White house on the issue of vaping and underage use of ecigarettes. Were joined by andrew who covers healthcare for cq roll call. Tell us why and age vaping became a bigger issue in 2019. It was a combination of factors that really drove this to the front of the policy debate this year. One was just the yearoveryear increases in the number of teenagers reporting ecigarette use. Thats been increasing fees of years. When that is another significant increase over last year. Another was this in in a relatd but sort of distinct issue that we saw starting over the summer with vaping related illnesses that were beginning to emerge. Weve now seen thousands injured and dozens dead from this. Thats related to elicit thc vaping which is distinct from the problem of ecigarette use. But the urgency of those illnesses i think really prompted policymakers to want to respond more broadly to the vaping issues we deal with in the u. S. Tremont and the Administration Starts the new year with an announcement about vaping and ecigarettes. Andrew siddons youre covering the story. What did they say . Guest the Administration Says that in early february products like a like a juul whf the most Popular Among Young People and use nicotine filled hotspur cartridges, then only be able to be sold in flavors like tobacco or menthol. Previously juul have been available in flavors like mint mango, of the fruit and otherwise. The company has only taken those products off the market a few months back because of public pressure and in anticipation of these flavor restrictions. Products like, similar to juul, of the things that are pot or cartridgebased cartridgebased they will have to take their flavors off the market. The other type of ecigarette products available, there are these devices they have tanks that the users can refill them with liquid nicotine themselves. These tend to be more popular among adults. Theyre harder to conceal than products like a juul and the shops that sell the flavors for those will continue to operate as they currently have as long as they have strict age verification procedures in place and as long as they are not selling flavors obviously marketing to children. They wouldnt be able to sell things like flavors based on serial or Something Like that. So those shops will continue to operate as they normally have. Host President Trump was at maralago over the holiday break, and on new years eve he previewed the announcement speaking with reporters. Lets take a listen. The vaping is coming out. Which is going to be announcing it very shortly. Some people already know about what we are doing. We have to protect our families, at the same time its a big industry. We want to protect the industry and as you know when we take, taking off the flavors for a period of time, certain flavors, were going to protect our families, protect our children were going to protect the industry come hopefully everything is safe they will be going very quickly back onto the market so the flavors will come off, there will be checked, we want to make it, people have died from this. They die from vaping. We think we understand why. We are doing a very exhaustive examination and hopefully everything will be back on the market very, very shortly. Look, vaping can be good from the standpoint come you look at the ecigarettes, you stop smoking. If you can stop smoking, thats a big advantage. We think well get it back onto the market very, very quickly, but we have to protect the children. We have to protect the families. At the same time with a very big industry, its become a very big industry. Were going to take care of the industry tremont we will show you some of President Trumps public deliberations on the issue later. Right now though part of a House Oversight subcommittee hearing from july. We will hear from High School Students and their parents, two of a High School Student say a representative of the ecigarette company juul gave a presentation to the ninth grade classroom and said that ecigarettes are totally safe. Im a a disbursement and to represent parents against vaping ecigarettes. We call it paved, Grassroots Group founded over a year ago by three concerned moms. We already have groups of activated parents across the country from california to new york and places in between. With people with us today from texas, georgia, virginia, new york, new jersey, et cetera. My cofounders are behind me with members of our families between us we have nine kids between ages of seven19. Along with a friend, we created paved in response to the juul epidemic that as you said seems to come out of nowhere. Yet experts consider one of the most serious adolescent publichealth crisis our country has faced for decades. Our goal today is to give voice to the 3. 6 million teenagers who are vaping, most of them juuling. This most recent data from the cdc is already outdated. It is a you said between 201720 team that was a 78 rise in the use of these parts by High School Students and a 48 rise in use by middle school students, and experts believe that the new figures due this fall will likely be much higher because nothing has happened to have them go down. We hear from desperate parents every day who contact us seeking resources, information and help further juul dependent nicotine addicted kids, that there is not yet in fda approved treatment for this kind of teenage nicotine addiction. I will share what it used was because they come from every step represent on the panel and probably every state of people in this room. From massachusetts, our paid advocate speaking about her son, a hockey player described how we develop a cough and continues not able to breathe while skating. He became distant, moody, irritable and at extreme bouts of anger. A very common thing people report home and find it was toxic and turns out that he has restrictive lung disease. He needs inhalers and oral steroids. He has been smoking a pod a day, the equivalent of more than a pack of cigarettes a day for years, for three years. Kelly from North Carolina is here with her