White house on the issue of vaping and underage use of ecigarettes. Were joined by andrew who covers healthcare for cq roll call. Tell us why and age vaping became a bigger issue in 2019. It was a combination of factors that really drove this to the front of the policy debate this year. One was just the yearoveryear increases in the number of teenagers reporting ecigarette use. Thats been increasing fees of years. When that is another significant increase over last year. Another was this in in a relatd but sort of distinct issue that we saw starting over the summer with vaping related illnesses that were beginning to emerge. Weve now seen thousands injured and dozens dead from this. Thats related to elicit thc vaping which is distinct from the problem of ecigarette use. But the urgency of those illnesses i think really prompted policymakers to want to respond more broadly to the vaping issues we deal with in the u. S. Tremont and the Administration Starts the new year with an announcement about vaping and ecigarettes. Andrew siddons youre covering the story. What did they say . Guest the Administration Says that in early february products like a like a juul whf the most Popular Among Young People and use nicotine filled hotspur cartridges, then only be able to be sold in flavors like tobacco or menthol. Previously juul have been available in flavors like mint mango, of the fruit and otherwise. The company has only taken those products off the market a few months back because of public pressure and in anticipation of these flavor restrictions. Products like, similar to juul, of the things that are pot or cartridgebased cartridgebased they will have to take their flavors off the market. The other type of ecigarette products available, there are these devices they have tanks that the users can refill them with liquid nicotine themselves. These tend to be more popular among adults. Theyre harder to conceal than products like a juul and the shops that sell the flavors for those will continue to operate as they currently have as long as they have strict age verification procedures in place and as long as they are not selling flavors obviously marketing to children. They wouldnt be able to sell things like flavors based on serial or Something Like that. So those shops will continue to operate as they normally have. Host President Trump was at maralago over the holiday break, and on new years eve he previewed the announcement speaking with reporters. Lets take a listen. The vaping is coming out. Which is going to be announcing it very shortly. Some people already know about what we are doing. We have to protect our families, at the same time its a big industry. We want to protect the industry and as you know when we take, taking off the flavors for a period of time, certain flavors, were going to protect our families, protect our children were going to protect the industry come hopefully everything is safe they will be going very quickly back onto the market so the flavors will come off, there will be checked, we want to make it, people have died from this. They die from vaping. We think we understand why. We are doing a very exhaustive examination and hopefully everything will be back on the market very, very shortly. Look, vaping can be good from the standpoint come you look at the ecigarettes, you stop smoking. If you can stop smoking, thats a big advantage. We think well get it back onto the market very, very quickly, but we have to protect the children. We have to protect the families. At the same time with a very big industry, its become a very big industry. Were going to take care of the industry tremont we will show you some of President Trumps public deliberations on the issue later. Right now though part of a House Oversight subcommittee hearing from july. We will hear from High School Students and their parents, two of a High School Student say a representative of the ecigarette company juul gave a presentation to the ninth grade classroom and said that ecigarettes are totally safe. Im a a disbursement and to represent parents against vaping ecigarettes. We call it paved, Grassroots Group founded over a year ago by three concerned moms. We already have groups of activated parents across the country from california to new york and places in between. With people with us today from texas, georgia, virginia, new york, new jersey, et cetera. My cofounders are behind me with members of our families between us we have nine kids between ages of seven19. Along with a friend, we created paved in response to the juul epidemic that as you said seems to come out of nowhere. Yet experts consider one of the most serious adolescent publichealth crisis our country has faced for decades. Our goal today is to give voice to the 3. 6 million teenagers who are vaping, most of them juuling. This most recent data from the cdc is already outdated. It is a you said between 201720 team that was a 78 rise in the use of these parts by High School Students and a 48 rise in use by middle school students, and experts believe that the new figures due this fall will likely be much higher because nothing has happened to have them go down. We hear from desperate parents every day who contact us seeking resources, information and help further juul dependent nicotine addicted kids, that there is not yet in fda approved treatment for this kind of teenage nicotine addiction. I will share what it used was because they come from every step represent on the panel and probably every state of people in this room. From massachusetts, our paid advocate speaking about her son, a hockey player described how we develop a cough and continues not able to breathe while skating. He became distant, moody, irritable and at extreme bouts of anger. A very common thing people report home and find it was toxic and turns out that he has restrictive lung disease. He needs inhalers and oral steroids. He has been smoking a pod a day, the equivalent of more than a pack of cigarettes a day for years, for three years. Kelly from North Carolina is here with her son whose addiction was so severe he spent 39 days as an inpatient at rehab in california. Kelly said we began living with a stranger. Our straight a students grades dropped to f. It was the extreme anger and it turned out our 14 year old had a Substance Abuse problem, and that substance was juul. Now i want to share a personal story, a story about juul went after our kids and their friends by coming into their School Without the knowledge of the school or of us concerned parents. Juul set of representative to talk to our kids about its product under the guise of education. On april 3, 2017, my then 15yearold son caleb son caleb who is here told us third then and at the addiction talk at school for the ninth grade. The teachers left the room and the man named alley gave a confusing talk about juul, telling them it was not for kids but for adults. It was much safer than cigarettes. The fd would approve it any day. When he was done, caleb and his friend with up to talk to. Ally repeated that juul was for adults, not kids. Then he took out this sleek looking juul, showed the boys how it worked and called it the iphone of vaping. And thats when we moms decided to fight back. We had discovered a few months before that our kids were juuling at home right under our noses, which is also very common for it does doesnt mean yourd period if your kids are juuling. Its stealth by design. We knew that nicotine was harmful to our kids brains, and as we researched and put pieces together we learned that juul Deceptive Behavior seem to be part of this marketing strategy. In california a retired school silverton superintendent was offering schools in the state in massachusetts money if you implement the antijuul curriculum. A man was offering on juuls behalf. We came across the Stanford Medical School tobacco prevention toolkit with an odd disclaimer that we really realize what the reference to juuls taking information it shouldnt have. None of this is surprising. As a said juul is stealth by design. Juul says it no longer restocks retail orders of the flavors that research has proven are harmful to kids. Yet just the other day nearly in a one block radius in two Different Stores i was able to buy these men fall im sorry, these mango pods that juul says are no longer on the market but there still online and thats the problem. Juul really wants to slow youth vaping epidemic and keep younger kids from starting, they will immediately remove all flavors from the market, including menthol and met for the most popular kid flavors and and orp spending millions of dollars on lobbyists to oppose sensible legislation that pays. Enemy Coalition Partners are fighting for all over this country to restrict access to juul and other products. We hope todays hearing motivates members of congress on both sides. We all care about kids come to hold juul accountable that only for the epidemic but for its predatory practices and for causing harm as only kids in this country it is not a political issue but a moral one. If we dont take action now we face an entire generation of kids addicted to nicotine, who are human guinea pigs for the juul experiment over all. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Berkman. First of all, ms. Berkman and ms. Verma come after you discovered that a presenter representing juul gave a Close Assembly at her childrens school, you research the issue and form an Advocacy Group to inform parents around the country about the dangers of adolescent ecigarette use. Thank you for your continued advocacy. As a pair of three Young Children myself including a teenager, i was shocked to hear juul have access to children without the presence of teachers or administrators and without parental permission. Juul continues to partner with youth organizations across the country so its important to understand what outreach looks like on their part. Ms. Berkman and ms. Verma and id like to ask a couple of questions of your sons, if thats okay. Yes. Philip and caleb can you please, to the table for a couple of minutes . Id like to first address caleb. Caleb, what grades were you and fill up in the year of the juul presentation . Ninthgrade. Can you speak directly into the microphone . Ninthgrade. Thank you. What were students told about the presentation before it began . If it was safe. I think a lot of kids still thought it was possibly dangerous. Did the presenter ever mentioned his connection to jewell . My teachers were not in the room when he spoke. To the presenter ever say that jewell was safe . Yes. Totally safe more than once . Yes. What impacted those totally safe comments have on your classmates . Some of those that have already started vaping. A sigh of relief. Now they were able to vapor without any concern. Where there kids that were not doing it that were likely to do it after they were hearing it was quote unquote safe. After this meeting, kids were more inclined to vapor because now they just thought it was a labor device that did not have a harmful substance in it. You approach the presenter. I believe the presenter was giving mixed signals by saying jewell is totally safe and following up every totally safe statement, but we dont want you as customers. I believe the presenter was playing on the rebellious side of teens. When they are told not to do something, they are more likely to do it. Philip, that me ask you a couple of questions. What was your experience as the presenter . We went out and caleb asked a question about what can you do if your friend is addicted to nicotine. Philip, were you addicted at the time of this presentation . I was. Was caleb referring to you . He was. How did the presenter answer . Since caleb was not specific on what kind of nicotine he was addicted to, and ecigarette or cigarettes, the speaker thought that he was talking about cigarettes. Thought he should mention jewell to his friend. A safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. Let me get this straight. He wanted you to switch. Yes. To the presenter demonstrate the product to you . Okay. This is very disturbing behavior a person connected to jewell pulled out a jewell device. Lying about the product being totally safe. Did he say anything else about whether the government had approved jewell . Mentioning they were about to come out and say it was safer than cigarettes. It was in fda approval while the talk was going on. Thank you. Let me ask dorian to say a few words here. Dorian, thank you for coming today. Thank you. Addicted to jewell. How did his addiction impact your family . It was difficult. At first we did not understand what was going on. He was interested in so many different things. I started to find these flash drives and these plastic caps in his pockets. I did not know what it was at first. We would have fights about it. I figured out what it was because i googled the name on the side. He started spending a lot of time in his room, in the dark. He became moody. We had a very contentious relationship. He did not understand what was going on himself and neither did we. Let me recognize Ranking Member for questioning. Im curious of the reaction. I assume you approach the school board, principal, what was what was the reaction . The school had no idea that the outside group had brought a jewell representative into the school. We believe that the outside group was naive, definitely. When i called to ask about this presentation, oh, you found the right person. I was researching researching antijewell registration online and i came across the name of the woman called Julie Henderson who was listed then. This woman, miss Henderson Henderson said, i have the perfect person. Thank you. Could you explain the difference from a Health Perspective there are many, many differences differences. Traditional cigarettes consist of the preparation of tobacco leaves. When burned, create smoke and contained roughly 7 million different chemicals. Most of which are not good for the human body. E cigarettes contain far fewer ingredients as opposed to nicotine. Commonly found in ingredients. In general, the difference in terms of the number of compounds and ecigarettes makes the e cigarettes, in general, safer. They can probably vary from product to product. The safety of the cigarettes depends on temperature control. For example, if products have adequate temperature control they can be less toxic. Okay. We know cigarettes for a while cause cancer. A long sitting in a car. What are the Health Effects of the combustion will side of it and what are the Health Effects of the nicotine side . Well, yeah. That is an important point to raise. If we look at nicotine in and of itself, it is not risk free, but probably a lot less toxic compared to the other chemicals that come out of cigarette smoke nicotine probably does not cause cancer. It may have some small effects on cardiovascular disease and so forth. The brain may have to adapt to having a drug on board. True for any drug. The nicotine is not the culprit when it comes to things like throat cancers, at least as far as we know. We seem to have a competing set of facts here. Teen ecigarette use has gone up you mentioned that a lot of that is transitional. Little bit aboa better understanding of what is new use, what is transitional use. That is an important question a lot of the surveys that we look at our crosssectional. A dipstick or slight in time. We see kids that were born to us using one or two days. Every day and so forth. What we need are studies that track kids over time seeing whether ones that are started out one or two more. Once again, we do not know what the real implications are of these different patterns of use. I want to emphasize i share the concern that kids should not be trying these products and they certainly should not be using them on a frequent basis. The cdc data shows a huge use, over over 2 million students. A fraction of them experiment and other become regular users. If you start smoking today, it is 24 years before you could have lung cancer. Nobody knows what it does to the human log to read in and out. It is an experiment, frankly. We will find out years from now the result. The compound that we put into our food, when you breed them and, for example, the classic example is buttered popcorn. The compounds in the industrial setting cause severe restrictive lung disease on the part of the workers. We are taking a wide variety, taking flavored chemicals, thousands of different ones, cotton candy and cookie centers and then theyre exposed over and over in the lungs. We just do not know yet the longterm results. There is no doubt in my mind that vaping is safer than conventional smoking. That does not mean that it is safe. I now recognize congresswoman for five minutes of question. Thank you so much. I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here. I can sense your frustration. Kind of hearing, you know, some people call it rhetoric to discredit a lot of the things we are pushing forward. I want you to know you have the truth on your side. Be stronger for that. We do not need more studies. We already know the truth here. A few years it dominated the market. Through a targeted advertising campaign. This seems to be a winning strategy. 76 of the of the ecigarette market. It is simply staggering. What i find troubling is the same timeframe the rate of teen nicotine addiction skyrocketed. The cdc found 75 increase in ecigarette use from 20172018. There is no coincidence to me that teens that use ecigarette almost exclusively referred to the activity as dueling. You have studied jewels marketing process since the Company Started in 2015. Should jewell have been aware of the Marketing Campaign appealing to you . Absolutely. Huge teenage fads dont happen by accident. The beatles and beanie babies, products a very clever promotional activities. Jewell engaged ad agencies understand the difference between marketing to baby boomers like newspapers radio broadcast tv who sit all day long on their phones looking at social media. Following the instructions of their clients. Using instagram. Who the heaviest users of instagram were. I do not think there is any question that jewell knew its actions were perpetuating the youth epidemic. You are a professor at stanford. Have you ever met james or adam . Yes. We went up to jewell last summer in august. He was quite interesting. He thanked us for the database we have with 50,000 traditional tobacco ads online. He said that they were very helpful. The seven of us left the twohour meeting was a very first thing we talked about. How surprising it was that he indicated grounding in traditional advertising. We know very well having studied advertising and jewels marketing affects the methods used to target young people. That includes brands such as marlboro. Direct derivatives and advertising. The Mission Statement asserts that it quotes the lives of the 1 billion adult smokers. Due to the marketing practices which you have studied for years, align with that . First three and a half years. At that point, their ads became more calibrated. They have now switched campaigns to depict the middleage and older adults. No longer they are promoting social media. This only happened long after there was a youth epidemic. Unwanted and intense attention by regulators. As mr. Muncy pointed out, they were concerned about their investors. Companies Like Fidelity who certainly did not want to be associated with products that were widely seen. Last November Jewell deleted instagram and facebook. The explosion had already had an impact on you. How do we continue to see initial Marketing Campaigns influence on kids about social media today. Taking off its own marketing did not stop all of the jewell branded hashtags. There are dozens of them. First three years and five months, about a quarter of 1 million mostly by young people last november until now, it doubled to over half a million. I really do appreciate that. It is important to know that they deleted facebook instagram, but jewels twitter followers, half of them are under the age of 18. If i might say, just because because you delete them, doesnt mean it never happened. No. Thank you so much. A professor who testified that jewells advertising was based on the early advertising of the cigarette industry. The next day and executive denied that. My names is james muncy. I am grateful for the opportunity. From the moment that adam and i began the journey we were clear to help improve the lives of adult smokers. We never wanted any nonnicotine users. Becoming under age four jewell products. Under age americans doing so. This is a serious problem. No higher priority than fighting it. It is helpful to understand how the company came about it in the first place. We tried to quit and failed. On our way to becoming one of the nearly 500,000 americans who die in your from smoking disease for us, giving up, up smoking required an alternative that did not exist at the time. The product we develop holds no Previous Technology has done. Help adult smokers stop smoking combustible cigarettes and a widespread and consistent basis. Recent behavioral studies find that more than half of adult smokers who purchase and use jewell products switch completely from smoking cigarettes within six months. In 2018, it declined 5 . The fastest rate rate of decline in a decade. Mr. Chairman, jewell labs is not big tobacco. We are here to eliminate its product, the cigarette. Our difference difference is fundamental. Our product did not involve tobacco. 