SHAPING VAPING ROUGH TRANSCRIPT 3/28/2025
Jim McCarthy: Hi, it's Jim McCarthy with American Vapor Manufacturers, another installment of Shaping Vaping. We're going to have with us today our special recurring and inimitable guest, Joe Gitchell from Pinney & Associates. Joe, are you there?
Joe Gitchell: It's good to be here, Jim.
Jim McCarthy: Well, it's always a delight to have you, and I'm so pleased that we've been able to make this into a recurring, ongoing chat, and we're building a modest but ultra-high quality listenership, or as your favorite band Spinal Tap might say, we have a small audience, but they're highly, highly selective.
Joe Gitchell: Yes, I would say the appeal of the band is becoming more and more selective.
Jim McCarthy: Exactly. Well, there's a lot to talk about. It seems like each week we've been doing these more and more news items, and I don't know what the metaphor is. The avalanche ball keeps getting larger as it grows downhill, but in the last couple of days, the Senate voted to approve the nomination of Dr. Marty McAree to be the new head of FDA, and I imagine he's going to be sworn in probably today or tomorrow. We have a couple things to talk about, but why don't we kick off there because I think that's really the biggest, most impactful news. I should hasten to add he was confirmed by a 56 to 44 vote. He got the support of all 53 Senate Republicans and three Democrats, including Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is bar none the single most hardline anti-vaping member of Congress. What are your thoughts on that news and especially on that little tea leaf in the vote, Joe?
Joe Gitchell: Thank you for that. That's an excellent setup, Jim. Again, Joe Gitchell, Pinney Associates, consultants to Juul Labs and to Philip Morris International on regulatory pathways for non-combustible, non-tobacco nicotine products. I watched Senator Durbin's remarks before the vote, and I would encourage people to do that. He raised several points that were clearly important to him. And in the spirit of the generosity that I would hope that folks might extend to me, I would describe Senator Durbin as unapologetically anti-tobacco. And I think a key, to the extent I understand his thinking, I think a key difference between us is that he does not accept that there is a risk continuum across tobacco and nicotine products. And I would just ask us to indulge in the thought experiment that if we too believe that, that whether it was vaping or pouches or snus or smugglers tobacco, that those were really the same problem as combustible cigarettes, I think we'd be agreeing with Senator Durbin a whole lot. At least, I think I would be. And it makes me wish for the kind of opportunity, the fertile zone of curiosity and reflection that would allow someone to be open to changing their minds, which is quite a challenge. But I think that's critical as part of this, and that's what I believe underpins his posture.
Jim McCarthy: Well, you can imagine his mystification then when the head of FDA tells him about the continuum.
Joe Gitchell: So here's what I presume. I don't know, but what I presume is that this has been an important topic between the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and Senator Durbin for a decade. And I think that should, I think that's an important element too, that even his own civil servants were presumably unable to alter his perspective on this critical topic.
Jim McCarthy: What do you make of the fact that he voted for McAree?
Joe Gitchell: Oh boy.
Jim McCarthy: Oh boy. I don't know. I mean, it seems unlikely, doesn't it?
Joe Gitchell: Uh, so I'm not, I mean, I would love, you're a much closer student of these sorts of things as much as I've lived, as long as I've lived inside the Beltway. For example, I learned on Tuesday that the Hamilton Hotel and the Hamilton Restaurant are not in the same building. So not really that clever. But I went to the Axios, what next event? We can talk about that if we want, anyway. So I don't, I obviously don't know why. My presumption is though that having voted for him affords him more access and opportunity to engage with the commissioner's office. And that he has, he raised prescription drug price transparency as an important issue. I think he raised like food policy and chronic disease. But he also talked about tobacco products in the same way that he has in the past. So I would assume he has a list and he would like to be part of the discourse with the commissioner's office.
Jim McCarthy: Maybe he was impressed when Dr. McAree testified.
Joe Gitchell: I think it's Macari, dude. I'm pretty sure it's Macari. We're going to have to get that right. Forgive me.
Jim McCarthy: Commissioner of food and drug. I wish to learn. I wish to learn. Macari, excuse me. Maybe he was impressed when Dr. Macari testified, quote, there are a few things the FDA can try to do to address the vaping problem. First of all, he said the office of inspections and investigations at FDA has a lot of people with guns and they do enforcement and raids. And we need to collaborate with the department of justice and other areas of law enforcement to try to address this problem. That must have been music to Durbin's ears, I should think.
Joe Gitchell: And again, not being inside his head or his heart, but yes, that would seem to be a consistent.
Jim McCarthy: We don't have to imagine, Joe, we can think we can recall back to when Durbin held his own hearing just a couple of months ago. And yes, CTP director Brian King testified and Durbin recounted with delight about how he had sent his staff out to maraud a small retailer in Silver Spring, Maryland, and then and then browbeat the Department of Justice rep who was testifying about when he Durbin could expect to see the FBI kick the door in of that exact retailer.
Joe Gitchell: Well, and I oh, and here I'm sorry, I'm catching up. I didn't see your note back to me before, Jim of our plan for today. Oh, this should be helpful. So keep talking while I read.
Jim McCarthy: Well, let me give a little preview for our listeners of the topics that we hope to cover today. We're going to kick around FDA leadership and possible changes at the agency a little bit. Then we're going to talk about a really important piece that you flagged, Joe, by Greg Lukianoff at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and Expression and Expression Fire. Wonderful First Amendment free speech organization and his views on how public health writ large has squandered trust and what they can do to repair it. And then I also thought if we have time, we could touch on an op ed piece that our Alli Boughner had this past week about the Puritan roots of the war on vaping, because I think that's a thread that's running through through a lot of it. But as ever, we may meander in other directions, but that's kind of oh, and then oh, last lastly, we might want to talk also about the FDA's a report in the last few days about how their real cost ad campaign has performed.
