Matt Culley on the Culture, Business & Politics of E-Cigarettes

type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today's subject and guest is a return to the issue of e cigarettes and vaping, and as many of you know, you know, when I stopped running drug policy lines four years ago, probably the issue that most engaged me was the fight over e cigarettes and jeweling and vaping and tobacco harm reduction. And one of the reasons was, you know, so much of it reminded me about what I'm interested in drug positive reform.

Back in the late eighties, it seemed like the science and the evidence we're all headed one way, but the politicians and the media and public opinion or all ahead of the other way. And so I began to delve into this area, and one of the people I learned a lot from is my guest today, Matt Culley. He's played an important role in the vape world, the vape shop owner world. He's got a web channel which evaluates different vaping devices, which I think is the most popular

one in the world. And he's also been involved to some extent in vaping activism. So Matt, welcome to Psychoactive and thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having me then. I really appreciate it. You know, I was thinking, I think the way we met was a little over two years ago. I had been on somebody else's podcast talking about this. You heard it, and you reached out to me and said, you know, let's talk, And so I gave you a call and I had to tell you.

I mean, I was scribbling notes like crazy because what I needed to understand first and foremost was how did this whole e cigarette vaping thing evolved. Big Tobacco was definitely not the pioneers and all this. Yeah, so the East sigarette was originally created by a guy named Han Lick in China, and there is some other evidence that, like Big Tobacco, companies might have been dabbling with some of this technology in the seventies and eighties, but they

never brought a product to market. But anyway, han Legs dad died from lung cancer and so that was his motivation. He was also a smoker. The whole idea behind this, and I think most of our listeners know this now, is that nicotine itself is not all that dangerous to drug. It closes dependence, but it doesn't cause cancer. Got relatively low association with other heart diseases and things like that.

Although some modest reason for concern would make cigarettes so dangerous is the combustion, right, It's consuming nicotine in a combustible form, and that basically what the sigarettes are doing is is a allowing people to consume nicotine in a form that's not burning, it's not combusting, that's not putting all these tars and other crap in your lungs. And it has dramatically fewer carcinogenic ingredients, you know, not zero,

but dramatically fewer carcin genic ingredients than does cigarettes. You know, it was kind of a slow thing where it was a really niche internet, grassroots thing where some of these devices started coming out of China. Most of them worked

very good, they didn't perform well whatsoever. And so a group of people in the US and in the EU kind of started taking them up and then modding different parts of them to make them better, creating a lot of their own e liquid flavors that they thought were better than the ones, you know, coming out of China. And and it really started as a small niche thing on forums on the internet. But the Chinese are the

ones who keep making them. So there's this like interplay between the people in the US and EU on the one hand, and then the folks in China who are making it or are people starting to really make it in a big way in the U s as well. Now, I mean the mass produced products have always been made in China. Even you know jewels and and you know big tobaccos products, they're they're having those manufactured in China. There.

Over the years, there have been smaller manufacturers in Europe and in the US that usually make more of the advanced types of products, something more niche. You know what's called rebuildable atomizers where you can build your own coils and wicking in them, and they make some of their own mechanical mods they're called, but majority of the products that you see out in the wild today are are manufactured in China. And so what were your entry into

all this? Well, the first time I ever tried on EAT, it was actually probably Owned nine where there was this group of people. I think they were traveling because I live in Montana. They were here in the summer and they were in a bar and walking around trying to get people to try these things called X and they had this little card that explained what it was. I took a puff off of it and never you know,

thought about it again. But then in two thousand and twelve, I got oral cancer squam cell carcinoma, and um, you know, I can't one say that it was from smoking, but it was right where I laid the cigarette on my lip and I don't have HPV, so like the only reason for a thirty year old to get something like that is probably from cigarettes. So after trying to uh

quit cold turkey multiple times. Once I had the operation on the cancer, um, Vanessa, my fiance bought me an eastig from the gas station, and that you know, got me googling and doing more and more research, and I went down the rabbit hole and got on all the forums and and watched all the YouTube videos at the time, and uh, you know, ever since then, I've I've basically been stuck in this rabbit hole. And back in that day, I mean, Jewel doesn't come around until or something like that.

So back then you said, there were these kind of what they called signalized or something that we're kind of not very effective devices. But then these new things began to come along. Like you said, use the word mods, what exactly is going on there? Yeah, you had signal likes and the original mods were actually called that because people are taking things like flashlights and turning them into a battery holder. For an atomizer, you basically have two

parts on an east sig. You have the atomizer, which is what you know, heats up and vaporizes the liquid. But then you have the battery holder that is what's firing that atomizer. And sometimes that battery holder is more complex. But yeah, people were taking those early signal like type devices, modding them, making more powerful battery holders and mods what they called them, to to make it perform better. And then the products just kind of incrementally got better. From there,

you had tank systems. What does that mean? Tank systems that's where you put the flavor. A tank system is basically something that you fill up with liquid. It's larger than something like a jewel pod. And the flavors, I mean, who's coming up with all these, you know, hundreds of different flavors. It's started from the users. It was just a user driven innovation where you know, most of them didn't like tobacco flavor. People have to remember, tobacco flavor

and ESICX tastes nothing like a cigarette. You can't mimic the taste of smoke very well, right, So you know, people didn't like this fake tobacco flavor that that started appearing, and so they started dabbling with other other flavors and making things they liked. And a lot of them were just doing this d I Y at home at first. And then the whole phenomenon of the vape shops. I mean, I assume a lot of these things people were just buying inconvenience stores and things like that. But when did

vape shops start to emerge? You know, I can't say the exact time was around eleven and then you know, by the time I started vaping in we even had one here in Montana where I lived, so like they were really growing quite a bit by that time. And these are like big chains or these individuals they're there's a few larger chains, but the overwhelming majority of ape shops are small business. You might have a guy that

owns two or three in his county. You know, most of the business owners are are ex smokers, and they kind of started at how I did with they were looking for a way to quit vaping work for them. They got really passionate about it and decided to open

a vape shop in their area. You know, man, I remember about a couple of years ago, there's a very good young journalist, Alex Norcia, who was writing for a Vice magazine and now he's been writing for the online publication Filter, and he did a beautiful piece, I thought, and it was about the vape shop owners and describing that almost the harm reduction ethos that he found in these shops that not like unlike you would find it a needle exchange program, except you know that that you

had people who had stopped smoking by taking up vaping, and now they wanted to sort of spread this public health thing by setting up a shop that was for profit, but where you know, there was a different sort of connection to the customer. It sounded like that one has in most commercial establishments. Yeah, there's there's quite a bit more passion. And it is because a lot of people view this as a life saving products. They feel like it saved their lives, and they feel like it's saving

their customers lives. And they're also they kind of become more than just a shop owner to their their consumers.

