FDA Briefs U.S. Supreme Court on the Nicotine Brain Fallacy

Responding to a petition from the FDA, the Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Triton case (formally known as Wages & White Lion Investments, LLC).  The Circuit Court, sitting en banc, had found that the FDA failed to follow proper administrative procedures in considering Triton’s vaping pre-market tobacco application (PMTA), and the agency’s denial order was vacated.

Appealing that decision, the FDA filed a brief to the Supreme Court, available here.  I will not comment on the myriad legal and regulatory implications of the case, but in their “scientific” discussion, lawyers for the FDA made numerous false statements about nicotine and e-cigarettes, such as:

“Nicotine is a highly addictive drug that can harm the developing adolescent brain.  Studies have found that e-cigarette use may be associated with diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.  And e-cigarette users may progress to conventional tobacco products, which can endanger human health even more.” (emphasis added, legal references removed)

I have repeatedly warned the tobacco harm reduction (THR) community that the NIH-funded bad-science tsunami would result in federal and state regulations aimed at stifling safer cigarette substitutes (here, here and here).  Now we have a concrete example.

Over the years, I have exposed distorted and false research findings concerning e-cigarette use and respiratory conditions (here, here and here), so today I will focus on the nicotine brain fallacy, which I first discussed four years ago (here):

“Let me be crystal clear.  The harm in brain development federal officials talk non-stop about only happens in laboratory torture of mice.  Mouse studies are well known to be of questionable value in predicting human effects.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim that nicotine causes harm to human brain development, so it is astounding that federal officials traffic in this false narrative.  This nonsense is an affront to 34 million adult current smokers and 55 million former smokers in the U.S., virtually all of whom started when they were teenagers.  There is no evidence that their brain development was harmed.”

The facts remain the same today, and still the unfounded attacks on THR continue. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a viewpoint authored by tobacco prohibitionists Robert Jackler and Pamela Ling (here).  Criticizing Medscape for creating continuing medical education courses on THR, they also attacked my design of the course content, complaining that my “expert opinion” conflicts with the CDC’s claim that “nicotine can harm brain development…until about age 25.”  They cited a review that purportedly contains “a sizable body of human data,” but that treatise actually offers no evidence of harm to brain development in human smokers.  The fact is that no study has ever demonstrated that human brain development is harmed by nicotine. 

It is a travesty that bad science and fraudulent claims against THR have persisted for so long. No court, including the Supreme Court, is likely to end the onslaught of misinformation that remains the hallmark of the powerful, government-funded tobacco prohibition movement.

 

 

Washington Post Embraces the Flawed CDC Youth Vaping “Crisis” Narrative

 

The CDC’s latest report on youth vaping, based on the National Youth Tobacco Survey, showed that the vaping rate among U.S. high school students plummeted by half, from 28% in 2019, to 14% this year.  Still, the Washington Post editorial board on October 16 proclaimed the behavior “a public health crisis.”  Since their editorial is paywalled, I’ll give you the highlights.

The Post cited as evidence of a “public health crisis” the new findings released by the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC.  My readers know that these agencies don’t initially release unvarnished data; they issue spin on the data, keyed to supporting the crisis narrative.  The actual raw data will only be released after months of needless delay, when more thoughtful and balanced analysis will be ignored.

The editors focused on the news that “9.4 percent of middle and high schoolers — more than 2.5 million young people — reported using e-cigarettes in the month before taking the survey.”  Actually, from 2019 to 2022, the vaping rate among high schoolers was halved, a fact that should have lessened the editors’ fear of “lifelong health and behavioral risks associated with adolescent vaping.”  Additionally, the data show that youth smoking declined to record lows. 

While the number of youth vapers is still too high, it pales in comparison to the half-million adult smoking deaths that are recorded in the U.S. annually.  That’s the real crisis that is all but ignored by Washington elites.

The Post went on to repeat the vacuous claim that “nicotine… can harm adolescents’ cognitive development,” which would mean that a substantial number of today’s 89 million current and former adult smokers are brain damaged.  Kids should not vape, but the FDA knows there is no human research demonstrating that nicotine is detrimental to brain development or function.  Eschewing actual science, the agency is currently promoting a teen zombie social media campaign labeled “Real Costs.”

The influential Post is all-in on FDA action, urging it to “double down on getting illegal products off the shelves and streets.  Until most flavored products are taken off the market, teenagers will continue to consume them.”

The problem is that high school students engage in a wide range of harmful behaviors, and vaping is low on the risk chart above.  Marijuana use, which was totally illegal for most of the past 30 years, persists at 20% among high schoolers.  The chart shows that many other high school behaviors, from driving while distracted or intoxicated, to drinking and binge drinking, to bullying and carrying a weapon, are far more dangerous and virtually ignored by federal authorities who choose to focus on a drug that is no more dangerous than caffeine.