Joe Gitchell: Yeah, I don't want to I don't feel the need to talk about that. Okay, well, so I think I would, let's start and as you we already have with the confirmation of Dr. McCarrie as Commissioner of Right. And I'm happy to lay out my vision for what I would love to see. And who I would love to see executing it. I think that will not be met with applause. Probably just stony face stares of Joe, are you having a transient ischemic event? What's happening? Um, but let me let me do that, if you'll give me a few moments.
Jim McCarthy: So I started let me preface. If I may, let me preface it by by using as a touchstone, the reform proposals that our friend and colleague, Clive Bates laid out many, many weeks ago that got so much traction in policy world. I've studied it closely. I know you've read it too. I'm just going to tick off briefly the six or excuse me, the seven main reform suggestions that that Clive suggests, and then you tell me where you differ or diverge from that. I think that might be a good way to, you know, get a handle on the big picture. First, Clive suggests that that on product pre-market assessment will be limited to the characteristics of the product itself. Meeting guidance for chemical, electrical and thermal safety and ensuring the packaging and marketing are responsible and not targeted at youth. It would be a quicker way to do it, and it would be in effect, you know, a product standard that could be reasonably met. Number two, product improvements, a fast and efficient product process is necessary, he says, to authorize product improvements, especially if these improve health and safety. Manufacturing, include GMP standards for manufacturers and importers. Surveillance, instead of including surveillance in individual product authorizations, which is wasteful and complete and duplicative, they should conduct surveillance of the whole market, including illicit trade and unauthorized products. Five, population effects, any adverse population effects can be picked up by this post-market surveillance and subject to corrective action, including recall or rescinding authorization. Risk communications, number six, FDA and CDC should provide a range of findings about the absolute and relative risks of nicotine and tobacco products. Simple, actionable, truthful statements aimed at consumers, health pros, media, politicians and industry. And seven, last, enforcement. Illicit trade should be managed primarily by crowding out illegal commerce with lawful products and suppliers. And that is to be, I will add, to be distinguished from the door kicking guys with guns method that was heretofore mentioned. So those are Clive's seven suggestions. Now, I'll pause here and let you tell me where you see it differently.
Joe Gitchell: I'm not sure that I see it differently at all. In fact, you know, Clive might be the hardest working man in rock and roll on this stuff. He certainly is the most trenchant, lucid and actionable. This is quite a prescription for how to move forward. The challenge I think that does deserve a little discussion is forward towards what? And I think that's where the discussion still is in the US of A. I think you and I share largely where the direction of travel needs to be, which is to try to accelerate the trend that consumers are already driving away from combustible products and towards non combustible ones. But as I just mentioned regarding Senator Durbin, that is not forward progress in his book. If anything, that is backwards progress. And that is the tension before we get into what are the almost technical rubber meets the road improvements that would be helpful to enhance the regulatory regime.
Jim McCarthy: Well, I hear that and I'm sure you're quite right that Durbin would prefer a world in which there was no nicotine. But, you know, to borrow a line from your favorite movie, No Country for Old Men, it ain't all waiting on him. You know, that's a choice that individual Americans have the right to make for themselves. And some of them might want to do use nicotine recreationally or for focus or to quit smoking or simply because they wish to or for other reasons, unbeknownst to us. And that's OK. You know, Dick Durbin is not the czar and he can he's welcome to his view. But I think there's a principle at stake here, a very important one, which is that Americans have the right to take part in their own health destiny and in there and the choices they make about what risks they're going to take in their own lives and what products they're going to use for their own recreation. And what's more, Joe, I think, you know, at a certain point, we have to recognize what you pointed out a moment ago about the you know, that the marketplace is making these decisions. There are, you know, approaching 20 million Americans who are using vaping products, most of them in a successful effort to quit smoking cigarettes. So, I mean, I don't doubt, you know, that's no small that's no small thing. We can't just wave that away because Dick Durbin's, you know, been out of shape.
Joe Gitchell: I would agree with you, but I'm going to put a little challenge back towards you, as you know, rumor has it you you've studied communication. Your work has been in arenas where tensions run high. Polarization is extreme. Not a lot of shared truth to build from. Right. I'm going to task you to give me the talking points if I were going to go in to try to persuade Senator Durbin that an approach that accepted that nicotine products are something that Americans choose to use and that because of his vision, Congress gave FDA the ability to create a market that has radically less public health harm associated with that behavior. Well, yeah. But these are true. I haven't checked. I assume he was a sponsor on the bill. I don't know if he was in the signing ceremony. I would assume so. He presumably wants it to succeed as much as anyone. And how to help him realize that his posture of not accepting the absolute foundation of product regulation that FDA is pursuing, how that stands in the way of CTP becoming a successful contributor to public health, as opposed to a valuable learning lesson to others.
Jim McCarthy: That's a fair challenge, Joe, and a steep one, too. The first thing I'd grapple with as a comm strategist is how to persuade someone who is so deeply committed to a position that has remained utterly inflexible and hardline for so long. I think what I would do if I had my way is call on what I think has been, in the time I've been involved in this issue, the single most compelling form of communication, the most persuasive element, which is individual adult smokers speaking firsthand about their experience.