They're kind of the guide, right. So you have a smoker that comes in their overwhelmed, they see all these different types of apes and they have no idea where to start, and that that you know, a good shop owner or a good uh employee of that shop will help guide them through the process and you you end up kind of creating a bond with your customers and the customers build that way about the you know, the

person that sold him their first vape as well. Yeah, you know, I walked into one of these shops a couple of years ago, I think I was in Manhattan Beach, California, and I just started firing a hundred questions at the guy who ran the place and then sort of chatting up some of the customers. But I was curious about questions like, for example, you know who prefers tobacco flavor vapes? Like do older forty year smokers? Are they the ones more likely to favorite Where do people you know prefer

to switch right away to non tobacco flavors. You know what's so great about vaping is the fact that you have all that variety. Now, there has been multiple polls and studies on what adults are vaping, and I think it's safe to say that plus of adult vapors are using a non tobacco flavored liquid. But even with um, those tobacco flavors, a good portion of those aren't just

straight tobacco. It'll take a tobacco flavor that's made by a flavoring company, and then they'll add a little bit of vanilla and a little bit of honey, or a little bit of cherry or something um, and so a lot of those are more complex than just tobacco. And like I said earlier, none of these tobacco flavors truly mimic the taste of a cigarette. So when I first started vaping, I uh figured that because I was a camel light smoker. I would also like a e liquid

flavor that tasted like camel light. But you do quickly get your taste buds back when you quit smoking. First off. And also, none of these flavorings perfectly mimic a cigarette, like I said earlier, because you can't really mimic that that smoke taste. You're not you know, when you're smoking, you're not tasting what it would be like to eat a piece of tobacco. You're inhaling the smoke from it.

And the liquid flavors that are tobacco based are quite a ways off from from mimicking that experience and flavor profile. I see, I see because you know, I mean now, you know you often so often see that it's the flavors which are the issue, because the kids like flavors. But what you're suggesting is that the adults like the non tobacco flavors almost as much as the kids do. I mean, yeah, as as we sit here, I'm vaping a watermelon peach flavor, so um. Like I said, you

get your taste buds back. And also part of what makes vping so successful is having that variety. I do like to switch to multiple different flavors. In the summer, I like a more fruity, tropical flavor, but then a lot of times in the winter, I like, you know, something that's a little richer, like some of the desserts or bakery types of flavors. And you know, that's what's so great about it is everyone has different tastes and when they get sick of one flavor, they can find

something else that fits the bill for them. You think most vapors, most people doing this sort of stuff are switching flavors and have a variety of flavors they like. Well, I mean, there's no doubt about it that that majority

of adults are using these flavored products. That's why you see in certain states or cities that when they do ban flavors, the vapor shop there is not able to survive because the majority of their business was with those flavored products, and those consumers go to you know, try to find it online somewhere or some illicit means to to get it because they don't want to vape the tobacco flavor. So most people are going back to say between two thousand fIF team, most people are who want

to wanting to get these things. They're buying them in vape shops, or they're buying them in convenience stores, or the buying them online or all three or how does it shake out? It's all three. So back then, none of those gas station etis were really that good. Usually what happened is is people would initiate on those it would be enough to spark their interest and then they would walk into their local lape shop, or they'd start

watching YouTube videos and buy some stuff online. Now that that whole paradigm kind of changed when Jewel came about, because Jewel was much more effective. Um, but back then it was kind of like the gas stations and comedian stories were just a stepping stone into the vape shops.

We'll be talking more after we hear this. Add there's that initial sort of disruptive technology that emerges ten fifteen years ago with the first generations of the e cigarette devices, the mods and all that, and then Jewel, you know, really does something that is a whole new level of stuff. So just explain to our listeners what was unique about Jewel. Well, the magic sauce with Jewel was that they used nicotine salts and so what that does is it gives for

a smoother hit. So a jewel has I think it's fifty six milligrams per m L or they call it five point six percent nicotine, which is much higher than a lot of other of the refillable types of products that came before it, or even some of the cigalettes that came before it. And because it was a smoother draw, people were able to handle that higher nicotine content. With free base it would be so harsh on your throat that's it wouldn't be enjoyable. So that was really it

wasn't the device itself. It wasn't the way they built the atomizer inside or the battery. All that's pretty basic, although they gave it a cool form factor that we didn't really see, the whole thumb drive type look. Yeah, but really the number one thing is the nicotine salts.

