspan cspan3. Friday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, live coverage of Hillary Clinton and her daughter, chelsea, talking about their new book, the book of gutsy women, stories about women who have inspired them. Watch our coverage from the book store in washington, d. C. Friday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. A pentagon official overseeing china policy says u. S. Competition with china is a challenge for this generation. Randall shriver, explains why were competing with china during a speech in washington, d. C. After he spoke, china policy