Joe Gitchell: I love it. I love it. So how many...
Jim McCarthy: Sorry, just to finish the thought, there's a tweet this week. Our good friend Nick Green, who's the most preeminent vape advocate on YouTube, among other platforms, has a great clip that's running this week. He's trying to persuade YouTube to reverse his decision to demonetize his account, which is just appalling. But to do so, his viewers and listeners sent in to him testimonials about how Nick's show had helped them quit cigarettes, and he edited them into short little two, three second clips and ran them in a sequence. And there are people from all over the country, a complete cross section of American life, ordinary people, men, women, younger, older, of all races and backgrounds, saying this show helped me quit cigarettes with vaping. So if I had my way, I would find a long list of those folks from the state of Illinois, and I would walk them in to Senator Durbin's office, like the players did in Rudy when they laid down their jerseys. And I would have them walk up to his desk holding the FDA documents on the continuum of risk, lay that on the table, and tell him how they quit smoking and what flavor they used.
Joe Gitchell: Jim, there's a reason why you're still gainfully employed. Because I love, love, love that. I have mused in the past that imagine if Senator Durbin's first encounter with vaping instead of what it must have been, was instead a best friend from kindergarten, who calls him and says, whatever his the name that you're allowed to call Senator Durbin, if you've known him for 70 years, right, and says, you'll never believe it, I have finally stopped smoking. And if that person would have said, I have tried everything. This finally did it. Watermelon. It's watermelon. Yeah, yeah. How different would the arc of all of this be? Because, you know, we like to think we're rational reasoning creatures. We are feeling creatures, and then we come up with the reasons to support our feelings. And, you know, we can't, we don't have a time machine. But I love that idea. And I don't know that it's been tried and failed. But I think it's a wonderful idea. And I, my basic point is this topic, nicotine and health is not inherently a partisan issue. It easily becomes a partisan issue. It does not, like nicotine and nicotinic receptors don't know them, left coded, right coded, whatever. They just know, open some channels, let whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah. So we, I believe we will make much better, more rapid progress when this exits the partisan fray and becomes a society wide, hey, let's end smoking.
Jim McCarthy: Let's talk about that for a second. I mean, I've been reflecting on that in the last couple of weeks, because I know you often touch on this notion that we're stuck in these tribal mindsets and that, you know, we have, we have, you know, biases that we're, we suffer from confirmation bias and that we need to move out of our tribes. And I've really tried to think hard about that. And I, I want to, I want to make a case if I may, that the tobacco harm reduction, you know, movement, if I could call it that, that we're a part of, is not as tribal as it might seem. I mean, we've got...
Joe Gitchell: Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Like I usually criticize you for interrupting me, but so wait, sorry. Please proceed. No, no, no, no, no. Finish your thought. I apologize.
Jim McCarthy: No, that's okay. That's okay. I, I, you know, I, I've been thinking about how, how wide ranging our, our side of it is and how much we have tried to compromise and dialogue. I mean, just consider we've got, we've got, you know, liberals, progressives, conservatives, libertarians. I mean, you think about some of the leading lights in our, in our effort, like, I don't know, you could put Cliff Douglas, Guy Bentley, and Grover Norquist in a room. And I doubt you could, you spent all day trying to find an issue that all three of them agreed on. And they were all important parts of the tobacco harm reduction movement. And think about, I mean, there's plenty of examples galore of, I mean, you and I right here on this talk show, you know, you and I have a very different, you know, political, social outlook on American politics. But, you know, on this issue, we see mostly eye to eye. We're certainly able to have an open dialogue about it. That's the other point is that we've, you know, our group has, I think, has tried to meet in the middle, tried to be accommodating. AVM, for example, helped push for the passage of the enactment of the 21 and under age restriction. You know, we participate wholeheartedly in preventing youth access, which is no small thing, by the way. There's lots of people in the THR movement who don't see it that way. You know, our members take expensive part in the PMTA process in an effort to, you know, comply with the law and go through that process. Our movement takes part, as you well know, in the academic literature and tries to comment and engage with other people that are studying the topic and constantly offer dialogue. And this show itself, as you know, we have standing invite for any counterparties or people from the from the tobacco control side. We'd love nothing more than to have them on for a chat. And I should add, too, when when leading figures leave the tobacco control movement and leave that the other move from the other side in our direction, there's no recrimination or public shaming. I mean, think about Dave Dobbins or Matt Holman or lots of other examples that no one no one's, you know, brow beating them about their, you know, rough and rowdy past. So so I would say those are all those are all examples of how our THR movement are not behaving in the kind of blinker tribal way that you warn about.
Joe Gitchell: And I, I agree with you. And I think you've also made an elegant and clear support for my nouns versus verbs kind of point from last week about how can we see people as people who take actions as opposed to actors who play a role no matter what situation they're in and they will always remain in that in that role. And that ties if we want to get into leadership at CTP, we can talk about that. But I think the challenge is that the I'm oversimplifying when I'm saying, oh, we just need to, you know, de-partisanize the nicotine issue. Yes. And we need to somehow restore or create a nicotine science regulation policy environment where dissent and viewpoint diversity are sought and protected as opposed to indications of betrayal and prompts for exclusion. And that's a real tension. And I think so I would say what I'm really wishing for is in the U.S. political context to de-partisanize this issue, but also within the tobacco control research and advocacy and policy community to gain back this willingness to discuss and debate and to essentially I've been referring to it as can we become less wrong together. And, you know, it's a quote attributed to Voltaire that my buddy Ted Kyle introduced me to a long time ago. Cherish those who seek the truth, doubt those who have found it. We need to somehow hold those values of intellectual humility and openness to discourse and debate as sacred things as opposed to problems to be suppressed.