That's what makes a jewel effective. So, in other words, to deliver a higher amount of nicotine, which would be more satisfying to a consumer, although also more potentially dependence causing, but to do it in a way which hits the back of the throat the way smokers like, rather than to feel really rough um the way it would have with a high nicotine yield in the old fashioned models. You know, it's not that a puff off of a jewel is giving you way much more nicotine than a

puff off of a cigarette. They wanted to get it close so that they mimic each other closely. So basically one jewel pod is equilled into one pack of cigarettes roughly. There's yes, I mean it's very close. There's been some debate on that, but yeah, I would say that that's a that's a good estimate. Yeah, although I think in in the EU or the UK or whatever, I mean,

the jewels are limited to a lower level of nicotine. Yeah, and that's the that's the kicker with a nicotine salt, When you do it at twenty milligram, there's almost it's almost too smooth. So a smoker or or a vapor still likes a little bit of a throw head. They want to feel that that vapor going into their lungs. But with a twenty milligram nicotine salt, it's so smooth that it almost feels like nothing. And I think that's part of why it didn't take off as well in

those lower nicotine concentrations. So when jewel comes along, I mean, for smokers who've been trying to quit, who have tried cold turkey didn't work. Maybe they try to patch or a gum it didn't work. You know, are there folks who have been smoking and they find the jewel works like nothing before and even works better than the old mods,

the old open tank systems. Yeah, it definitely helps some people that were struggling, especially the types of folks that smoke two packs a day, that that are really used to a high amount of nicotine. You know, none of the vapes out there beforehand really satisfied them. It helps them quite a bit. And I think that it fits a spot in the marketplace. I never felt like I needed that much nicotine for myself. I very satisfied vaping twelve milligram out of a little pod system that's refillable.

But you know, to everyone's different, and it was another harm reduction tool out there for people, and and it worked quite well. And how did the vapees shop owners you know, feel when jewel comes in? I mean, is that cutting into their sale of all these other devices? Uh? Do they see it as a welcome addition to what they're selling. It was a rude awakening for some of them,

and some of them disliked it. Some of them sold it because when you have a bunch of customers coming and asking you for the jewel, you need to start carrying it. Um Now, you know, I think a lot of people's takes on them is a little more nuanced.

It's it's not that they disliked the product. They dislike some of the things Jewels done over the last few years, especially with their lobbying, like Jewel has been for flavor bands in some states, and uh, you know that's where I kind of stand too, is I think it's an effective product. It's helped a lot of people. I have nothing against the Jewel, but I'm also not fond of some of their their actions that they've taken the last few years. Okay, so let's jump forward to nineteen here.

So jewel sort of takes off and it starts to become immensely popular among adolescents, and not just adolescents who had been smoking, but also adolescents who had never smoked before, and it starts to freak out their parents, oftentimes in middle upper middle class you know neighborhoods. You know, parents who had never smoked and smoked in a long time and think that jeweling is just as bad, and their kids are saying they can't quit, and all this sort

of stuff. And then you have, you know, in late eighteen, you know, Jewel, which a year a year or two before, had also engaged in a social marketing campaign which peer child friendly, which seemed really bone headed at the time, and they tried to tighten it up, but they'd already done that damage. Late eighteen, they sell thirty percent of the company to the tobacco company Altria right for thirteen billion dollars, giving Jewel a thirty eight billion dollar valuation.

And at that point, between the sale to Altria and the explosion in east cigarette used it, especially jeweling among young people, it seems like everything turns and Scott Gottlie, who's the head of the FDA, and they've been sort of supportive of tobacco harm reductions, seems to be piste off. Members of Congress, politicians start to turn. Anti vaping organizations emerge. I mean, it just seems like this ship hits the fan. And then there's this moment in twent nineteen when two

other things happen. One is that the activism starts to cause all the politicians to start proposing bands on flavors and maybe even bands and all East cigarettes. And the other thing it happens is this e valley E V A l I where the media starts reporting about a few, you know, many people landing up in the hospital and some dozens of people landing up dead because they're vaping, right and and so this all comes as a shock all of a sudden, not just Jewel, but I think

the broader industry is on the defensive. So I mean, Matt, you're smack in the middle of this at that time, So just describe how that felt from where you were sitting in a central place in this whole vape world. Oh it was. That was a really tough year. And then of course follow that up with COVID. But when Scott Gottlieb and the Surgeon General started calling the teen

vaping issue an epidemic, that really changed the game. And uh, you know, unfortunately, while there was a lot of teen experimentation at the time, if you really dive deeper into the numbers, it's way more nuanced than that. So you know, they they really touted this look. Over a quarter of teams were vaping and so everybody had this imagery on their head that there's you know, one quarter of us teams are all just nicotine addicts, and um, you know,

the future is screwed. But but really that was just you know that tried vaping one time or more in the last thirty days at the same experience in the whole marijuana thing for decades, right that the media headlines would say the sensational number, and when you look at the details, that's how many teenagers had smoked once in the last year or maybe once in the last month. And the daily number of consumers would be very low, a few percent, but that would only be in the

small print. And I saw the same sort of media coverage happened as you're describing in the in this vaping world. You know, there's a recent article out by Ken Warner, the former dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, you know, basically saying that when you hold all the very other variables constant, like which teams are risk oriented, which teams this, and that, which you find is that there's this whole notion of the gateway apothis

is that kids will start vaping. You know who had never smoked and they switched to smoking. Just there's almost no evidence to support that sort of stuff. So it's clearly an issue, right, parents are seeing this stuff, but it's being exaggerated and blowing up by the media in

much more substantial ways. Well. And one more thought to throw in on that too, though, is it can be a self fulfilling prophecy, like what we saw in San Francisco, where once you do ban vapes, you see teen smoking go up, and they'll try to say, look, vaping was a gateway to smoking. No, it's just you took all the access of other safer products away, and more people are smoking in your city, teens and adults. So, um, you know that's that's another another way to look at

it as well. Yeah, I know a very good published study by a professor at Yale, Abigail Freeman, that looked at that San Francisco data and found that when San Francisco started banning all that stuff, it's exactly you said, Matt, you know, smoking went up, you know, a kind of counterproductive result of a semi well intended band from you know, coming from a purportedly public health perspective. Yeah, and as

far as adults go. Um. You know, I think a good portion of adult vapors don't really keep on top of the advocacy stuff and what's happening in vaping news. But the ones that do are very, very passionate. Um. You know. I'm on the board board of an organization called CASSA. It's Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association,

and we have over two members. And uh, when there's something, you know, like when Trump almost banned flavors back at the end of twenty nine, uh, quite a few people uh stood up and played their parts. So you know, there's there's quite a few adults that are are pretty passionate about making sure that they have access to these products. Yeah, just because saw I think that's what c A s A A right. But when the Holy Valley thing comes along,

that must have been infuriating. You know, A lung disease that people realize almost instantly is associated with illicit tainted th HC cartridges, you know, which some knuckleheads have been cutting with vitamin and acetate, which can be safe to consume orally, but when you light it up, it splatters in your lungs and puts you in the hospital, right.