son whose addiction was so severe he spent 39 days as an inpatient at rehab in california. Kelly said we began living with a stranger. Our straight a students grades dropped to f. It was the extreme anger and it turned out our 14 year old had a Substance Abuse problem, and that substance was juul. Now i want to share a personal story, a story about juul went after our kids and their friends by coming into their School Without the knowledge of the school or of us concerned parents. Juul set of representative to talk to our kids about its product under the guise of education. On april 3, 2017, my then 15yearold son caleb son caleb who is here told us third then and at the addiction talk at school for the ninth grade. The teachers left the room and the man named alley gave a confusing talk about juul, telling them it was not for kids but for adults. It was much safer than cigarettes. The fd would approve it any day. When he was done, caleb and his friend with up to talk to. Ally repeated that juul was for adults, not kids. Then he took out this sleek looking juul, showed the boys how it worked and called it the iphone of vaping. And thats when we moms decided to fight back. We had discovered a few months before that our kids were juuling at home right under our noses, which is also very common for it does doesnt mean yourd period if your kids are juuling. Its stealth by design. We knew that nicotine was harmful to our kids brains, and as we researched and put pieces together we learned that juul Deceptive Behavior seem to be part of this marketing strategy. In california a retired school silverton superintendent was offering schools in the state in massachusetts money if you implement the antijuul curriculum. A man was offering on juuls behalf. We came across the Stanford Medical School tobacco prevention toolkit with an odd disclaimer that we really realize what the reference to juuls taking information it shouldnt have. None of this is surprising. As a said juul is stealth by design. Juul says it no longer restocks retail orders of the flavors that research has proven are harmful to kids. Yet just the other day nearly in a one block radius in two Different Stores i was able to buy these men fall im sorry, these mango pods that juul says are no longer on the market but there still online and thats the problem. Juul really wants to slow youth vaping epidemic and keep younger kids from starting, they will immediately remove all flavors from the market, including menthol and met for the most popular kid flavors and and orp spending millions of dollars on lobbyists to oppose sensible legislation that pays. Enemy Coalition Partners are fighting for all over this country to restrict access to juul and other products. We hope todays hearing motivates members of congress on both sides. We all care about kids come to hold juul accountable that only for the epidemic but for its predatory practices and for causing harm as only kids in this country it is not a political issue but a moral one. If we dont take action now we face an entire generation of kids addicted to nicotine, who are human guinea pigs for the juul experiment over all. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Berkman. First of all, ms. Berkman and ms. Verma come after you discovered that a presenter representing juul gave a Close Assembly at her childrens school, you research the issue and form an Advocacy Group to inform parents around the country about the dangers of adolescent ecigarette use. Thank you for your continued advocacy. As a pair of three Young Children myself including a teenager, i was shocked to hear juul have access to children without the presence of teachers or administrators and without parental permission. Juul continues to partner with youth organizations across the country so its important to understand what outreach looks like on their part. Ms. Berkman and ms. Verma and id like to ask a couple of questions of your sons, if thats okay. Yes. Philip and caleb can you please, to the table for a couple of minutes . Id like to first address caleb. Caleb, what grades were you and fill up in the year of the juul presentation . Ninthgrade. Can you speak directly into the microphone . Ninthgrade. Thank you. What were students told about the presentation before it began . If it was safe. I think a lot of kids still thought it was possibly dangerous. Did the presenter ever mentioned his connection to jewell . My teachers were not in the room when he spoke. To the presenter ever say that jewell was safe . Yes. Totally safe more than once . Yes. What impacted those totally safe comments have on your classmates . Some of those that have already started vaping. A sigh of relief. Now they were able to vapor without any concern. Where there kids that were not doing it that were likely to do it after they were hearing it was quote unquote safe. After this meeting, kids were more inclined to vapor because now they just thought it was a labor device that did not have a harmful substance in it. You approach the presenter. I believe the presenter was giving mixed signals by saying jewell is totally safe and following up every totally safe statement, but we dont want you as customers. I believe the presenter was playing on the rebellious side of teens. When they are told not to do something, they are more likely to do it. Philip, that me ask you a couple of questions. What was your experience as the presenter . We went out and caleb asked a question about what can you do if your friend is addicted to nicotine. Philip, were you addicted at the time of this presentation . I was. Was caleb referring to you . He was. How did the presenter answer . Since caleb was not specific on what kind of nicotine he was addicted to, and ecigarette or cigarettes, the speaker thought that he was talking about cigarettes. Thought he should mention jewell to his friend. A safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. Let me get this straight. He wanted you to switch. Yes. To the presenter demonstrate the product to you . Okay. This is very