Jim McCarthy: Well, I love the vision, Joe, and I admire as ever your generous optimism about that. I would say, however, that, you know, all the folks that I was just talking about have been, you know, trying to do that for the last 10 years or more. And my own shin-kicking example notwithstanding, most of those people have been trying to do it in exactly the way you describe. And I am at a loss to see that any of the major institutions on tobacco control side or their political allies have moved one iota in our direction.
Joe Gitchell: And I guess the rub is that's our world. That's our challenge. And I'm just stuck with I can't think of an alternative that is not worse than what we're trying to do. And that ladders all the way up to how do we function as a 330 some million people trying to share the same country and make decisions and confront trade-offs together as fairly and effectively as possible.
Jim McCarthy: Let's explore this just a little bit. If you'll indulge me, you know, a little deeper dive on this. You know, I've been thinking a lot also this week about, we touched on, Professor Jonathan Foulds has an excellent piece in MSNBC this week, We'll put that in the thread. And there are a lot of other good examples of that. And I was sort of grappling, and you and I were in our Twitter thread about how to look at that piece. And, you know, I offered I want to emphasize minor, small quibble. I thought it was an excellent piece. And my regard for Dr. Foulds is as high as can be. So I did that in the spirit of colloquy. But I've been reflecting on this, Joe, and I keep thinking that so much of what we're talking about from the communications and the advocacy from THR leadership, the institutions, like, I don't know, you could...I mean, I don't want to name any names, but Dr. Foulds' piece made me think of it. And I guess what I'm getting at is all of that advocacy seems to me to be discussed in this kind of detached, academic way with, you know, clinical, sterile analysis, removed from the problem, looking at it from afar, as if you were, you know, examining something under a microscope. And there's no...you know, I have, and I know a lot of the people that are members of AVM and a lot of the ordinary rank and file vapors, if you want to put it that way, have deep passion about this issue. They see the human cost. They know what it means in their own lives, both to have quit smoking and also to see, you know, other people get deprived of it. And just this week, I was trying to buy vaping products for myself. I'm in New York state, and I can't do it. Like, even your friends at Juul, like, I use Juul as part of my rotation. I can't buy Juul pods in this state. And you can't get them online at any rate. And so, you know, you can just imagine the passion. And yes, sometimes the anger people feel. And I got to tell you, I think when ordinary vapors and ordinary Americans see the issue being discussed in this, you know, I'm trying to find the right adjective, this theoretical, clinical, you know, ivory tower way, it makes us angry. There's...this is serious as a heart attack, like, not even figuratively, literally. And there should be some passion here, for crying out loud.
Joe Gitchell: So, I'm not going to disagree. I'm going to then say what's the...if we're...we are agreeing that what we want to have happen is to get enough of the range of viewpoints in the same room to actually talk to each other like human beings. And when I say that, for the avoidance of doubt, that includes, you know, the academic research community, that includes policymakers, and that includes the consumers of these products. And I think, ideally, it includes the manufacturers of these products. And that sentence that I just finished is heresy right now. And the tension is, but I don't see another way that will work. And I'd love to be persuaded otherwise, because it's going to be so hard to make that happen. But I also don't see another way. And I do believe, and this I suffer from profound optimism bias, that were that to happen, with the right mix of, you know, lighting and music and maybe appropriate, you know, other lubricating contributions, that it would happen that so many people, you know, going back to Monica Guzman's point, that the people who are underrepresented in your real life are overrepresented in your imagination. If people got to create real relationships with people who see the world differently, they might realize the differences aren't that big. And I'm going to cling to that because there's nothing else available.
Jim McCarthy: But maybe there's an example. I mean, Joe, the alternative seems pretty straightforward to me, which is political change. I mean, the same way that every civil rights victory of the last 75 years was achieved by denouncing and replacing these outdated, harmful, corrosive views and leaders. And that's happening, is it not, at every single federal agency in Washington? I mean, the new EPA director is absolutely sweeping the decks of the personnel and the policies at that agency. You can differ about whether they're on the right track or not, but there's no doubt at all that he's making substantive change by, you know, replacing those people and securing a new policy course.
Joe Gitchell: And all true. And I would just make my a clear posture. And I haven't done a systematic analysis because presumably I have better things to do. But what I long for is what I do believe many folks in leadership, particularly it seems Dr. Bhattacharya at NIH, and I believe Dr. McCarrie as well, are big fans of dissent and viewpoint diversity and making sure that a room of decision makers is not a room of already decided. And that's what I would long to see. My concern is seeing things that look a lot more like purges because that's not viewpoint diversity. That's replacing one bubble with another bubble. And as comfortable as we can be within bubbles, we are not going to be able to we're not going to be able to converge on truth and best policy and best programs unless we have that range of perspectives all working together.
Jim McCarthy: Well, let me ask you, in the Kennedy administration, John F. Kennedy administration, when the Department of Justice, you know, was taken over by civil rights champions and they, you know, enforced civil rights laws in the South, were they in a bubble?
Joe Gitchell: Well, I am going to plead enough ignorance because I haven't read enough about that specific thing. Is the point that they did purge the Department of Justice?
Jim McCarthy: Yes. Yeah, they steered a new policy course and they...