7000 chemicals, at least 250 of 250 of which are known to be harmful. Products do contain nicotine. It is not directly responsible for the many diseases associated with smoking. Public Health Authorities such as Public Health england concluded that vaping is a fraction of the risk of smoking. At least 95 5 harmful, less harmful and negative risk to buy standards. Totally different from those of tobacco companies. Traditional Companies Face a saturated, concentrated Global Market. Reaching just 0. 3 of a global of a Global Market of 1 billion smokers. 70 of whom want to quit. Our incentive is to help them achieve their goal of transitioning from cigarettes. It is an astonishing Business Opportunity no doubt, but it is a historic opportunity for Public Health. Underage use of our product imperils it. Unlike cigarette manufacturers, our Company Acknowledges and acts upon Public Health data. We embrace appropriate regulation. We have acted voluntarily to restrict our own practices in service of Public Health goals. These actions include certain products to retail stores. Investing our own fund to drive retailer compliance and proactively legal age to buy our own products. We believe the steps we have already taken take a category wide standard going a long way to driving down underage access and usage of Paper Products. Mr. Chairman, we are prepared to do more. We have met with many of our sharpest critics. Suggestions for how we can improve. We remain open to their input. We are committed to cooperating with this committee, state attorney general and other officials who wish to examine our practices. We are dedicated to learning from our mistakes and not repeating them. In doing so, we hope to earn the trust of this committee, congress, regulators, customers and regulators, customers and the american public. We are grateful for the opportunity to discuss these important topics and look forward to answering your question. Doctor robert, a professor from Stanford University testified under oath for this subcommittee that you confirm to him that you reviewed stanfords Online Library of cigarette advertising and found it, and this is sworn testimony, very helpful as you design jewells advertising. You did and fat meet with the doctor. I did. But i did not make that statement. You are denying you made that statement. I think he may have misheard my commentary. The resource is a useful resource. Adam and i at stanford. We were very interested in them historical bad actions of the company. We were very interested in using his research to understand exactly what bad actions have been taken to familiarize ourselves with how not to run a business. You deny a statement under oath. I like that it puts the assertion in context. Please show advertisement one. These images that you see on advertisement one contain a few different images. Right over here is a picture of the trade dress. In the middle is the original jewell design that you came up with. On the far right is the most recent jewell design. Now, early on in your advertising, you entered into a settlement with Philip Morris. In a set of board minutes from august 12, 2016 that you produce to us, it says due to requirements outlined in the pmi settlement, we remove all jewell branding that uses triangles and diamond shapes. Pmi is Philip Morris international. Right. That is correct. They alleged you copied. Is that correct . Yes. That is what they said. Should you pay as part of the settlement . 0. It involved no exchange of money. It required that you abandon the triangles and diamonds which are very similar to the trade. Is that correct . We never designed the product to look anything like marlborough. Do you deny that they look similar . I do deny that you are comparing here, with all due respect, mr. Chairman. You are comparing a piece of packaging to a piece of product hardware. The last thing we wanted to be confused with any major tobacco company. The board minutes say due to requirements outlined we removed all jewell branding that uses triangle and diamond shapes. Do you deny that that is what was said in your board minutes . I do not. We would request you provide the subcommittee with the pmi Settlement Agreement within two weeks. Would you do that, please. I will have to get back to you on that. I dont see why that would be a problem, but i will have have to check with my colleagues. We will have to subpoena it, if that is required. The leading youth initiation cigarette. Unfortunately it says something that jewell chose marlborough to emulate. Please go to add to. Lets look at the flavors highlighted in this ad. As you can see on the right are the marlborough products. On the left are the jewell products. You notice the colors are very similar between the two companies products and one very interesting thing i like to point out is the flavors. Lets talk about the flavors for a second. You have meant, mango and virginia tobacco. Which is currently the topselling product. Currently after we pulled all of our flavored products off the market, now they are only available on our website. The topselling product, i believe, is a meant product shortly followed by virginia tobacco. That is right. About 74 of your companys sales. Mint is a mint is a flavor, obviously. Meant is a menthol based product intended to appeal to consumers using menthol based cigarettes. A menthol based flavor. Correct . That is correct. Okay. Could you please put slide three, or add three up. Recently you took out a fullpage ad in the washington post. You said taking flavored products out of stores. I think that is what you alluded to a moment ago, the problem here that i see is you left what you called a menthol based flavor in the stores. These such as meant. That is correct. Yes. Mint is still a flavor available overthecounter, in the stores. According to the 201617 population assessment, 96. 1 of 1217 yearolds started with the flavored product. 97 of current youth, ecigarette users used a flavored ecigarette in the past month. Such as meant. Flavors hook kids. Yet you say you took all the flavors out of the stores. You left the mint flavor. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, i think that what you will find is these are unprecedented actions that we took. We heard these concerns. I agree with you that we should be concerned. We looked to ourselves, without new regulations coming and being imposed upon us, we took this action in and of ourselves. The flavored products that we pulled from market represented more than 50 of our business at the time. I cannot imagine a more responsive proactive step that we could take to exactly the point you are making. When you pulled the other flavors off the market, meant took their place. Do you disagree with that . Unfortunately what is mostly taking the place is a legal products that do not comply. In your stores or not . It is. A flavored product still in the stores. With that, i will now recognize the Ranking Member for five minutes of questioning. Thank you. Great to have you here. Do you feel that jewell was ever purposely used deceptive Marketing Tactics to convey that their products are not harmful . No. Never. What was the purpose of creating fruity flavored pods. It is to create a more efficacious solution. The mission of this company is to improve the lives of 1 billion adult smokers around the world. We know 70 of those people want to quit. A number of tools that we used as we were designing the platform, in the first place. Empathetic research with smokers where we could see opportunities to make a product that could be superior to cigarettes. It would make it obsolete. What we see in plenty of studies that we have run now, flavored products over index on switching. My opening statement, about 54 of adult smokers picked up jewell and used jewell, quit smoking entirely after a sixmonth time. That number continues to go up. The number is much higher by as much as 30 when those consumer have access to flavored products. You created the company to disrupt the cigarette industry. Smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of preventable death. It kills almost 500,000 americans every year and it cost us 300 billion. Are you concerned about the number of teenagers that report they thing or using jewell . I could not be more concerned about that. Was your product ever intended for underage use . Absolutely not. 100 not. You never intended on that product having the rights of underage usage that it apparently has. Unfortunately, the long history of tobacco is also the long history of underage use of those Tobacco Products. As long as they have been available, underage consumers have access those products and use them, often times, illegally i bought those products illegally and i use them. There have not been a lot of advancements in the way we control those products. In building these products, not only designed for use, it imperils the business. What we really need to do is work, hopefully, this committee, every tobacco every tobacco researcher analyst possible, anyone we can get our hands on to help us create industrywide practices. We are trying to prove what those practices should be. What they really can be. It is a priority for jewell. There is no higher priority for this company. As i mentioned earlier, last year, in november of 28 teen, going back even further, we have taken escalating steps as we have learned about these problems. Most of the criticism we receive does not come directly to the company. We welcome map. We would love to work more directly with people that have the country. We take this extremely seriously and we take action. These steps really move through. One that we will really highlight. November 2019, we pulled over 50 of our revenue off of the market. Proactively. Nothing that required us to do that. We were hearing a lot of critique about flavored products tobacco based and menthol based products. Just the same way that cigarettes exist on the market. Have you been working with the fda to institute any changes to prevent use of your product . There have been some conversations that the fda has taken up with us. In particular, how to run surveys. Understand when we want to better understand the usage issue, it is very difficult for us to study youth directly. One of the ways in which we have had the most valuable or positive relationship so far was just getting guidance from them. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. Taking the ecigarette use seriously. There is so much evidence to the contrary. I am hoping you can offer me some answers and clarity. Existing ecigarette contained nicotine per milliliter of liquid. Removing the harshness and bad taste and then tripled the nicotine content over the vaping products making jewell the most potent ecigarette on the market. Capping nicotine levels that 20 milligrams. One third of your u. S. Product. With that, you do still sell a product in the eu and uk. Last year, israel also capped calling jewell higher nicotine product a grave danger to Public Health. Jewels 59milligram product already on the market there. Do you recall your product and enter that market and israel with a product. Correct . Correct. Jewell has determined that can still make money selling a product that much dangerous nicotine levels. Do you think 20 milligrams can accomplish the stated mission of helping adult smokers to quit smoking conventional cigarettes. Let me provide a little bit of context there. If you could answer briefly. I understand. The first concentration 5 of products you are talking about right now was designed to mimic, but never exceed the insurance. A clearer answer of can you achieve the mission of helping adult smokers quit smoking conventional cigarettes using a 20 milligrams per milliliter product. We would love to try. Already trying in every country except for this one. The proposition that ecigarettes help people quit smoking. Participants in that study were using e liquid below nowhere near the 59 level in your u. S. Product. It was reported that jewell began complying with 20 milligrams but would also increase the voltage in temperatures of the device and deliver more nicotine to the blood. Is that accurate. I am not sure what you are referring to. The actual delivery device. Increasing the voltage and the temperature of the device instead of having a 59milliliter cap you would have, go down down to 20. You would deliver a more potent Delivery System of nicotine into the bloodstream. Is that accurate. You could answer that question for the record, i would appreciate that. It is mind boggling you do not know the answer. Heightening the risk for young people. If that were the case. If we were to increase the voltage of the product. And the temperature at which the liquid is delivered. Quite notably temperature controlled for product safety. The only product we would never increase the temperature. So you are saying it is not accurate. I like to get more specific information. Supportive of regulations. Your actions speak differently. Manipulating seem to disregard. You appear to be marking yourself as a smoking sensation denies. You are not fda approved for that purpose. Highlighting why that is the case. Fda approved include instruction for stepping down nicotine. Product coming with these instructions. It does not and we would never market it as that. Let me be very clear. You do not market, that is news to me. Probably everybody in this room that jewell is not marketing a nicotine or a smoking sensation product. Every other vaping product except for yours . When someone starts on jewell, would you have any problem keeping them as a customer for life . You do not want to use your product as a smoking sensation tool. You just want people to be addicted to nicotine their entire life. Absolutely not. Wanting to stop smoking immediately. The first and most important thing that they can do to improve their Life Expectancy is move away from cigarettes. That is the stage that we are at right now. Owning 35 of your company. It is true, yes. I consider traditional Big Tobacco Company as a major industry in our country. Actions speak louder than words. Thank you. That last segment we heard from the congresswoman about her legislation on vaping. Covering healthcare. What are the major issues congress has been considering . There are a lot of bills in congress right now. Notable republican signing on as well. The movement in congress right now is doing more to limit access and flavors. Require any company that wants to sell the product to prove that the flavor is essential for the product to help an adult switch from a traditional cigarette. Also show that it is not a risk for youth starting nicotine in the first place. It could be a difficult proposition to prove. Because that is such a tough standard to meet, the backers of this legislation think that it will effectively ban flavors from the market. Thank you. We will hear from congressman jim jordan. You have a product. The consumers like. Certainly. Yes. You and your friend, young people sitting around college, you know what, we will develop a product. Developing a product that is much less harmful than traditional cigarettes. Could actually be a way to get people away from smoking traditional cigarettes. You actually did that. Thats correct. You develop that product. When you started marking that product, did you follow the law . We did. Absolutely. I think someone said 70 growth in market share. That sounds about right. This amazing product that you developed. This tremendous marketshare share growth and you followed the law the entire time you had that growth. Is that right . Followed the law. Developed a product that people want. More harmful traditional cigarettes. A product that can help you phase off using nicotine altogether. Somehow, you are a terrible guy. This is a very complex company. No doubt about it. Empathetically, i want to really express, this is not my favorite thing to be here today, but i do not mind. Extremely important. I very much understand the skepticism. This is an industry that has done wrong for a truly long period of time. We are changing that from the inside out with products delivered from innovative people to a company that is 100 committed to changing the fabric of this market to eliminating cigarettes for good. We are seeing that these tools actually work. I think that this was donated extremely well at the very beginning. We dont want any underage consumers using this product. We need to Work Together to make sure no underage consumers use this product. It is terrible for our business. We want to get onto the business as eliminating and saving lives. Some things that took place with this amazing growth in market share that you are now changing. Is that right . That is correct. You are placing limits on the quantity. For reputational concerns, u. S. A company have made a determination to do those two things. Let me build on that a little bit. The safety of young people. I stated this earlier and i will state it again. The actions that we are taking were trying to lead by example. We are willing to take independent action if needed to protect. If those standards were adopted from an industrywide basis, it was required to stop these counterfeit products from entering the market. Other companies that were not willing to do these things on a proactive basis. Then we believe we would be looking at substantially lower usage numbers. How many people work for jewell . You develop a product as a way to have an alternative to more harmful traditional cigarettes as a way to help people move on and help people stop smoking altogether. Amazing product that now has 76 growth in growth in market share. 23,000 people. You made some decisions that you decided to change just to make short young people like we have in the audience dont get access to your product. Not to be marketing on social media platforms and limiting the quantity that can be sold in retail outlets. You probably came out saying you dont think anyone should be using Tobacco Products, including your own, until they they are 21 and the reward for that as you get yelled at by democrats. I think it is just an incredibly important mission. Yes, we have 30,003,000 people now. I have never met a more Mission Oriented group of folks and the people that come here. We all there is a lot of stigma historically. Assuming we are tobacco twopoint oh. We are quite the opposite. We just heard jewells cofounder taking credit for removing flavored e cigarettes other than menthol from store shelves. The head of the American Vaping Association says flavored e cigarettes should remain on the market. Research shows they are the most used product by adults. Despite flavors were actually invented in these products because consumers back in 2009 2010, long before them being viable, they demanded flavors. They started creating their own. The industry responded tiered users of tobacco flavors, adult users, more likely to be still smoking. That actually leads people to continue to smoke. Not just the most popular among adults, but popular among adults that have fully switched. In september, President Trump appeared in the oval office. The head of the fda to announce plans to ban flavored e cigarettes. We have a problem in our country. It is a new problem. A problem nobody really thought about too much a few years ago. It is called vaping. Vaping as it pertains to innocent children. They are coming home and saying, mom, i want to bait. The parents dont know too much about it. Nobody knows too much about it. But they do know that it is causing a lot of problems. We will have to do something about it. One of the reasons we are meeting today is because it is out there. We want to have parents understand. It is very new. Potentially very bad. They have their own difficulties the fda doing a fantastic job. I want to thank you. We want to discuss the situation not only is it a problem overall , but really specifically with respect to children. We are getting some stories that we do not want to hear. We may very well have to do something very strong about it. I ask you to say a few words. Thank you, mr. President. We greet the president and first lady today on undisclosed new data that we have from the National Youth tobacco survey. This information shows a continued surging in adolescent usage of e cigarettes. It also shows that the youth are drawn to flavored e cigarettes. Including meant and menthol. Currently 8 million adults use e cigarettes. 