But you see the US Center for Disease Control and others in the politicians using this vaping disease associated basically entirely with illegally produced THHC cannabis vapes, using it as an excuse to crack down more on nicotine vaporing and nicotine e cigarette seems to be to change the name of the thing. I mean, I mean the valley stands for et cigarette and vaping use associated lung you know, uh injury. I mean they should take out the E from it, because people who vape cannabis don't say I'm

vaping cannabis from an EAST cigarette. The phrase east cigarette is almost only used to refer to nicotine. So it's

fundamentally disingenuous and effect dis honest. And the fact that c d C and maybe f d A and others and politicians who do know better keep propagating this myth and keep saying, well, we're not a certain that there might not be a nicotine E cigarette thing, I mean, I just find that fundamentally dishonest and and and it also is responsible for people dying because by obscuring the really accurate evidence there and by letting people who were vaping th HC know right off the bat that this

was about you know, illicitly produced th HC vape cartridge is not about not about the cigarettes with nicotine. I mean, people did not take the proper precautions in the marijuana vaping area. So I mean, you know, obviously you my audience can hear me getting passionate about this, but so much of this reminds me about the dishonesty that kind of refer madness stuff we saw with marijuana. Now the same sort of refor madness mentality being employed against vaping.

And you know how it is to that, you know, the first headline is what sticks, and so the damage is done. And even though we started to see more and more articles that would throw in the you know, it looks like this is probably from the right of any answer to it was just too late and so even to to you know, today, there's still plenty of people to think Nick Genie six are what we're killing people. And while CDC backtracked somewhat, it's not as if they

did it very loudly. Well, Matt, let me ask you hear about you know, the demographics in politics of this issue, right, So I pulled up a chart earlier, and you know, if you look at the states which have the highest rates of smoking, they're all what we would call red states. Right, It's West Virginia is first, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, and then finally hit Michigan, a sort of purple state.

In North Carolina, purple state. And then you go to Wyoming in South Dakota. So the states are the highest rates of smoking are basically red states. Right. Then you look at what are the states with the lowest rates of smoking, and at the very bottom is Utah. Right, that's a conservative state, but it's because of the Mormons and the Holy anti smoking thing. But right from there, it's California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Washington, Maryland, New York, New Jersey.

Road is in Colorado, Virginia, Illinois or again, and then you finally get to Minnesota and Nebraska. Right. So the dozen states that are the lowest in smoking are except for Utah, are basically blue states. Now I'm guessing that

when it comes to vaping, those would probably be similar. Yeah, correct, It does seem that there's quite a few more vapors in Red states because they started out with more with more smokers obviously, but also, um, the Red States have been friendlier to vape as far as regulations go to so there's more vape shops there as well. Um. You know, in some states like Washington, California, they were really flourishing with vape shops about six seven years ago, but a

lot of those have shut down. The regulations have gotten harder to uh to navigate, and uh so that that's another reason why I think we see less vapors in some of the Blue states as well. Well. There's also when you look at the rest of the demographics who smoke, you see that the highest rates of smoking are among Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. The lower rates are among

Hispanics and Asians, right. And when you see that, it's higher than the average is generally among white Americans, and especially you see lower income, less educated white Americans. So you look at a group which is you know, disproportionately smoking at larger numbers and probably disproportionately interested in vaping or vaping, right, and also disproportionately supportive of Donald Trump. Yeah,

I would say so. So and by the way, the other group we left out of this, we're the smoking way to the highest of all um is among people who suffer from mental illness and especially schizophrenia and some other things, and also people with anxiety disorders, where you see remarkably high rates of smoking. And it's baffling to me why the National Association of Mental Illness, you know,

is not a vigorous supporter of tobacco harm reduction. But this, this gets us into the moment with Trump in twenty nineteen, right, And as I understand the story, you know, his wife Milania, comes home one day and she's a bit freaked out because their son, you know, they think he or his buddies are vaping and uh. And she says, you know, you're the president, you should do something. And Trump goes out and and says, okay, I'm gonna you know, I'm

gonna crack down on this. And he calls his head of health Human Services I think his name is as ours are a's are, tells him to do something about it. Um And then the politics start to get more interesting because in a way, he's addressing an issue that means

something to his political base. Yeah, and I think obviously Milannia played a part, but this is something that I think Azar wanted quite a bit as well, and he was pushing it, and then when Milannia came on board, I think that's that's probably around the time Trump was like, Okay,

let's do this. And you know, like he did plenty of times as president, he spoke very soon on it, right after he had the meeting on it, said we were going to bay on all these flavors, and then didn't really understand all the different political implications or the backlash that might happen. And you know, that's when he started to kind of get wishy washy and go back and forth, and then eventually backtracked and only did a partial ban on just pre filled pods products like jewels mango.

I saw a video of the meeting that Trump held at the White House um on the issue of vaping and what to do, and I was absolutely amazed because everything I've seen about Trump, I mean, I have unlimited contempt for this human being, and yet there he is in the White House and he's got a meeting of two dozen people coming from all perspectives on this issue, and he's going around the room and asking people what

they think. And it was almost like this Obama esque moment by Trump, and you could see he was torn.