Joe Gitchell: Well, they're steering a new policy course, which is what elections have consequences.
Jim McCarthy: Right.
Joe Gitchell: And then there's our policy is that we can't trust any of these deep state bastards that are here. So if we're going to actually make any progress on our policy, personnel is policy and you personnel are out. Right, right. And this could be my squishiness, my progressive left leanings, the thought of discarding people who actually know so much about what the agencies are able to do, what they're not able to do, and conclude that because they were part of prior administrations, that they are the enemy. That is, if it's not the peak of foolishness, it is, you're starting to need oxygen to get that far. I mean, I made the point just on the Twitter a little bit ago that there's, I called it the public service availability heuristic asymmetry. And the point is availability heuristic is the way we get, one of the ways we get through life, which is we recall things, some things more easily than others. So vape pen explodes in user's mouth. Is much easier to remember than cigarette house fire. And that's just because one is new and we have evolved to attend to stuff that's new. So government, mostly we hear about what government does in its absence or failure. And we seldom get heralded of the successes. And so many of the successes are the absence of something bad happening, whether that's national security or it's public health. If public health is working, you don't know that it's working because it's working. Well, Joe, but that leads to a totally biased understanding of what good is government. So I guess that's a long way of saying this is, I don't know, it's a long way of saying that I would just want the idea of viewpoint diversity to be shaping the personnel decisions, not loyalty litmus tests.
Jim McCarthy: Well, I've got an idea. And it's one we found, I think, some common cause on a moment ago. I'm not envisioning putting the first 12 people at local bar at the head of the FDA. What if we had, as the head of the FDA, Cliff Douglas, and the new head of the Office of Science is Joe Gitchell, and the head of communications is Guy Bentley, and the pencil-sharpening intern is Jim McCarthy. I mean, that viewpoint diversity, as we just talked about, it's a wide range. And how about a new special advisor, Clive Bates? I mean, that is as wide a range of an ideological spectrum as you can get, people coming from vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints. I mean, does that not meet the standard of having a lot of different ideas in the room?
Joe Gitchell: I think it would meet that standard, though it doesn't really represent the kind of incumbent public health tobacco control standpoint. And you could rightly say, well, Joe, that was the point of the purge. But let me make a different argument. This goes back to nouns and verbs and what we would wish for. My wish, and I'm building from what happened in the waning days of the Biden administration with FDA issuing the very low nicotine product standard and authorizing Zin within 24 hours of each other. And I look at that as those are verbs that happened. And then the question is, I want more of those kinds of verbs, especially the latter one. And who do I want to do that? I want the person to do that, to lead that effort, who is experienced enough to know how to make the trains run, and who would bring credibility with so many of the people out in the country who also have real questions or real doubts about the continuum of risk and. Who meets those criteria is the current incumbent, not any of the other people winning.
Jim McCarthy: Maybe that's where maybe that's a good place to pivot to the viewpoint diversity on that you flagged this week from Greg Lukianoff. I will set aside, if you'll indulge me, I'll set aside the complaints that so many staffers at Center for Tobacco Products made to the Reagan-Udall Foundation about the lack of diversity.
Joe Gitchell: But it's nouns and verbs.
Jim McCarthy: I don't, I still don't grasp the complaint there. Help me understand how that's out of bounds.
Joe Gitchell: Okay, what I'm saying there is this. You would accept that people can grow, can change, that they can invest in more training, right? They can get better at a skill. They can have new insights. We accept that. People are not locked into a viewpoint. They're not locked into a posture. Doesn't mean that it's easy to change, but you accept that it's possible to change. And if anything, someone who does that change brings the added credibility of, I used to think the way you do now too. Let me walk you through how my thinking has evolved and why I think you should join me on this journey. And the, what I read, interpret from those actions, particularly the ZIN authorization, is that this is a CTP that is trying to advance the comprehensive plan, which is based entirely on the continuum of risk and is about ending smoking as quickly as possible and creating a regulated environment for non-combustible nicotine products that meet consumer demand. And I don't think it's that complicated. Like, I don't think we need someone as smart as Clive Bates to shape how to make that happens. It'd be great, but I don't think we need it.
Jim McCarthy: Well, I'm still, I'm still puzzled though. I mean, you know, you said a moment ago that you think more viewpoint diversity would be a good thing within CTP and I wholeheartedly concur. And we know from what staffers there say, that there isn't much of that happening at all. In fact, if you do speak up in dissent, you're going to be punished. Why is it out of bounds to point that out?
Joe Gitchell: It's totally fair. That was from a report issued at the end of 2022. And I'm pivoting from a, what I think was inflection point in January of 2025. And you're right to say, but look at the stuff that's happened before then. And I'm not going to disagree with you. I'm just going to say, but look at what happened in January of 2025. Does that not suggest a change? And if don't, we want CTP to be doing things like authorizing more products, creating a more viable pathway for novel non-combustible products to enter the marketplace. So consumers can rely upon them. Retailers can feel comfortable and confident in stocking them. And we expand from there.
Jim McCarthy: Well, let me, since we're touching a lot on Clive Bates, let me read you, he grapples with this a little bit in the policy prescriptions that we are touching on. Again, I'll put a link in the thread, but let me just quote one short passage here, talking about that, those kinds of the approvals that you're pointing to. He says, although the FDA recently authorized one menthol variety vaping product, this was justified using a standard that few other companies could meet. It may have been a tactical concession to further the FDA's defenses in contentious litigation, rather than the opening of a viable path to a market for flavored products.