5 million children are using e cigarettes. This is exceptionally harmful to our children. An entire generation at risk of becoming addicted to nicotine because of the attractiveness, appealability and availability of these vaping products. With the president support the food and Drug Administration intends to finalize a guidance document that would commence enforcement to require that all flavors, other than tobacco flavor, would be removed from the market. This would include mint and menthol flavoring as well as candy flavors, bubblegum flavors, fruit flavor, alcohol flavor, you get the drill. Once the fda would finalize this guidance, removing all such products from the marketplace. We would allow tobacco flavoring to remain subject of their filing. The tobacco flavored e cigarette product filing for premarket tobacco approval with the fda to assure that the availability of their product was consistent set by the Tobacco Control act. Any of the other products which would be removed from the market would be able to apply under the regular pathway. With the president support while we would allow the e cigarettes to on the market to be available for adults who are seeking to stop the use of combustible tobacco, if we find that children are being attracted to ecigarettes, if we find that the manufacturers are marketing the tobacco flavored cigarettes to children, placing them them in settings where they get them, we will take enforcement action there also. Let me take it over to the acting commission for any additional details. Thank you, secretary. Gathered by the cdc. A very concerning alarming abuse by children. Flavored e products. The president is directing the fda to take Decisive Action of the problem. This would have the effect that was mentioned of surveilling curtailing access to e cigarette products. We believe derive childhood use. Will help us get a handle on some concerning trends. Working on this very. Now going to double and triple up. Looking at very strong rules and regulations. We want to get to the bottom of a very unusual situation. It has become so big, so fast. It could be a potential very severe problem. Commissioner, you know what to do. It is something that, frankly, should have been looked into a few years ago in a much more advanced way. We have something that will intt turns up. You will be able to report back in the fairly near future. We will see what happens. Thank you very much. President trump in september said his administration would report back on rules for flavored cigarettes. We talked about the announcement for the administration what has happened since the september announcement by President Trump . The announcement in early january. Have they come out with additional rules . There has been an evolution in the thinking since the september announcement. They said that they would clear the market entirely of flavors with no exceptions. What they ended up doing in the end was making exceptions for the vapor shop. Selling more adult oriented products. And for mental flavors. They said they did this because as they got more data back from the 2019 national survey, it showed that among youth the most popular products were jewel and other pod or cartridge based devices that are the main target of new flavor policy and the most popular flavors were meant, mango and other fruit flavors. A very small percentage of High Schoolers reporting tobacco or menthol flavors. Those two flavors. There is some fear that young people will continue to use jewel with tobacco or menthol flavors. Fewer kids who are starting them because the appeal was fruit flavors or otherwise may be less interested. They also wanted to preserve. Menthol cigarettes are Still Available and they would rather gear adults toward using Paper Products rather than combustible cigarettes, in the first place. President trump held a meeting with representatives from the vaping industry and Public Health groups. Here is some of that now. Watch prohibition. You look at the alcohol. If you do not give it to them, it will come here illegally. Instead of jewel or legitimate companies, Companies Making something that is safe, they could be horrible. The one problem i cannot seem to forget. Instead of having a flavor that is at least safe, they will be having a flavor that is poison. Most of the members are small manufacturers. Small businesses that have built this industry from the ground up. We say you have to implement, as you said its an accomplished policy. You have articulated one critical reason why it will not work. Just going to the black market. Adults are demanding these flavors. Isnt there going to be, someone opening up a shop in china and ship it in with flavors. You dont know what standard you are getting. You can buy 15 different versions. Its really not for your product we are very focused on this portion to get the products off the market. What is it called . Counterfeit product. You just dont know. Three million kids addicted. 5. 3 million kids. 1 million kids a day using these products repetitively with addiction. We have seen a rise in use by kids. Before flavors so heavenly by jewel. Number one flavor of ease cigarettes on the market was tobacco flavor. We are not talking about removing these. Removing the flavors that has fueled the epidemic among our kids. If we take all the flavors, wont they just be made illegally . No. [inaudible conversations] 92 of the revenue is flavors level point to percent [inaudible conversations] seventyseven get their products from friends, family or other people 18 years or older for only 8. 4 [inaudible] its very important to realize apart from the Convenience Stores and gas stations were take kids to believe frequent is a whole disturbs an chain that is growing up which is a bakeshop supplied by just a beater and supplied by a manufacturer but this is the new fabian [inaudible] [inaudible] is the number one retail source. In the same study it also said these kids are refusing only 25 of the time. If a vape shop [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] we sell a lot of age restricted products made from, as i said earlier, beer, lottery tickets, and cigarettes and it is vitally important to our members to do age restricted products sales properly and that is or the reasons why our compliance rates are much better than just [inaudible] any prescriptive we take it very seriously. I think this debate over flavors is half the audience here firmly believes and i think there is some stalling evidence that flavors help adult cigarette consumers reduce their use but [inaudible] because of the flavors we have to double down and do well [inaudible] you think flavors are dangerous essentially . We felt the response looking to do was the leader in the industry should remove the vapors that youths were getting access to flavors. Sir, i think our Business Model which is unique to jewel that we can build an adult audience of the smokers without creating a former smokers without a new audience and new users and its been demonstrated to the data that over the last 12 months [inaudible] conducted 146,000 retail establishments and 29 violations. By way of comparison jewels had 60 times more violations than most, 60 times pick this up three times more product than us and have 60 times more violations. Its because of the weight we implement policies that limit youth access but nobody can intellectually odyssey tell you you can permanently illuminate youth access. What would you say . We are focused on getting back to the science based arguments. We will fully support the fda process. Flavors have demonstrate a plane and appointed role for an adult to make an important choice which is to put down using the cigarette they cant quit and switch to a product that has less risk. We think the science argument is important and that is what we are focused on we think the fda is most appropriate to determine whats appropriate for do you thank you have it right now . Essentially youve gotten rid of flavor . Spirit i think we made the right decision and are looking forward to filing our no one. [inaudible] we have almost 6 million kids addicted to nicotine and they are getting addicted to nicotine because of flavors with 60 of the kids addicted to these products are saying they did not even know it had nicotine in it but they thought it was just a candy pipe product. If the flavor that is drying the kids and i salute the fact that jewel has that were taking these products off the market because we care about our kids. [inaudible conversations] adults have access to mental products through jewel and tobacco flavored products and putting out cotton candy flavor and what it isnt, unicorn poop flavor, this is kid products that we have to put the kids first. [inaudible conversations] that has to be done and that keeps away from the youth. Twentyone years on top of that we laid out 21 different marketing restrictions with clean advertisement and television. [inaudible conversations] everyone is criticized the industry for their marketing but nobody is talking about actually putting the marketing restrictions and. We think its the wrong approach frankly and the better approach would be to raise the age to 21 but severe restrictions on how you market the product and on top of that you have to increase