The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 6

Time to bring down the hammer on the vaping industry

E-cigarettes have for too long held a unique place in the American regulatory framework. They aren’t tobacco, so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has no jurisdiction. Though their ingredients are ingestible, liquid vapor manufacturers haven’t completely submitted to the Food and Drug Administration’s jurisdiction. These devices sneaked into Americans’ lives and their vapor into to many people’s lungs, making users human guinea pigs in an experiment that is yielding increasingly tragic outcomes.

At least four users have died in recent weeks from lung ailments caused by inhaling vapor infused whose ingredients aren’t entirely known to regulators. The vaping industry has been around for about a decade, yet the regulatory framework governing them remains in its infancy while users are poisoning themselves.

E-cigarettes were once hailed as a revolutionary way to help millions of smokers wean themselves off cancer-causing tobacco cigarettes. Around the time they were introduced, an average of 435,000 people were dying prematurely each year from smoking-related diseases.

So E-cigarettes seemed like a genuine life saver. But there’s no escaping the downside: This new technology is just a more efficient way of delivering nicotine to feed user’s addictions. Nicotine is as addictive as heroin, researchers say.

The profit motive for exploiting the nicotine market is huge, which partially explains why the vaping industry is fighting every step of the way to avoid regulatory oversight by the Food and Drug Administration. At the same time, they have introduced a variety of flavored liquids designed specifically to bring young people under the vaping umbrella.

About 3.62 million middle and high-school students used e-cigarettes in 2018. From 2017 to 2018, e-cigarette use jumped 78 percent among high school students (11.7% to 20.8 and 48 percent among middle school students. In one 2014 survey, 81 percent of young e-cigarette users said the variety of appealing flavors attracted them to start vaping.

Today it’s chocolate or bubble-gum flavored vapor. Tomorrow, manufacturers wager, it’ll be nicotine - and the creation of a customer for life. No wonder even the tobacco industry has gotten into the vaping business.

Meanwhile, young people are inhaling what they think are innocuous vaping liquids when, in fact, they could be killing themselves. The recent deaths are believed to involve a liquid containing THC, the chemical that causes a marijuana high. In an additional 450 cases, patients have been hospitalized with respiratory ailments linked to vaping.

Common sense would dictate that people know what they’re inhaling before they allow it into their lungs. But common sense doesn’t always prevail, especially among young people and especially when vaping products are marketed as safe when no federal regulatory agency has deemed them so. People are dying. Is that not enough for this to become a priority regulatory issue in Washington?

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The St. Joseph News-Press, Sept. 6

Jeff City’s fog of inaction

Maybe it’s true what they say about marijuana. It seemed to bring about a case of the lazies in our state lawmakers.

Our elected officials are a sober bunch - at least when it comes to marijuana - so there’s no need for a potato chip and cartoon marathon. Marijuana does, however, seem to bring about a lack of initiative in legislation that deals with the drug itself.

The result is a crazy patchwork of enforcement that can vary from county to county. Jackson County, for instance, doesn’t prosecute most marijuana possession cases. Buchanan County does, though jail time is a rarity for minor possession.

Now, a new law that removes hurdles to agricultural hemp is adding to the confusion. Livingston County no longer prosecutes misdemeanor marijuana cases, because it’s impossible to distinguish between small amounts of illegal marijuana and legal hemp that contains less than .3 percent THC. Other states, including Nebraska, have run into a similar issue. (Some Nebraska football players were able to beat the rap, for now, because of the lab testing issue).

In Missouri, the problem isn’t the hemp law. It’s a Missouri Crime Lab that remains overwhelmed and underfunded. Whatever your stance on marijuana, you can’t blame those in the crime lab for prioritizing backlogged rape kits over minor marijuana cases.

You can wonder how it came to this.

Some would say it’s best for lawmakers to back off and let the legalization train roll through. Privately, lawmakers suggest that a legalization ballot initiative is inevitable, so why bother?

To those who think it’s best to passively sit by and wait for a voter referendum, we would point to the failure of ethics legislation a few years back. Now, the state is advertising for an unelected demographer with unseemly clout to redraw election boundaries.