Joe Gitchell: A hundred percent agree. And let me be very clear. I'm not suggesting that the leadership and direction of CTP is absolutely perfectly calibrated and wonderful, and we should never look at it again. I am saying that granting the current people with a brand new commissioner some time to demonstrate that I'm either right or wrong. And I would much prefer to be right, shucker, but I'm willing to be wrong and I'll even put a bet on it. I'm good on my bets. I'm usually an easy mark, so happy to do it now. But if I'm right, then by, you know, by Thanksgiving, the nicotine marketplace for non-combustible products and the information environment about relative risk could look really different. And I'd love to see that happen with people who I think would have so much more credibility with the people who are currently not seeing things the same way that we are. I would too.
Jim McCarthy: And again, let me offer a pivot to something you raised this week about this exact shift or what could happen. And that was this piece by Greg Lukianoff about how public health institutions had such a tough time shooting straight in that way and what they could do about it. You flagged it, and I've got a few thoughts about how it overlaps with our THR dilemma, but why don't you tell me what appealed to you about that piece?
Joe Gitchell: Well, what appealed to me about that, and this is the one, the misinformation crisis isn't about truth, it's about trust. And I would commend it to people. And I think the heart of this is embracing that our modern knowledge generation approach, science, is about becoming less wrong in a systematic way. And that means starting from the premise that you're wrong. And how do you narrow the subjects about which you are wrong? And when people, for social reasons, for political reasons, for any number of reasons, deviate and slide into, well, we're pretty sure we know best, and we need to make sure we speak with one voice, and we need to make sure that if people are disagreeing with us, that important shapers of public opinion understand that those people are crazy. That's a slippery slope, no matter who is doing it. And there is an important distinction whether it's actually the power of the government that is behind that closure of discourse versus a culture or social pressure. But make no mistake, social pressure is powerful stuff. So that's, I think, the heart of this. How can entities, organizations, voices that we should be able to rely upon, how do they gain back some of the trust that they have lost? And I have thoughts about that. I think reading this post is a very good way to kind of start to think about that.
Jim McCarthy: Yeah. And I think I would hasten to add, you know, Lukianoff really methodically goes through all the ways in which, you know, leadership at public health institutions like CDC and NIH just, I mean, blew through one ethical stop sign after another and without any apparent contrition or accountability, and that the trust in those institutions is now, you know, severely impaired. And I think that's the same kind of dynamic that's been happening in our world of nicotine and tobacco policy.
Joe Gitchell: A hundred percent.
Jim McCarthy: I mean, we've got a thread which I'll put in the chat. We're putting all of these links beneath the link for this Twitter spaces. But I took the liberty of ghostwriting a few paragraphs to illustrate just how easy it would be to mirror examples from our world into what Lukianoff is arguing. Go ahead, yeah.
Joe Gitchell: No, I, you know, this is starting to get boring, Jim, because I'm agreeing with you. I completely agree. And where we might differ is, and this, your sacred value being liberty, I'm a big fan of liberty, but it's not, I don't know, it's not my top sacred value, right? I think you look at federal government agencies with authority and resources with more skepticism inherently than I do. So I think you have, I would assume you have a little more mixed emotion about them restoring their credibility. I would counter that with, but if they restore their credibility by applying the kind of established approaches to quality, reliable knowledge generation, which is based on intellectual humility and welcome dissent and viewpoint diversity, I think you'd be a lot more comfortable trusting a CDC that walked that talk.
Jim McCarthy: I guess I'll have to, I guess I'll have to reflect on that.
Joe Gitchell: Yeah, you're like, I'd love to see it to be able to.
Jim McCarthy: You're describing a magical world that I've only read about in J.R.R. Tolkien. I mean, at a certain point, you know, the bartender's got to take the keys away from the guy, you know, that's kind of, not enough coffee, but no amount of coffee is going to get the car home.
Joe Gitchell: Well, yeah, okay. But we are entitled to a very good functioning government for crying out loud. So I'm not prepared to like settle. And I assume you would agree. So that doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy or quick, but I want awesome government to deal with collective action problems, to deal with trade-offs that have to be made at a societal level. And we have a lot of amazing underpinnings to do that.
Jim McCarthy: This is the Hamilton versus Jefferson debate. Why don't you explain to our listeners what you and I've been, the framework you and I've been thinking about this week.
Joe Gitchell: So this was spurred by listening to comedian Jeff Maurer interview Mark Dunkelman, a like public policy thinker who has just written a book about why nothing works anymore. And particularly focused around housing development and why we have a housing crisis, that sort of jazz. And the tension being, if you have a societal wide problem, we need more affordable housing. The tension is, do you embrace a Hamiltonian mindset, which is we need to push power up more centrally to allow centralized decision-making resource deployment, or is the problem better met by pushing power down and out into the citizenry and enable them to have that sort of influence? And that's one of the, you know, one way I think Eric Liu makes the point that let's not forget America is an argument. It's not, was an argument or used to be. The whole idea of America is an argument. And if you accept it that way, you know, it's never going to be finished, but oh my gosh, what amazing things we can accomplish if we commit to actually better argument. Oh, that reminds me, I do want to put in another link. So that's, it's just an interesting way. And I think it's fascinating since so much of the kind of last 40 years of tobacco control has been that tension. You have the kind of California's clean indoor air 1970s movement, which is hard Jeffersonian. Yeah. We want to go municipality, county. That's the way to create the kind of change that we seek versus a, hey, let's bestow a lot of power in the food and drug administration to regulate the tobacco nicotine market. That is hard Hamiltonian. And there's a lot of tension within the tobacco control community between people who, who work there in those viewpoints. Yeah. Not really resolved. So I really enjoyed that podcast in terms of thinking about not just how do we get to housing abundance, but wow, this really could be a useful lens to analyze how we deal with nicotine policy. And what was going through my mind is our combustible products, more of a Hamiltonian problem, whereas non-combustible products might be more Jeffersonian as what's needed. And can the same regulatory agency like foster that?