penalties for retailers because our retailers are fine but the other companies do note that they are age dating and keeping these products of the hands of kids so we say three strikes and youre out. Today the fda can allow you to have seven strikes before you are told to stop selling Tobacco Products but thats unacceptable and thats perfectly okay for our perspective on the top of that age verification but we are in the dating age of technology and this is the Technology Product that is helping people with smoking and unfortunately for some [inaudible conversations] im a pediatrician take care of children every day. These parents and children are counting on our help. I had a teenage boy in my office crying telling me i was dumped. [audio difficulties] its a crisis. Children sleep with their jewels under the pillow so when they wake up in the middle of the night they can take them safely and these children nicotine is so addictive we have nothing in our arsenal. [audio difficulties] we need to take off flavors of the market and to a fda investigation. We are worried that if we leave one flavor on the markets, even menthol, the children will go to that because they want somethi something. They will want something. Thats why [inaudible conversations] known of these guys will do it. There are legit companies. It will be shipped in from mexico. Im hoping secretaries are blessed something for that. Our big thing is that we have 5 million children and what we dont want to do is have another 5 million addicted by leaving the flavors on the market because children like flavors. We flavor medicines, amoxicillin is a bubblegum flavor because it takes good and medicine is good for children but e cigarettes are not. They should not have on the counterfeit issue we know that many of these kids want to quit and need help quitting and we ask kids what would you do if all the flavors were taken off the market, including menthol and 60 , the number one was quit. We have introduced a quick quit of a game program and use it on your phone and [inaudible] with almost no promotion 60000 kids signed up for this. They thought it was all fun flavors until then they got addicted. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible] to those who argue that he cigarettes are effective smoking [inaudible] if they had the evidence they should ticket to the fda we can evaluate and we can all make decisions based on science and the evidence. Wouldnt you say its a lesser problem . The e cigarettes you stop smoking and is better you dont think so, sally . No, mr. President. Its bad. It affects your liver and how does that compare to normal smoking . Neither one are good. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] they are often those who become smokers so theres the measurement of the risk [inaudible conversations] spirit that is not accurate. Less than 1 in most of the kids who have tried this product have already tried cigarettes or some other Tobacco Products with these are kids that have atrisk behaviors and that is why yes, we have a [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] tell me about what you think. Well, i would say the American Cancer Society is an organization like all Public Health groups in here. What is your public stance on this . Its a new modern age problem that five years ago when did this begin . About two years. So nearly two years ago but tell me your stands. Our stance is aligned with what you suggested on september 11. We fully support that decision to take all flavored e cigarettes off the market and godless of age. Yes, absolutely. And no flavors unless youre over 21. [inaudible conversations] its an epidemic and its a matter with a use it less if they [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] youre the biggest committee in 2020 of american stop [inaudible conversations] their longterm play is to sit out, file applications with fda and then they can come back and have 90 of the market. [inaudible conversations] for talking 151,000 jobs in the Economic Impact that we just put up this morning from associates included that over over 13000 Small Businesses would close if you implement this and 150 the flavor ban. Correct, and it would illuminate 151,000 jobs. [inaudible conversations] im sorry, that is not correct. [inaudible conversations] you have 10000 shops, four employees for every store, for fulltime employees that 40000 the Convenience Stores sell a lot of products but they will not go out of business because they dont have flavors but its that they been shops. May i finish please . They will not all go out of business because i cancel flavors. Some may and i would be unfortunate but some may recognize that if there are 50000 employees fulltime equivalent that they been shops youve got five and a half million kids youre talking 100 kids addicted for one employee. Typically minimum wage. I put the kids first. All right . Its over 100 kids for every fulltime employee. [inaudible] there is no reason we can do both things this country but if you would illuminate flavors according to this report because flavors make up about 8590 of their sales they will go out of business. There is no question about that. No Small Business owner could take that kind of hit to their revenue. He say you are going out of business and basically youre saying why does jule not go out of out of business . They can invest in capital and wait it out. They can wait two years to wait to resource their game. And rod we are reserving this opportunity for adult smokers who cant quit so they have an option print that the mission of our company. We felt we were a part of it that we had to address it as a leader and we took the test steps to change. You think flavors are dangerous in terms of addiction and other things . I think flavors play a role for adult to make the transition but the problem is kids get access to them. Who will take your place . Counterfeiters and then that gets dangerous. Mr. President , what you will see is that we have not seen a growth in adults using these products with the introduction of flavors but theres a lot of myths going on here. [inaudible conversations] let me finish. I did not interrupt you all. What you will have is you will have companies who produce products that have tobacco flavors which used to be the most popular and may still be among the adult although not among the kids and then second what we are talking about here and want your proposal was for a company that then have stated to show they have a problem with or without flavor it promotes tha that it can go to the food and Drug Administration for the review and were not talking a permanent ban but what we are talking about is making them develop the science conducive to the agency that has the authorities to review it and then has a science based decision made about what is in the Public Interest and that is what we are talking about and what do you do in the interim . If we do nothing in the interim we will wake up six months from now in another million enough kids will be addicted they will not be able to quit. Let me ask you this but the concept of letting states make their own decision because he talked about that the other day what about that . Weve put anyone limit we put an age limit of 21 but what if every state needs to decide . Nationwide we need testing for our kids wherever they live and it should not be that if you live in a state that doesnt address this issue your children are at risk. That is what worries me. And then they go by it . That is why fda has the authority. We have a Governmental Agency that has the authority to address a comp gated question that exists and puts into place rules and makes science based decisions. Every company in the country, including small companies, has to do that by may and the fda is under a statutory obligation to provide an answer within six months so what we are weighing is this nearterm solution is being proposed and i value what matters and i have children, not want them using these products but we are valuing a sixten month solution where the fda has to make the decision by december of next year anyway versus that hundred thousand jobs. For the record [inaudible conversations] i would understand supported conversation about jobs that i am here because our group represents millions of families of moms all across this country and dads across the country and grandparents and you can go to any state in the country and ask people with children and this is what people are worried about. [inaudible] this is a generation of children that would otherwise not have been initiated into tobacco use and we know that because the youth use figures and they are the lowest theyve ever been. Before jewell came on the market with their patented nicotine technology with huge amounts of nicotine going to the brain so quickly that is why they have a head rush this addiction is severe addiction and this is enormous amounts of nicotine [inaudible] parents are terrified. We hear this every day from people all across the country and they feel like they have lost their kids with straight a students are getting kicked out of school. Athletes, star athletes, cant run a mile and i hear over and over in all the time is i dont recognize my child about the anger and pain and parents are in pain and we need you. What is your solution . Our solution is your solution. Just to ban it . But if you had no, thats not correct. What is your solution . Its what you had the right instincts were at the beginning which is the flavored take the flavors, leave tobacco flavor for the adults. [inaudible] we are not prohibitionist so leave tobacco flavored for adults because in the end its not there yet but if the science ultimately proves that yes, this is going to help people quit than they should have that right. We have no interest i dont think the science is there yet. I think we need more data [inaudible] there has been no evidence presented to the fda or any manufacturer who makes a claim will be enforced against and so you may think there is that evidence and the evidence does have the process of tobacco to bring forth that evidence in the context of the free market authorization that would be part of the process. Mr. President , its a little hard to take all the