He didn't know what to do. You know, he had his if he had his head of Health and Human Services on the one hand, but he had the base and it was you know, small entrepreneurs and all this sort of thing, and he's kind of twisting um and uh, you know, I mean it was really a fascinating moment to see him kind of you all a sudden get all gung ho on a on a public health message and then uh and then kind of you know, get

confused about it. Yeah, let's not get it too twisted here and give him too much credit because behind the scenes, there was a lot of politics going on. And so there was two different camps. There was the camp that thought that, you know, pissing off vapors was gonna lose votes, especially in really tight states like Michigan where he had only won by by ten thousand votes. And then there was the camp that was for the band that we're

worried about um pissing off the suburban moms. So while you know, yes, it was really nice that he did that, and and he was he did seem to be interested about the subject. The reason behind the scenes, I believe, while why there was a lot of going back and forth,

it was all politics. Yeah, well I saw some pulled that suburban soccer moms care about this, but that vapors can be one issue voters, and in Michigan or Pennsylvania or Ohio or Florida, you know that there's enough people who could actually, you know, say we like you, Mr Trump, but we're gonna stay home if you screw us by banning vaping. And you know that the whole slogan we've we vape, we vote right. I mean, that was a kind of powerful moment and that I recall. I think

you were there, Matt Right. There was a demonstration outside the White House in November. Yeah, I was one of the speakers and helped organize that. I think it was effective. Uh, it got media attention. Some of them made fun of us, which was fine, but the whole point was to get media,

media attention. And at the time Trump's helicopter flew right over our our rally, and uh, you know, there was a lot of information after the fact that he that he saw us as he was leaving the White House that day, and even it's been written in some books. He was talking a lot about the vaping issue behind closed doors, trying to figure out what to do and not wanting to piss off the vapors, worried about the

quote unquote vaping vote and and stuff like that. Then when Trump softened on it, you know, and and uh acted like he cared about the vapors and decided not to ban you know, all all the flavored products he was going to, I think that that made it even more of a political issue than it was. And and now, while the left hasn't always been friendly to vaping, I think it just it made it that much worse, if I'm making sense. Yeah, no, I think he did. I

have to tell you, you know, I've discussed this. It's so galling for me that this issue of the banning on flavors, of the banning on all vaping is so much being led off in times by Democrats and progressives. And that's a community that I consider myself part of,

and that overwhelmingly I'm generally supportive of. But you know, the same political figures, whether you know, around the country who were my allies on legalizing marijuana first for medical purposes and then for all adults who are supporting needle exchange and harm reduction programs and the locks on the reduced overdoses, all that stuff. These are the same folks who oftentimes have been leading the charge to ban e cigarettes or either to ban all flavors or everything but

tobacco flavors. San Francisco sort of becomes the epicenter of this. But it's happening. You know, it happened in Michigan. It happened in a range of other states in the Northeast as well, and you know, some of that was playing off all the fears that happened around the e Valley thing, which turned out not to be about the cigarettes and nicotine. Um,

but it it. I mean, in a way, I analogize that I sometimes look back at the you know, the if you look historically at the progressive movement in a hundred years ago, early twentieth century, and you know, they played a pivotal role in advancing good things like food and drugs, safety, and you know, child labor laws and

better working conditions. Yet at the same time they also are the ones who led the charge for banning alcohol for alcohol prohibition, the Eighteenth Amendment, you know, which, in a way I mean to me is the progressives can get most of it right, but sometimes they can get something radically wrong. And that's in believing that a prohibitionist measure is somehow going to be a good progressive measure.

And I see the same thing happening today where I generally support a lot of what the progressives and Democrats are pushing for in the economic scale and a whole range of other fronts, But in this front, I just

think they're going asked backwards. And what's actually bothers me a bit is that, you know, I believe that my political allies really understood harm reduction deep down, but in point of fact, you know, what it makes me suspective is that maybe they just don't get the core principles right.

That they came to the right place on drug policy reform for reasons that had more to do with politics, with racial justice politics, with anti incarceration politics, but that in this issue, you know, I mean, all those things go out the window, either because of the fear about their kids or because big tobacco is playing in every greater role in the vaping world. Yeah, I mean, there's

multiple factors that that muddy the waters here. And as you know, I consider myself a progressive also, but like you said, they have kind of a checkered past when it comes to prohibition, and uh, sometimes they try too hard to save people from themselves. What I think is really muddying the waters here is the big tobacco influence. But even if it wasn't big tobacco, just other big

corporations making money off of, you know, nicotine. And what I think progressives and Democrats have to accept here is that when you legalize drugs, whether it be cannabis, you know, nicotine, maybe down the road, you know, we'll we'll, we'll see some others. There are gonna be legal businesses there are going to step in and some of them may get

very large. And you know, I know that, like in the marijuana world, they're trying to mitigate that somewhat and and I applaud that, but you know, once once federal legalization happens, you're gonna see some big players pop up um and you just have to deal with that. And you but you need to still regulate them, hold them

to account when they do something wrong. But you have to accept that people are going to make money off of this, and so I think that that's what kills it for them is that they look at this now, is these big corporations preying on their children. You know, they hate the businesses, but then they also don't want to criminalize drugs. So like, what do you do? And I think you have to accept the lesser of two evils in this case, and that is legalization. Yeah, no,

I mean you see this. You know, a few decades ago, the kind of tobacco control was united in opposing big tobacco and trying to reduce smoking. And then when all these tobacco harm reduction devices emerge, e Cigarettes and a

whole range of others. Um, you see that community split right where one group begins to say harm reduction is the way to go that you know for people who can't switch quit smoking, that east cigarettes and these oral products, that these are all harm reduction things that can really badically reduce both smoking and the negative consequences of tobacco nicotine. And so from a public health perspective, we have to

embrace harm reduction. And then there's another group right which has got the upper hands right now, which essentially is saying our number one objective is to put a stake through the heart of big tobacco, right, and that if allowing big tobacco to sell e cigarettes and these other things is going to keep them alive, then we have to be against it, right, And they're exercising enormous influence.