Jim McCarthy: Well, let me, let me, let me offer a thought maybe to the, I don't know, to the right of Jefferson on this Joe, which is, you know, we keep talking about which direction the power ought to go and where, how do we bestow it and how do we structure it, structure all this? What, why don't we, why don't we, what, what if we, what if we were to, you know, to let freedom ring? I mean, all of the innovations that have happened in the last 15 years in vaping didn't come from some government bureau. No one at the FDA helped Hanlick develop the, you know, a marketable device, you know, all of the, of the different flavors and e-liquids and devices that our friend, Nick Green reviews, which are getting better and more effective and easier to use and more appealing on an almost quarterly basis. None of that's being done at the instruction or guidance from any federal bureaucrat or any think tank or policy shop that's happening in the marketplace. It's being driven by consumer demand. And it's, it's what enables it is not bestowing power on anybody, but instead getting people getting, you know, restrictions and regulations out of the way so that ordinary people can exercise their own choices and take charge of their own lives and, and trade, you know, sell and buy products from one another, you know, on a voluntary basis. I mean, is that, is that such a dystopian world? I mean, all of the benefits we're talking about, I mean, all the studies that were, that we talked about a moment ago that I think are a little too antiseptic in their tone are all describing a world that was made possible by small and medium-sized businesses and innovators who made those products better over 10 plus years in the face of enormous sleet, hail, and bayonet headwinds.
Joe Gitchell: So I, I actually think you've just put a very artful way of fleshing out my proposal, which is non-combustible products are a, our starting premise should be Jeffersonian, which means that a kind of, it's like what Clive laid out with product standards and what an innovation pathway could really look like, but that something like combustible products may demand a Hamiltonian approach to realize the welfare benefits as quickly as possible.
Jim McCarthy: I mean, I guess I'd see that as a place of compromise. I mean, you know, in, in, in the, in the wingnut world that I would create, Americans will be free to use whatever products they wish. I mean, the government can give them guidance or advice if they wanted to, but at the end of the day, you know.
Joe Gitchell: They're grownups. They get to decide.
Jim McCarthy: Yeah. Yeah. Men froze at Valley Forge so that we could live as free people. That's what I would create, but I'd be willing to compromise with you, Joe. Okay.
Joe Gitchell: Okay. I love it. I love it.
Jim McCarthy: Here's my compromise. CTP and FDA can, can, can do as they do as they wish to control the combustible tobacco market. And, and I'll, I'll, I'll concede to you that that product is so deadly lethal and, you know, all the other, all the other pejoratives that it demands the government intervention. I'll, I'll meet you halfway in the meantime, leave the vape shops alone.
Joe Gitchell: Well, leave them alone or create a regulatory framework that allows them to continue to do the kind of innovation and customer service and being pillars of the community that they once were able to do.
Jim McCarthy: Mark, Mark, our friend, Mark's list in the upper peninsula of Michigan got no, got no advice or help or assistance or encouragement of any kind from governor Whitmer or the FDA, quite the opposite. They did all they could to stomp his business out of existence. He was perfectly capable of being an upstanding community leader.
Joe Gitchell: No, but to be clear, I'm not suggesting that that's been the, that we've got that. I'm saying that needs to be the goal. And that's what we need to realize. Not that, Oh, everything was great. It's just too bad that Mark wasn't able to keep his business. No, that's a tragedy. But that's because the regulatory burden, the regulatory regime was not appropriate. And that's why, you know, Clive's written the, the, the prescription.
Jim McCarthy: Well, yes, but, but notice left to his own devices. Mark did all the things you wish for. He was a responsible member of the community who helped people smoke cigarettes by introducing more innovative products and was respected by everyone in, in, and did enormous goodness community and earned their, and earned their respect. And yet when regulators came in, it all went sideways South. And now those same people are either back on cigarettes or off to black marketeers who couldn't give a good goddamn what the FDA thinks.
Joe Gitchell: So. And, and completely agree. And this goes to the, uh, I mean, We, the reality is not everybody is Mark, right? And is that, is that the way you're going to have a established nationwide marketplace is just say, as long as you're willing to be as thoughtful and considerate and careful as Mark's list, then, or, you know, or Skip Murray, you can go into business.
Jim McCarthy: People in those communities had the opportunity when, when Skip and Mark had their shops to also buy from the illicit market and, and they, you know, they, Mark and, and, and Skip and many others like them earned the trust of those communities and those customers and, you know, the police chief and the mayors and, and all, and all the rest by being upstanding, responsible retailers. And given the choice, yes, I think ordinary Americans, as the people in the approved with their action will choose to go to Mark's shop and not the guy in the white van in the parking lot. It's only when the regulators that you have, you know, are, are, are, are suggesting, you know, arguing for get, get in the way that all those problems result. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's this again, it's Hamilton, Hamilton and Jefferson. We should, we should meet on the, we should meet on the banks of the Weehawken and Weehawken, New Jersey with pistols at dawn, because I can see why those guys got into duels. It's like, you're arguing, you're arguing for, for a policy prescription. That's going to, that's going to cause the very problems you wish to avoid.