virtue signaling going on because you got to remember the history of this paid we all were excited that there was an opportunity and by the way i come from appalachia and from bluecollar world and my brother is a smoker and i understand. It is a very addictive behavior and it was exciting at the beginning to think look theres an opportunity for people to get off tobacco and at that point we were winning when he came with kids but the people who are buying the product was 18 outs. They do not have a generation coming up and then the truth is they pocketed kids and paid influencers on social media to make it look cool and then we have a problem again. Many of the same people are in cahoots with the Marijuana Industry in the tobacco industry. We get [inaudible] i like your original solution but i think we ban all flavors and take the age two to 200 your point earlier was correct. When you make it illegal theres always the black market but we can say that about anything red you could say that about heroin. We can make it legal and say that about opioids and sell it and theres always going to be so i dont know if that works. Mr. President , on the American Lung association and i certainly want to echo our Public Health partners but on a daily basis the number one concern that we hear from our communities and from parents and schools is that how do we really address this stuff and academic that we are facing. We are looking to you and your leadership role in terms of hoping to create the next generation that will be pro what is your recommended solution. To ban all flavors including including menthol . Thats a big statement [inaudible] it is certainly an important step but is one you are putting out in september as these groups have 160 and reasons for Michael Bloomberg to not come to the table and optimize. We are parent advocates, volunteers because parents are in pain. I sat at the table on monday from the state of massachusetts and everyones story was individual to them but it was also the same. People who say their kids were no longer recognizable in their kids could not focus in school and they were having trouble breathing and angry and this is not a small thing. In this nicotine addiction at these levels people are in pain and parents across the country, all parents, care. We know you care. You want to ban all flavors . Including menthol . Yes, as said earlier that if you get rid of a few tests the kids will go to menthol but even out when kids are fighting do they understand theyre not in control. To the point about the predatory behavior the reason we started our group is because our sons came home from school one day in 2018 and said there was a mixed message presentation about juul and that in their school with no other adults in the room someone came from an anti, outside anti Addiction Group but anand turned out to been a juul representative told the kids that juul was not for kids but was totally safe and that it would receive fda approval any moments. Both of those statements were and remain untrue. That is why a group of moms arguing their own research understood that this was an epidemic of proportions and as you said earlier that the kids were targeted. These are not risktaking kids but it affects all families, all kids and there are 5 million kids doing this and that means there are millions of families who are in pain and need you to save our generation of kids. [inaudible] how many children will heres a thing, 97 of kids who are they been are using flavored bait. Do you agree with that . Research is indicating the kids are getting access to flavors. 97 , while we are talking about will they inject every flavor but their own flavors in . Our product is single use. [inaudible] in other words, i read about a lot of data in it so counterfeit. Its not from juul [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] our look at they been any cigarettes continues be joining us Andrew Siddons with cq roll call for the president went through a bit of a revolution in his thinking on they been and eat cigarettes particularly under age of 18. How did his thinking evolved . The president after announcing what sounded like a widespread flavor fan he eventually seemed unmoved by some concerns raised by conservative groups and Small Businesses in the fabian industry about both economic and political move. A lot of the they been industry is large corporations but theres a sizable segment of Small Businesses that produce nicotine liquid and there are thousands of jobs that potentially could have been at stake if a full flavor ban went into effect. Conservative groups are emphasizing the number of adults who vapor in the states that trump won in 2016 like michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania the number of papers in an estate exceed the margin of his victory and they were making the argument that if trump banned flavors he could potentially lose those voters. Indeed in the days leading up to january policy announcement while trump was at his florida resort, mara lago, there were apparently protesters with shirts and signs at saint we tape, we vote lined up along the motorcade route. In that November White house meeting we did here talk about banning the use of e cigarettes to those 21 and above any ministries and talking about that so where does that stand . The purchasing a for Tobacco Products including a cigarettes is now 21 nationwide but when President Trump signed the bill into law at the end of 2019 that became the law of the land. Fda is still probably going to be taking a few months before it is fully enforced around the country and in the meantime a lot of states already have the age 21 in place and in states that dont might be slower to enforce its but for now it is illegal for really dealers to sell to anyone under 21 and they need to check the ideas of anyone looking hundred 30. Not long after that November White house meeting the head of the fda center for Tobacco Products testified before congress and was asked about whether the fda plan to ban favored cigarettes. You are aware that on some number 11 hhs secretary azor said the fda would issue guidance clearing the market for quotes, nontobacco flavored easter dress including mint and menthol products, right . And you are aware that secretary azor announced the ban because quote the number of the ny ts show a continued rise in the disturbing rates of ecigarette especially for the use of nontobacco flavored. Correct . Correct. Secretary azar, for the stated quote, more than one quarter of High School Students were current ecigarette uses in 2019 and the overwhelming majority of users i thank you said 75 were High Schoolers but that overwhelming majority of youth ecigarette users were popular fruit and menthol mormons flavors. Right . Correct. The purpose of banning or as secretary say clearing the market of flavored ecigarette was to decrease youth they been. That would be consistent with what the secretary said. There was urgency to this issue and urgency and that is white the president set on september 11 that fda guidance and action would calm rightdoublequote, a couple of weeks. Right . That was what was said mac and there was an urgency that was built at that time. Thats correct. On october 25 you stated fdas work on the flavored guidance issue was quote, a very, very high priority and we are trying to complete work on it as quickly as i can. I dont remember the date but yes, i said that. October 25 to the hill. The guidance this flavor guidance has not yet been published, has it . Note. According to a letter sent by me by fda fda drafted guidance and send it to o iraq, and office within the omb as we talked about before on october 205. Yes, sir. To be clear the guidance document follow through on secretary azar september 11 announcement that the fda would clear the market of all nontobacco flavors. Im not going to get into the substance of the document that was submitted. On what basis will you not get into the substance . Because theres been no final decision made on this policy because there are ongoing discussions taking place and i cannot get into the substance of what was in that document. And who instructed you not to get into the substance of it . This is based upon discussions internally at the agency and Standard Practice when there is ongoing policy making then that we dont talk publicly about what is under consideration be happy id be happy to come back and review and your staff when there is a final decision and walk you through every thing but this remains an open ongoing discussion. So, according to fdas letter sent to me yesterday the f a lyra letter sent to me yesterday they concluded its review on november 4. Correct. Did they make any changes to the initial guidance cemented by the fda . Again, i cant go into the details of what remains ongoing discussions. You are familiar with something called executive order 12866. Yes, sir. According to this catchy phrase eo 1266 the fda is not allowed to publish in the federal register until theyve completed its review. Right . For things that are subject to the executive order. Correct. This is one of them smacked this was a policy that was significant that we sent to omb for review. It would apply basically talks about the types of policies that would be cemented and then sent back to fda. Correct. They marked the report completed on its website. That means, mr. Zeller, the policy is now back with the fda. Right . They completed the review on november 4 and sent the document back to us but there were still other ongoing problems the policy related going on in parallel but they did complete its review, as you stated, incentive back to us in novembe. When you see their policy discussions are going between who and who. There were parallel policy discussions going on between fda and the department in the white house. So, according to executive order 12866 the fda is not allowed to publish in the federal register until they completed its review and now that they have completed its review the fda can publish the guidance, right . If the complete executive branch review of the policy was done but there was still, as i said, in parallel other ongoing policy discussions going on in addition to the review of the guidance document. These