Lawmakers had a chance to consider medical marijuana when state Rep. Dr. Jim Neely, a Republican who was leery of legalization but also saw the therapeutic benefits for his elderly patients, proposed a narrow measure with limits on the drug’s use.

It went nowhere, so voters took matters into their own hands. Unlike the legislative version, the voter-approved measure allows medicinal cannabis for specifics like cancer, intractable migraines and glaucoma plus “any other medical condition.” That means the hunt is on for a sympathetic doctor. Colorado tried medical marijuana for a couple of years, then legalized everything after a large number of men in their 20s started getting diagnosed for vague chronic-pain conditions.

Lawmakers might not be able to stop the well-funded legalization train, but they should climb aboard and try to influence the outcome with reasonable regulation before they get steamrolled again at the polls.

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The Kansas City Star, Sept. 8

Gov. Mike Parson wants to reduce gun violence without actually doing anything about guns

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says he wants to find solutions to reduce the spiking gun violence that is cutting lives short in this state every day.

But apparently, Parson hopes to somehow reduce the carnage caused by guns without actually doing anything about guns.

The governor recently pledged to send money for social programs that address gun violence and members of the Missouri Highway Patrol to St. Louis, which has seen an unending stream of homicides in recent months.

Unbelievably, though, Parson said he would leave gun control in the hands of lawmakers.

“I’ve got to be careful to stay in my lane,” Parson said.

If taking substantive steps to address what has become a public health crisis in his state isn’t in his lane, what, exactly, does Parson think his job entails?

As the governor of a state that now has three of the most dangerous cities in the country, Parson has a responsibility to take the lead on the issue of gun safety. From Kansas City to St. Louis, and from Columbia to Springfield, children, women and young men are dying every day as a result of gun violence.

And if Parson genuinely wanted lawmakers to take up this issue, he could make that happen.

As luck would have it, the Missouri legislature will be convening this week - a well-timed opportunity that could be used to discuss what has become an urgent issue demanding action. But the governor has other ideas.

Somehow, Parson saw fit to call a special legislative session to take up the very narrow and not-so-pressing issue of sales taxes on used cars. But he has declared that a special session is “not the correct avenue” to address gun violence.

It never seems to be the right time to take even modest steps to make our state safer.

Parson’s decision to aid St. Louis is well-intentioned and might provide a modicum of temporary relief. But it’s a half measure at best, not a long-term strategy. And the governor’s unwillingness to address the real issue - guns - is inexcusable.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said a financial commitment to hire 200 social workers in Kansas City and increased funding for the Missouri Public Defenders and Jackson County Prosecutor’s offices would be a better remedy than a flood of state troopers on Kansas City streets.

“The idea of having a bunch of folks from outside to come in and patrol a community that they don’t know, frankly isn’t really 21st-century crime fighting,” Lucas said.

Missouri has the seventh-highest gun death rate in the nation, according the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The state also has the highest rate of black homicide victims in the nation.

But the bloodshed is not just limited to the urban cores.

Gun suicides and unintentional shootings have affected every part of the state. Twice as many Missourians die by suicide annually than by homicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Firearms accounted for the majority of those deaths.

Missouri’s lenient gun laws contribute to the high violent crime rate. Anyone 19 and older can legally carry a concealed weapon without a permit, training or even a background check.

Gun violence is a growing public health crisis and needs to be treated as such. Allowing the largest cities in Missouri to enact their own gun laws could help stem the tide of violence.

To protect Missouri communities, elected officials need to take a comprehensive approach and invest in data-backed local gun violence prevention, said Karen Rogers of the Missouri chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Additionally, “we should be investing in firearm technology to help solve homicides and boost our clearance rates,” she said.

So far, the governor has shown no inclination to have a serious conversation about any commonsense gun safety measures that could actually make a dent in violent crime rates. Pleas from leaders in Kansas City and St. Louis, as well as lawmakers representing urban areas, have been ignored.

During a visit to St. Louis last week, Parson said, “It’s unfortunate that all these children have been shot and killed, and we’re now dealing with it after that.”

What’s even more unfortunate is that children have been shot and killed, and state leaders aren’t really dealing with it in any meaningful way.

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