Joe Gitchell: And so my weasel on this, and I, you, I'm, I'm prepared to largely concede, but not entirely because I don't think the regulatory framework that I have in mind that Clive has laid out as an example, that that's even been tried. And so what I would wish for is if everyone has the appropriate appreciation of what the benefits and opportunities are of the kind of impact that Mark shop skip shop could have that the regulation is calibrated to do not mess with this. This is special sauce. That's a mandatory, improve the confidence in these products, improve the reliability, the quality, but do not mess with this special sauce. Maybe that's not possible. I don't know, but I certainly know it hasn't been tried. And I think the way we get it to be tried is to get more people in positions of authority to embrace the continuum of risk and ask FDA to move faster on implementing policies and programs consistent with it.
Jim McCarthy: Yes. And here's my, here's my Guzmanian compromise for you. I, I will, I will set, I will set aside my, my, my, my wingnut Samuel Adams fanaticism and say that if it were, if it were a light touch regulatory system, like we have for, let's say beer, that would be acceptable. I mean, there's a reason that there's no counterfeit Budweiser and that's because it exists in a regulatory structure, I think with the kind of light touch that you're describing. So I can see getting, I could see living in that sort of world and, you know, and biting my, biting my tongue and saying a rosary for the poor men that died at Valley Forge.
Joe Gitchell: Well, that's a, it's a, uh, shall we conclude on that moment of, of camaraderie and consensus?
Jim McCarthy: We, we, we shall, we'll have to save, um, we'll have to save Ali's op-ed for next week, but we'll put that in the thread too. And I, cause I think that's important. So, you know, we were talking about Jefferson and Hamilton and I, I'm convinced that the hostility to vaping products and nicotine generally has a, is not new, but instead has a much deeper history in the Puritan streak in American life. And, uh, that has exhibited itself, you know, for many generations, all, you could even argue as Ali does back to the Mayflower. And I think we have to grapple with that because, you know, when you're talking about how do we persuade people, you know, like Senator Durbin or other hardliners to a more, you know, enlightened view, it's more than just reason that's happening. There's a deep instinctive streak.
Joe Gitchell: I mean, well, is it, is it not unlike a streak of, um, a devotion to liberty and the ability of individuals to chart their own destiny?
Jim McCarthy: Well, yeah. I mean, that's a philosophical, that's a philosophical commitment too. And I guess the distinction I would offer is that, is that you're right. Well, no, not, no, that, that I accept, that I accept the, I accept the harms and the trade-offs that come with my view and, you know, in a world of maximal freedom, people are, a lot of people are going to do things that I don't like, and it's also going to lead to, you know, harms. And you could even argue that it's not the most efficient way to, you know, run a society if you want to put it that way. But it has a, it has a kind of platonic value. Individuals, I think, and yes, this is a philosophical commitment, but I think we have a human right, a, some people would say a God-given right to control our own lives. And that is like, I don't know, that's important. I think that's, that's important. And I see the, I see the trade-offs in order to live in that kind of world. Whereas the Puritans are, they think that they're on, you know, on a path to heaven and see no downsides at all.
Joe Gitchell: Well, that may, we should think about who might be a good guest on, on that banger.
Jim McCarthy: I'm going to, well, you, you suggested so many good guests that we've got upcoming and we've got a, we've got a wonderful wishlist, which includes a lot of luminaries, but maybe, maybe I'll put some of my fellow wingnuts in there who can help us, help us plumb the depths of liberty.
Joe Gitchell: I love the viewpoint diversity. And, and Jim, I'm happy to continue the discussion about how we get the right people to darken Senator Durbin's door, because goodness, that would, I think, you know, I'd love to fail at that because I think there's a chance that we wouldn't fail.
Jim McCarthy: All right. Well, I'll give you just one more minute, because I want to tell you about a wild idea I have that maybe CounterPoint Strategies and Pinney and Associates can team up on. The great Kurt Yeo, who's a THR advocate in South Africa, did a study last year, sort of a do-it-yourself kind of study in which, in which he found several dozen smokers, gave them vape, vape starter kits, and then just tracked them and followed up with them and found that I think it was well more than 50% of them had, had quit cigarettes after six months, not peer reviewed, didn't appear in JAMA, but he did it in the real world and the results were startling. Well, guess what? On Capitol Hill at the U.S. Capitol building and the six office buildings for the Senate and the House, outside every exit are little smoking stations where congressional staffers go every day, all day long to smoke cigarettes, no matter what the weather or the temperature or anything. And I, my idea is we could do a project and hand out vape starter kits to a select set, let's call it, I don't know, 50 or 100 congressional staffers, follow them over the six months and see how many of them quit smoking. And I'm confident we'd see results similar to Kurt Yeo's and that would be a gigantic banner PR, you know, news cycle.
Joe Gitchell: Happy to, happy to muse more on that, Jim.
Jim McCarthy: All right. Well, we'll leave it there, folks. Thanks again for joining us. The, we'll put further links and Joe, let's keep our convo going as always in the thread beneath the, the Shaping Vaping link. And we'll be back this same time next week, if you can make it, Joe.
Joe Gitchell: That's the plan.
Jim McCarthy: All right. Thanks. It's Jim McCarthy with American Vapor Manufacturers. Our guest has been Joe Gitchell, Pinney Associates. Thanks as always for joining us and we'll talk again soon.
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