I mean, you know, Michael Bloomberg is a major donor hundreds of millions of dollars going to try to ban you know, vaping and flavored vaping and all that sort of stuff, giving money to the c d c S Foundation, giving money to W h O's Foundation. So you see a kind of um, you know, where the original public health objectives and ideals of tobacco control have almost become secondary because of this passionate you know, opposition to big tobacco.

And as you said, that dovetails to the broader liberal view of kind of you know, multinationals, big industry is inherently bad. So therefore if they might benefit in some way, you know, we got to oppose it. Well, just one thing to say about tobacco control. You're not quitting the way they always planned for you to quit, So you're kind of you know, a wrench has been thrown into

their plans. These people have had these plans for decades, right, and they've seen that the smoking rates lower even before vaping came along, and so they think, you, oh, great, you know now nicotine is here to stay. Even with the pro vape researchers, they still show if you listen to sometimes or read some of their literature, they still show these kind of puritanical glimpses of themselves where their

end goal really still seems like to eradicate nicotine completely. Like, yes, we we were for e siggs as a harm reduction quitting tool, and then eventually they'll get off the stiggs and then you know, new generations just won't use any of it. So we we need to only let the smokers vape and make sure the kids never get it. And eventually the smokers are going to die off where they're gonna you know, quit you know, vaporing, and nicotine

is gonna die with them. So even if you look closely with some of these people that we both like, they still are a little more puritanical than probably you or I are on the subjects where you know, I think nicotine's here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere, you know, how it's ingested me evolve. But we need to stop thinking of it as like winning the war is uh by eradicating nicotine. In my mind, winning the war is you know, saving lives, right, regardless of what

they're using. Yeah, I think you're right. You could snap your fingers tomorrow and all of the thirty million smokers in the US and the billion plus smokers around the world were to switch to e cigarettes or other tobacco harm aduction devices, it would probably be one of the greatest advances in public health and human history because these

devices tend to be, you know, less dangerous than smoking cigarettes. Right, A world with dramatically fewer smokers even have involved dramatically more vapors, you know, is a much healthier world with people living much longer lives. But the fact that it's going to put money in the hands of big tobacco, the fact that people are gonna be dependent upon this, the fact that many people are going to become dependent while they're still teenagers. That all raises moral and you know,

ethical issues and all this sort of stuff. But I think it blinds us to the bottom line public health thing which is what's most gonna save lives and extend lies. And I think, you know, I mean, I think that

is ultimately where the debate is gonna go. The other part is that some of the folks in harve reduction think that if we can reduce smoking enough in this country, you know, froment of the adult population down to five four three percent, you know, well, then let's band cigarettes, or let's cut the nicotine in them so low that

nobody even wants to smoke anymore. But I think if you do that, you're going to see a black market emerged in cigarettes that could well dwarf the black market we've seen with heroin, cocaine, meth amphetaman with all the mass incarceration and global black markets and and organized crime and all that sort of stuff. And I think that many folks in tobacco reduction don't take that possibility seriously enough. Yeah, I've corrected quite a few people that have said something like,

let's ban cigarettes. That's absolutely a horrible idea. And you you and I both know what communities that's going to disproportionally affect, and who the first people are going to be arrested from it. It would create a huge black market. There's already multiple states in this country that have massive cigarette black markets because of owners regulations. Well, you know, I think about it. I mean, if we go to the point of banning cigarettes, I mean, you remember the

case of Eric Garner. You know who the cops you know, landed up, you know, killing um. This guy was selling Lucy's in New York, you know, individual cigarettes, and you can see the Eric Garner phenomena increasing dramatically. We know that when markets become more listit like that, you know, it presents opportunities for people who don't have better better chances in poor communities and poor black and brown communities.

But I'll tell you something else. I also think there's another possibility here, which is that given the extent to which smoking is disproportionately concentrated, oftentimes in poor, white, Trump leaning communities, the ones who don't trust the government, the ones who are gun friendly, the ones who don't buy the stuff on COVID, all of this sort of stuff, and who basically believe that smoking is a basic human right.

On some level, they're right about it being a basic human right to put in your body what you want. I could easily see the emergence of black markets in which you begin to see white nationalists, you know, organizations playing in every bigger role and traffic in this stuff, growing it, you know, smuggling it, you know, and and really seeing themselves is not just making money illegally, but also doing this in a way that almost feels political.

So I know, I'm kind of you know, jumping into the future with this thing, but if you look at where the country is going in terms of polarization and radicalization and what's happened with COVID and the anti mass stuff, I could easily see an overly aggressive tobacco policy playing into that mix. Yeah, I agree. I mean there's a lot of outcomes that that could come from from a cigarette bandon and none of them look very good. And uh, you're much better off allowing cigarettes to exist, but having

a government that gives their citizens the proper information. And that's what we see in the UK. The UK has some dumb regulations. They have a nicotine cap, they have uh a, some regulations on the size of tanks they allowed.

There's some silly stuff there, but people are switching to vaping in the UK and sticking with it because they also have that support from their government, telling them the giving them the proper info, telling them you know that it's harm reduction, telling them, you know, the rail College of Physicians is still doubling down and saying vaping is

at least safer than smoking. That means a lot. So if we had something like that in this country, um, you know, you'd see a shipload more vapors than we have today. Let's take a break here and go to an ad So, Matt, let me I see this. In early mid October, the f d A basically allowed UH its first e cigarette um to be sold. You it's called views solo, right, It's not very popular device, but it's opened up the door, right, And now you and

