THE FDA’S DEADLY PROHIBITIONISTS: Warning: This Agency is Hazardous to Your Health. The dramatic decline in smoking among teenagers and adults during the vaping era has been a great public-health success story, but it threatens the activists, academics and bureaucrats who have built careers in the anti-smoking movement. To keep their jobs — and their cut of the $800 million in tobacco user fees that the FDA collects — they need a new enemy, so they’ve declared war on nicotine, which in itself is safe and provides genuine benefits to tens of millions of Americans.
The nicotine prohibitionists want to ban Juul vaping sticks, the most effective technology ever developed for inducing smokers to quit, and mandate lower levels of nicotine in cigarettes. This pointless and hopeless war is a boon for activists and bureaucrats — the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products has more than doubled its staff — but a disaster for public health.