Tobacco Free Alliance Equates Ecigs To 9/11

On April 7th, the Washington state House Appropriations Committee held a hearing on HB1645. Stacia Wasmundt of Tobacco Free Alliance of Pierce county testified in support of the bill, stating “Calls to poison control have skyrocketed over the last 3 years. There’s no safety regulations on the products. Children are getting poisoned by liquid nicotine, and even getting less than a teaspoon on their skin can be lethal. We support this bill because not only is nicotine the most addictive substance that effects brain development, but it is a poison that when used as intended kills 480,000 annually in the US, equaling 1200 per day. This is a 9/11 attack in death tolls every 2 1/2 days.”

Now, let’s think critically about the statements made in Ms. Wasmundts testimony. I might be wrong, but these sentences put together seem to be not only absurdly false, but blatantly misleading and overwhelmingly hypocritical when speaking about electronic cigarettes, e-liquid and nicotine as a whole. First off, the speaker talked about calls to poison control, and I understand the concerns that more people are making calls to poison control about electronic cigarettes. But, again you must break down the numbers of calls into their respective groups and compare them to other products. Have calls to poison control increased? Yes. But, that can also be correlated to the amount of increase of industry sales. If you only sell 100 bottles of e-liquid one year, but then sell 5,000 bottles the second year you will absolutely garner more calls to poison control the second year due to the increase of sales. Remember, the industry is growing at a near doubling pace every single year. While the numbers I’ve given you are extreme for a 2 year growth, the percentage increase many public health organizations are using are from 3-4 years ago, when most of the general public had never even heard the word ecig, to this year where we see the public health organizations placing multi-million dollar anti-ecig advertisements on public television and billboards etc. Yeah, when you scare the public into thinking a single drop of e-liquid on your skin will send you to the hospital emergency room, you’re going to get a lot more phone calls to poison control! Not only is the fear mongering getting out of hand, but they use the total number of calls as part of their stance, when that phone call could be something as routine as calling to find out if electronic cigarettes should be placed out of the reach of children, or asking for advice on what to do if their teenager is using an ecig.

Her second sentence grandstands on the fact there are no safety regulations on electronic cigarettes. No, the federal government has not made it’s final ruling yet, but there are states that have preceded the FDA on making these regulations. It is a difficult subject to oppose, and the industry has largely began putting their e-liquid in child “resistant” bottles. But, if you get 50 different states with 50 different laws, it becomes excruciatingly difficult for a single business in a single state to adhere to each law depending on where the e-liquid is being sent. And, again, I can not comment enough on how the FDA not placing common sense laws on electronic cigarettes is not the fault of the manufacturers. However, consumers do an excellent job of pressuring companies into doing things the right way and instituting quality manufacturing procedures, if they haven’t already done so.

Stacia’s third sentence is about the poisonings that have happened. Again, this is a true possibility. And, parents and adults need to use common sense to keep e-liquid and mods out of the reach of children, and out of the hands of minors. But, stating that getting less than a teaspoon on your skin could cause a fatality is an unrealistic circumstance. Many times extremists use extreme cases to justify their positions. Often times public health officials use the word e-liquid and “liquid nicotine” interchangeably. There should definitely be a breaking point between the two. The absolute highest mg/ml concentration I have heard actually used in an e-liquid is 48mg/ml in the vuse e-cig. However, I’d say a great majority of vapers are at, and more likely below, 18mg/ml in their e-liquids. Liquid nicotine is the base liquid used in manufacturing before it is cut down by flavorings and/or more propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. Liquid nicotine is usually anywhere between 24mg/ml up to 100+mg/ml bases. Unless a certain business has clean rooms and well trained employees, most small companies do not deal with nicotine in concentrations above 100mg/ml because it can become hazardous. I would expect that nobody who doesn’t very well know the dangers of working with nicotine base is actually purchasing it. But, again, politicians do not know enough about the electronic cigarette industry and community to see it that way.

The last part of Ms. Wasmundt’s testimony was about the amount of deaths due to the use of nicotine each year. She states 1200 people are dying every single day from, basically, the normal use of nicotine. Nowhere in this statement is anything even close to correct. Nicotine is not killing 480,000 people per year. Rather, a product which also happens to have nicotine in it, that when used correctly has you inhaling burning tobacco smoke influences the pre-mature deaths of that many people. I say this statement is also hypocritical because that same organization encourages the use of nicotine containing products (FDA approved cessation devices) to help smokers quit.

The reason that public health officials get away with blatantly lying in public, is because it takes an incredible amount of time (above the 2-3 minutes typically allowed for public testimony) to explain why the statements made are incredibly inaccurate. Up to this point, even the testimonies made by public health officials have had some semblance of truth to their statements. But, some public health officials, senators and representatives are apparently off their rockers, stating overboard manipulations of what the truth actually pertains.

The absolute worst part of this testimony was correlating the amount of deaths per 2 1/2 days to the 9/11 attacks. This is by far the most aggravating and disrespectful statement I’ve heard from any public health “professional”, ever. Not only is it disrespectful to consumers and business owners of vapor products which have nothing to do with the deaths caused by tobacco smoking, but it is extremely disrespectful to every single person who lost their lives and experienced the tragedy that day. I think America is owed an apology from Stacia Wasmundt and Tobacco Free Alliance of Pierce county.