I are talking the day before Thanksgiving. So it's possible that the FDA begins to give approval for Jewel or Enjoy, which is the one of the bigger of the independent companies, or some of the other companies, to sell their products as well, um, you know, without giving them a stamp of approval, but basically saying we've determined that they're safe enough and that the benefits to adults in terms of smoking, sexation, cessation exceed the possible harms to young people in terms

of uptake of aping. But it's also important to note that two years ago, you know, the f d A gave a kind of qualified to green light to stuffs, right, which is that oral nicotine thing that was enormously successful in Sweden a Norway in reducing smoking rates among adult men to the lowest in the world. And then you know last year in July. Um in July, they gave a kind of qualified green light to icos, which is, uh, you know, a heated tobacco products, so like an East cigarette,

but it works somewhat differently. So we see some of these other products being approved and maybe more down the road. They're all harm reduction devices. They all present dramatically fewer risks to people's health, and does smoking some of them maybe even safer than ease cigarettes. What I'm curious about is when you go back in your vape shop world, I mean, are the sniffs products, the oral products. There's something called zen which is a nicotine pouch that people

are also finding useful to stop smoking. Do those all fit into that mixer they all integrated, or are they seen as another world? Um. Some shops sell that, some don't you know myself, I'm a th hr to tobacco harm reduction absolutists, like I'm for any products that's gonna help,

you know, reduce harm, regardless of what someone wants to use. Um, I've seen more and more a lot of these vape shops that were once maybe predominantly vape shops are now almost like a head shop where there's also selling some you know, CBD products, and they're also selling snooze and and maybe they're even selling cigars which are combustible and you know, could cause health problems to people. But let I think a lot of them have had to span

out just to keep their doors open. Um. You know, obviously E Valley and everything hit them hard, and uh, it's scared people off. You had a lot of people that were we're already vaping that went back to cigarettes once they read the read those original headlines. And then you had smokers that would have become vapors that didn't become vapors because of that. And so they have had to expand and the little carry different types, you know, more various products now than they did before. M hmm.

You know that it brings up the question, so you know, we haven't really talked about very much THHC and cannabis and CDD, but obviously that's a hugely booming world. And we see cannabis, you know, both th HC based products and CBD products and others emerging, you know, but also in edible forms and drinkable forms and patches and gums and you name it, right, I mean, how much interaction has there been? I mean, I think, for example, you go back historically the guys who created jewel, Adam Bowen

and James Mondsey's. I met those guys ten years ago because they had created packs which people were using for for vaping um cannabis. Right. It was one of those kind of heat not burn things. It wasn't an oil at that point. It was something where you heated up to cannabis to a point short of burning, so it

was a relatively less problematic way to consume it. And I remember talking to those guys and not even fully appreciated that they were working on this nicotine stuff that was going to become their major business and then bring them all sorts of grief. Right. But I was also at visiting. I spoke a couple of years ago at the Emerald Cup. It's one of these, uh cannabis conventions,

and I remember being struck. I went to a panel on cannabis vaping and there was virtually no discussion of the nicotine vaping and oftentimes here almost nothing about cannabis when I go to the tobacco Harmony dunction things. Now you're sitting in a more sophisticated place about this. Is there a growing marriage between these two? I think there's

some crossover. I know of some different manufacturers that make a liquid and then they also got into the hemp space and they're you know, making different cannabioids and stuff like that. Or there there's some people that you know, ended up having their own cannabis farms. Um. I do feel like, you know, nicotine has definitely become the outcast of the drug world, and uh, you know, I think a lot of people in marijuana kind of want to to make sure they're separated from us because we've had

so much scrutiny over the last few years. But there's there's definitely some cross over there. Well on the consumer side, I mean, can one usually a jewel to vape cannabis oil? Well, the thing is that cannabis oil is a lot thicker than most eloquids. You could I've heard of people doing that with the jewel, but it probably isn't gonna wig very well, and you know you have to kind of jury rig it and open it up, you know, crack open the pod, which you're not supposed to do, and

try to fill it with that. So, while the products are very similar and there is some crossover as far as the atomizer goes, um usually they need to be more specialized for a certain liquid. I mean, it looks there's good reasons to avoid the marriage of these two industries. You know. Buddy of mind, Steve Bloom, who's been a journalist in the marijuana field for a long time for High Times and now um for Celebrity Stone or I think it's called, but he wrote an important piece. It's

almost a Maya culpa, he said. You know, he gave a lot of publicity to the emergence of blunts, right, of people hollowing out these kind of mani cigars and filling them with cannabis or combining cannabis and tobacco in a way, which was very common in Europe because people would smoke cash there and they would roll it in tobacco, but he was saying, hey, everybody stopped doing that because there's you know, any number of people who mostly like

cannabis then started mixing it with tobacco and began to develop a tobacco dependence that way. So let's keep these worlds separate, you know, and let's not have people. We don't want to see people vaping nicotine and cannabis together. Not a good idea. And you know, you see in Canada, where you have federal legalization, I think not just but big alcohol, but even big tobacco have begun to buy into the cannabis companies for all sorts of obvious reasons.

So I mean, do you think that this marriage or merger between the two is sort of inevitable? Well, I mean, I think you're talking about two different things here. Like obviously there is it's problematic to mix nicotine and th HD together because if it's a THD user that doesn't have much experience with nicotine, they could potentially, uh, you know, create a habit for that nicotine as first that, I

don't think that the two industries are ever going to merge. Yeah, Well, I mean there's this other possibility of people talk about what you already hearing reports of, which is people using vaping devices to take not just cannabis or nicotine or CBD, but even to begin to take other illicit drugs. And there are obviously some significant benefits, especially to the extent

that the newer devices control the amount, right. So some of the davating devices, I think, both in nicotine and in the cannabis area, you know, they can limit how much you're getting in each each puff, right, and they can sometimes automatically turn off after you've taken a certain number of puffs. So there's a harm reduction element to these, not just in terms of getting rid of the smoked and burnt matter, but also in terms of controlling and

keeping track of consumption. That could play a positive role. Um yet, on the other hand, might make some of these more risky illicit substances even more appealing. You have you already, Yeah, I mean, I think I think some of that is kind of you know, it's from the same camp that tells people to be careful of Halloween candy because it might be mixed with drugs or something.

