This fall the Food and Drug Administration will begin regulating e-cigarettes. | POLITICO Screen grab Jenny McCarthy ads up in smoke

Jenny McCarthy wasn’t in Washington this week, but she was still an important figure in the Senate.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday held up an image of the former Playboy model smiling, holding an e-cigarette gently in her hand and blowing a plume of vapor as an example of Big Tobacco’s return to using sex, celebrity and glamour to get teens to try nicotine.


“You don’t see any confusion between smoking and vaping in this ad or any other ads?” Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asked the president of the company that makes the products.

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“Of course there is some confusion,” said Jason Healy, president of Blu eCigs. “In order to defeat tobacco and cigarettes, we have to appeal to smokers.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the ads featuring McCarthy had disappeared from the company’s website. They had appeared in the days before the hearing. Blu did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

On Friday, Healy sent a tweet to POLITICO saying the ads were removed because McCarthy’s contract had ended, not because of the hearing. When asked when the contract ended, Healy replied “this month.” He added he would still run the ads if he could legally because “Jenny does not appeal to kids.”

“The relationship with Jenny McCarthy hasn’t changed at all, in terms of [us] having a good relationship,” said a spokesperson for Blu in a followup phone conversation. “The phasing out is purely to do with the agreement [Blu] has with Jenny that is ending August. That’s just part of the agreement as part of the sponsorship.”

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When asked if the ads came down after the hearing, she said “I can’t tell you that.”

A representative for McCarthy did not respond to request for comment.

This fall the Food and Drug Administration will begin regulating e-cigarettes for the first time, banning their sale to minors. But it has not acted to regulate how e-cigarettes are marketed.

Enter McCarthy.

The co-host of ABC’s “The View,” McCarthy is the celebrity face of two campaigns — one that stops kids from getting vaccinated and another that health advocates argue tells them smoking electronic cigarettes is cool.

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Together they threaten to unwind two of the most significant public health achievements of the past 50 years: the near-eradication of the most deadly childhood diseases and the drop-off in kids trying nicotine.

McCarthy taps into deep emotional narratives of modern life: crusading mom, telegenic actress and reality star. And she’s deeply skeptical of public health institutions in an era when trust in government is at an all-time low.

That current mood — one that puts more faith in celebrity than government — has left public health officials scrambling to maintain hard-fought wins, while beating back new threats.

“We are right now in an anti-government mood,” said Georges Benjamin, a medical doctor and head of the American Public Health Association. “All [opponents] have to do is say ‘freedom’ and then there’s a herd mentality. They are afraid they are going to have something taken away from them.”

“We always have to be science-based,” Benjamin said of public health institutions. “These other folks don’t have to have the evidence.”

McCarthy, for her part, recently said her views on vaccines have been misunderstood. In a recent piece for the Chicago Sun-Times she writes: “I am not ‘anti-vaccine.’ This is not a change in my stance nor is it a new position that I have recently adopted.”

An array of media outlets have questioned her claim, pointing to past statements. Even Megyn Kelly of Fox News created a highlight reel of McCarthy saying the opposite for years.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing Wednesday on the aggressive marketing of e-cigs, a multibillion-dollar industry largely controlled by the big three tobacco makers — Lorilland, Philip Morris and Reynolds American. Independent companies control a small portion of sales.

Longtime anti-smoking advocates on the Hill argued that e-cig marketing is a throwback to traditional cigarettes, using techniques to reach young people with rock concert sponsorships, sports magazine ads, fruit and candy flavors and sexualized TV commercials that push themes like rebellion, independence and freedom, which are the anthems of youth.

McCarthy’s ads are part of a broad campaign designed by Blu under the mantra of “freedom.” In one, she tells the camera she’s glad she can have an e-cig anywhere, no need to step outside to take a smoke or fear scaring off a handsome stranger. She sits in a bar smiling into the camera drawing a long, slow drag from her e-cig and blowing a plume of vapor that looks like smoke.

“The industry are pros. They know how to co-opt our words and phrases,” said David Kessler, former FDA commissioner. “Whether it’s cigarettes 50 years ago or e-cigarettes today, the emphasis is on freedom, on independence all cloaked in a certain edginess.”

E-cigarette makers say none of the marketing is aimed at kids or nonsmokers.

“E-cigs have a tremendous untapped potential to positively change the lives of adult smokers of traditional cigarettes,” Healy testified. “Reaching this ambitious goal requires a new way of thinking and involves compelling marketing to normalize this behavior, and as a result to denormalize smoking, so adult smokers know it is a viable alternative worth their trial.”

A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that it’s not just longtime adult smokers who see these ads. About 24 million teenagers were exposed to commercials for the products from 2011 to 2013. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the rate of high school kids using e-cigs jumped from 3.3 percent in 2011 to 6.8 percent in 2012.

Meanwhile, flavored cigarettes were banned years ago after studies showed they were appealing to kids. But nicotine vials for e-cigarettes come in flavors like gummy bear, Skittles and banana split, inviting kids to try a product that could serve as a “gateway” to traditional cigarettes.

Advocates also believe the packages need to come in childproof containers. There’s been a surge in young children poisoned by nicotine, a CDC study found recently. Advocates say the vials should be made childproof.

“Pediatricians have numerous and growing concerns about the known and unknown risks and health impacts of e-cig,” said Susanne Tanski of the American Academy of Pediatrics at a hearing on e-cigarette marketing this week. “We are seriously concerned that e-cigarettes may lead adolescents to a lifetime of nicotine addiction and could serve as a gateway to traditional cigarettes.”

Little is known about whether these products are dangerous — or if they could even be helpful in getting millions of Americans hooked on smoking to quit.

FDA officials point out that it is the tar and other carcinogens in traditional cigarettes that make them deadly, while the nicotine itself just makes them addictive.

“It’s not the nicotine that kills half of all long-term smokers, its the delivery mechanism,” Mitch Zeller, of the FDA s aid recently at an event unveiling the new rules.

The appetite and environment for more government regulation comes at a time when the public mood is not at its best for it.

Gallup tracks trust in government institutions at the lowest since it began in 1993. Pew Research has made similar findings.

And a willingness to trust in celebrity appears on the rise. Dr. Oz, the Oprah-endorsed weight-loss guru, testified before Congress this week on his successful TV show and endorsements of fat-burning “miracle” products that have no science backing up their claims.

Entrepreneurs quickly take his claims and market new products to consumers, a process that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) called the “Dr. Oz Effect.”

On the vaccine front, health advocates are trying to get vaccination rates back up, pointing to the 800 cases of whooping cough reported in the first two weeks of June in California and cases of measles in Ohio as proof there is a serious risk to not vaccinating.

McCarthy’s line, she says, is that vaccines shouldn’t be forced on parents. Parents should have the choice to give their kids one shot at a time. It’s a matter of freedom.