parallel discussions that sound like some kind of irregular channel of discussion and independent of the standard submission of the guidance from fda to Qassem Soleimani oira and back to fda. Is there some other review that is happening right now that has nothing to do with oira or fda . There are ongoing policy related discussions between the agency, the department in the white house about what the policy should be. Okay. Did oira really complete its review if they are still discussing with you this document . Oira repeated its computer but other levels within the apartment and the white house and the agency and again in parallel there were discussions continuing what the policy should be even though oira had repeated its view. And who is part of those discussions at the fda . There would be the leadership of the agency in various parts of the white house. That leadership includes you. Have been involved peripherally in those discussions and mostly event the leadership of the agency. At the white house was leadership involved . It is various offices from the Domestic Policy Council to the office of budget and others and i have not been directly involved in discussions with the white house. So, you would agree with me, sir, and the white house to visit policy council is headed by joe grogan. Correct. Would you agree with me that the fda should be regulating to that products . That is our job. Its not a waste of time. Its one of the most important Public Health things the right Literary Agency can do and is something ive devoted the last 25 years of my life to. That is why im so concerned by your prior answer that the White House Domestic Council headed by joe grogan is part of these discussions with mr. Grogan said it was quote, a huge waste of time. For fda to regulate tobacco. Last week my home state of massachusetts became the first in the nation to place a permanent ban on flavored ecigarette and menthol cigarette products. This is important because if we are banning flavors we must ban all flavors which includes meant and menthol. To not do so would be discovered at torrey since menthol in particular has imposed a unique and deadly burden on the black community. You must climb down on the production of menthol products and not the individual possession of it. There are real intergenerational dramatic consequences of broken windows policing that has historically over criminalized black and brown communities. It is something i called for in my peoples justice guarantee resolution we must be simultaneously attuned to both publichealth and and Public Safety to ensure there are no more eric garners. For years Big Tobacco Companies disproportionately targeted more tobacco ads specifically more Menthol Tobacco ads in black neighborhoods. In some instances as many as ten times more ads for menthol products. Cdc reports that nearly nine out of ten black smokers prefer adult cigarettes. Was that i would agree with that. Today nearly 45 of black menthol smokers say they would quit smoking if Menthol Cigarettes were banned. Almost two thirds of black smokers under 24 years of age would do the same and one year ago the fda announced plans to ban Menthol Cigarettes sane a ban was necessary because menthol products quote, disproportionally and adversely affect underserved communities. Years pass and the fda has not followed through on this man so why is that . As you said, congresswoman, we went through advanced notice of closed rulemaking on a variety of issues related to flavors including the presence of menthol in cigarettes and i would add to what you said that one of the Public Health concerns about Menthol Cigarettes is not just disproportionate use of menthols aggress by africanamericans but the role that month also play in attracting kids of any color to experiment with cigarettes and we continue to review the comments and explore what the revelatory options and policies should be when i absolutely hear you and i share your concern from a public Health Perspective. Im sorry, just to reclaim my time in the interest of time. Just to be clear on the record, does the fda plan to follow through with this ban . I cannot give you a yes or no answer in an open and public hearing but i can tell you that we are consuming to review all the evidence related to flavors and all Tobacco Products as we try to follow three literary resilience and come up with right policy. But previous attempts to ban menthol have been overridden by the office of management and budget. Why is that . You need to be more specific because i dont know what youre referring to. Should i restate the question . I dont know what specific incident to referring to. Okay, i will move on to the point im trying to reiterate and cannot underscore enough because we are talking about a life and death matter and is at 47000 black people die every year from smoking related illness and making the largest cause of preventable death among black americans. Even more than gun violence or car accidents. So, we dont have more time. People are dying. In my final second i just want to go to a different line for a moment e cigarettes are not re cigarettes recognized an effective smoking secession eight are not . They are not approved by sec as a cessation. They are not no one they are an on ramp hooking a new generation of smokers. While, we can go past attorney seconds that you have left but theres a Public Health balancing act the agency has to do with whatever policy emerges on flavors. Balancing are flavors helping adults successfully transition off of cigarettes completely in e cigarettes . What roles are flavors plain in that and its part of the balancing that we need to do. Its an easy call on the negative side of the letter when it comes to the role that flavors are plain to experiment when kids think they are Harmless Products but its a balancing act because we have heard repeatedly from former smokers that it was the presence of certain flavors that help them successfully transition completely away from cigarettes spirit fda official we just saw cannot say if he slaves cigarettes would be banned the initiation has since made that decision so what exactly again has been banned and what isnt, Andrew Siddons . You will no longer able to be by fruit flavored cartridges or pods for ecigarette brands like joule. The only flavors you can get for those products are tobacco and menthol. If you use a product that is an ecigarette that uses a refillable tank that you can buy liquids for at the shops you will be able to continue to buy flavors as long as the flavors they are selling arent explicitly targeted toward children. We heard from the Administration Announcement on a cigarettes and he is the chair of the energy and Commerce Committee opposing of some of the move by the administration. What else might we hear from congress in 2020 . One of the next steps that we will see from the administration itself is how strongly it enforces a mate deadline for ecigarette manufacturers to submit applications for sales authorizations to the fda. This is something that was acquired under the 2009 Tobacco Control act and for the first time decades later the ecigarette manufacturers are finally going to have to submit the applications to the fda to show things about the product safety and data whether it helps adults quit and how risky it is for establishing new nicotine users and so starting in may the fda will be considering those applications and a major question will be how much will the Trump Administration weigh the risks of youth use against the potential benefit helping adult smokers quit using traditional cigarettes and congress is concerned that the continuation of having any flavors on the market that young people will continue to be attracted to e cigarettes and while the prospects for congress are not getting anything enacted into law now beyond the big tobacco beyond the tobacco 21 a law unlikely in this session the house is likely to take up and probably pass the bills that will put more restrictions on what the fda would put more restrictions on the fda or considers the risks and benefits of permitting a flavor to be on sale. Joining us for our discussion our program on underage they been an flavored e cigarettes is Andrew Siddons who covers healthcare for cq roll call at cq. Com and also on twitter at a siddons. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. We close out our program with another look at President Trumps remarks on new years eve. We are just going to be announcing it very shortly. Some people already know about what we are doing and we have to protect our families and at the same time its a big industry and we want to protect the industry and as you know we will take it off the flavors for of period of time, certain flavors but we will protect our families and protect our children and protect the industry. Hopefully, everything will go quickly back onto the market so the flavors will come off and will be checked and we want to make people have died from this. They have died from vaping. We think we understand why but we are doing an exhaustive examination and ultimately everything will be back on the market very, very shortly. Look, vaping can be good from the standpoint of you look at the e cigarettes you stop smoking and if you can stop smoking thats a big advantage grade we think we will get it back up to the market very quickly but we have to protect the children we have to protect the families. At the same time we have very big interest and is becoming a big industry and will take care of the industry. For 40 years cspan has providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the suffering court of Public Policy events from washington dc and around the country so you can make up your own mind. Crated by cable in 1979 cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan your unfiltered view of government. The senate coming in shortly with a couple of items on the agenda. They continue debate on President Trumps Small Business administration and later this afternoon [inaudible] will be sworn in as georges new senator to replace the senator who retired. Here is part of a News Conference or governor cap made the announcement. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our next u. S. Senator