So I think some of it is just kind of fearmongering. Um, you know, I've I've never encountered people saying, hey, you know, I got a th HC card off the street and somebody puts some fentinel in there or something like that, but I have her. And about scientists like you you, I think you were alluding to talking about potentially using

vaping as harm reduction for some other drugs. So, like, there was an article recently about, you know, somehow implementing vaping into crack use, and could it potentially be a safer delivery method for crack users than you know, what they're using now. So I mean, there might be something to that, but obviously that's something that like shouldn't be something that just somebody's experimenting within their basement. Yeah, I mean, you know, when you talk about safer crack use, it's

a real thing. I remember a couple of decades ago when we were doing grant making, and one of the things that some of the harm reduction projects were doing

was giving out these little, um kind of rubber. I think it was rubber that that crack users could put on the pipe because one problem that people had with smoking crack, apart from the consequences of the crack itself was that the pipe, the crack pipe would heat up so much that they would burn their lips, and then the burnt lip would become a point of transmission for you know, sexually transmitted disease or other sorts of things.

And so by putting a kind of you know, just like the way you put on a hot coffee cup something to keep it from burning your hand, the same idea, but one could actually see that working in this area. Well, look, Matt, last question here, Um, So the politics of this thing. You know, I've had the opportunity, because of my contact sometimes to give some of the Democratic politicians I know and earful about tobacco harm reduction, and it's clearly unwelcome

knowledge to many of it. Many of them just don't even know better. They're going along with it. And we see this as a political issue where the Republicans are kind of mixed and divided, and some are anti vaping, but others are pro small business and others are pro individual rights and all this sort of stuff. Um But among the liberals and progressives, even Russwath of Democrats, you really see just this amazingly backward thinking. And I'm curious

what's gonna change that right now? Um? You know, I you know, I mean, I mean you're in Montana. You know you still have Democratic politicians there. I mean, what's your sense is or any hope on the Democratic side for opening up their eyes on this stuff. I think there's hope. I've I've had conversations with quite a few staffers and politicians and a lot of them are very receptive behind closed doors, and they end up getting it.

But you know, they don't word it this way. But the bottom line is is like, are you willing to stick your neck out and spend the political capital to stick up for vaping? You know what I'm saying? And and and so everyone's just kind of following along and they're keeping their mouth shut because there's no upside there for them. Yeah. I mean Dick Durbin, you know, I mean, he's you know, he's a deputy leader of the in the U. S. Senate. Good guy. I've been good on

a lot of drug policy reform issues. But he stands up there and says, my parents died, you know, from smoking. That's why I'm against vaping. And I'm thinking, damn, I mean, my dad died prematurely, and his packet day habit almost certainly played a role in his premature death of the age of fifty eight. But for me, I imagine that there's a chance my dad might have been able to switch from cigarettes to vaping, and that might have significantly

extended his life. So I'm kind of baffled by the Durbans of the world and and kind of piste off too. It does seem to me that when you have almost half a million Americans dying each year prematurely from long term smoking, and when we now have these sort of

technological breakthrough innovations that can dramatically reduce those numbers. Um, this is an issue which you know, progressive Democrats, all Democrats, and any Republicans who still say they believe in science and in science driven policy, you know, just ultimately, well, let's not forget how stigmatized smokers people who smoke are. I mean, it's we don't talk about it often, but

they are very stigmatized. And I think sometimes people have even more sympathy and empathy for someone when they overdose on another drug than a smoker dying from from lung cancer. It's a new permittive stigmatization. I mean, I'm in a world of illicit drug harmonduction, drug policy form where we

talk about all the harms that result from stigmatization. But in a way, now people who moke and even to something extent, people who have vape, those are the people who it's now okay to stigmatize, okay to feel no compassion for. And people literally will make the argument, you know, better that five smokers die ten years prematurely than that one kid gets addicted to vaping nicotine and that sort of trade off. You know, in the same way that the war on drugs for a long time was justified

as sort of one great big Child Protection Act. The reason we couldn't legalize medical meri wanta leaves wellize we couldn't medicalize, we couldn't legalize merri wana. More broadly, the reason we could allow needle exchange method on the locks on you name it. Well, I mean that's same. You know, the Great Big Child Protection Act is legitimizing, you know, allowing huge numbers of people to die who presumably, you know, you would think the decent minded, progressive, good Democrats would

care about. Yeah, it's it's unfortunate. Well, It's been great catching up with you and talking about with you, and I really I think our our audience will have learned a lot from this. It's obviously a world that many

people interested in drunk policy don't know about. UM. But it's a type of uh, you know, for a form of harm reduction that can save more lives than all the illicit drug harm reduction put together, so hopefully, I mean, one of the things I'm trying hard to do is to get more and more of my allies in illicit drug harm reduction and drug policy reform to embrace tobacco harm reduction as part of their agenda and to try to prioritize it, because many of them get the principles UM,

but it's been a tough issue for them to fully embrace. Definitely, And thanks so much for having me on. And I know, you know, vapors have really appreciated you taking interest in this subject over the last few years. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Katcha Kumkova and

Ben Kibrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick for iHeart Radio, and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blusian and especial thanks to Avivit Brio, Sep Yanka Grimshaw and Robert Beatty. If you'd like to share your own stories, comments or ideas, please leave us a message at eight three three seven seven

nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho zero. You can also email us as psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. And if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the information in the show notes. Tune in next week for my conversation with Steven Jackson, one of the better ball players in the NBA for many years, outspoken about the issues of marijuana, sports and longtime friend of George Floyd.

I went the long road to get to the NBA, you know, China for eighteen teams, breaking both on my feet, dealing with death to my older brother, and a lot of different things that can have you mentally disturbed, you know, and as a kid dealing with so much. The cannabis and basketball help me escapes. When I played basketball, I was able to escape from the world that what's going on. As soon as I leave the court, I'm back to the real world, where the only way I could escape

and keep myself sane was cannabis. Subscribe to Cycleactive now see you don't miss it.