disturbing behavior a person connected to jewell pulled out a jewell device. Lying about the product being totally safe. Did he say anything else about whether the government had approved jewell . Mentioning they were about to come out and say it was safer than cigarettes. It was in fda approval while the talk was going on. Thank you. Let me ask dorian to say a few words here. Dorian, thank you for coming today. Thank you. Addicted to jewell. How did his addiction impact your family . It was difficult. At first we did not understand what was going on. He was interested in so many different things. I started to find these flash drives and these plastic caps in his pockets. I did not know what it was at first. We would have fights about it. I figured out what it was because i googled the name on the side. He started spending a lot of time in his room, in the dark. He became moody. We had a very contentious relationship. He did not understand what was going on himself and neither did we. Let me recognize Ranking Member for questioning. Im curious of the reaction. I assume you approach the school board, principal, what was what was the reaction . The school had no idea that the outside group had brought a jewell representative into the school. We believe that the outside group was naive, definitely. When i called to ask about this presentation, oh, you found the right person. I was researching researching antijewell registration online and i came across the name of the woman called Julie Henderson who was listed then. This woman, miss Henderson Henderson said, i have the perfect person. Thank you. Could you explain the difference from a Health Perspective there are many, many differences differences. Traditional cigarettes consist of the preparation of tobacco leaves. When burned, create smoke and contained roughly 7 million different chemicals. Most of which are not good for the human body. E cigarettes contain far fewer ingredients as opposed to nicotine. Commonly found in ingredients. In general, the difference in terms of the number of compounds and ecigarettes makes the e cigarettes, in general, safer. They can probably vary from product to product. The safety of the cigarettes depends on temperature control. For example, if products have adequate temperature control they can be less toxic. Okay. We know cigarettes for a while cause cancer. A long sitting in a car. What are the Health Effects of the combustion will side of it and what are the Health Effects of the nicotine side . Well, yeah. That is an important point to raise. If we look at nicotine in and of itself, it is not risk free, but probably a lot less toxic compared to the other chemicals that come out of cigarette smoke nicotine probably does not cause cancer. It may have some small effects on cardiovascular disease and so forth. The brain may have to adapt to having a drug on board. True for any drug. The nicotine is not the culprit when it comes to things like throat cancers, at least as far as we know. We seem to have a competing set of facts here. Teen ecigarette use has gone up you mentioned that a lot of that is transitional. Little bit aboa better understanding of what is new use, what is transitional use. That is an important question a lot of the surveys that we look at our crosssectional. A dipstick or slight in time. We see kids that were born to us using one or two days. Every day and so forth. What we need are studies that track kids over time seeing whether ones that are started out one or two more. Once again, we do not know what the real implications are of these different patterns of use. I want to emphasize i share the concern that kids should not be trying these products and they certainly should not be using them on a frequent basis. The cdc data shows a huge use, over over 2 million students. A fraction of them experiment and other become regular users. If you start smoking today, it is 24 years before you could have lung cancer. Nobody knows what it does to the human log to read in and out. It is an experiment, frankly. We will find out years from now the result. The compound that we put into our food, when you breed them and, for example, the classic example is buttered popcorn. The compounds in the industrial setting cause severe restrictive lung disease on the part of the workers. We are taking a wide variety, taking flavored chemicals, thousands of different ones, cotton candy and cookie centers and then theyre exposed over and over in the lungs. We just do not know yet the longterm results. There is no doubt in my mind that vaping is safer than conventional smoking. That does not mean that it is safe. I now recognize congresswoman for five minutes of question. Thank you so much. I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here. I can sense your frustration. Kind of hearing, you know, some people call it rhetoric to discredit a lot of the things we are pushing forward. I want you to know you have the truth on your side. Be stronger for that. We do not need more studies. We already know the truth here. A few years it dominated the market. Through a targeted advertising campaign. This seems to be a winning strategy. 76 of the of the ecigarette market. It is simply staggering. What i find troubling is the same timeframe the rate of teen nicotine addiction skyrocketed. The cdc found 75 increase in ecigarette use from 20172018. There is no coincidence to me that teens that use ecigarette almost exclusively referred to the activity as dueling. You have studied jewels marketing process since the Company Started in 2015. Should jewell have been aware of the Marketing Campaign appealing to you . Absolutely. Huge teenage fads dont happen by accident. The beatles and beanie babies, products a very clever promotional activities. Jewell engaged ad agencies understand the difference between marketing to baby boomers like newspapers radio broadcast tv who sit all day long on their phones looking at social media. Following the instructions of their clients. Using instagram. Who the heaviest users of instagram were. I do no