WASHINGTON-Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy Ranking Member Michael Cloud (R-Texas) opened today’s hearing on vaping by outlining the importance of preventing youth from accessing e-cigarettes and calling for more progress to protect our nation’s children from these products.
The remarks as prepared are below.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We have known for decades that cigarette smoking is dangerous and linked to cancer and other illnesses.
Smoking causes approximately 480,000 preventable deaths in America each year.
That’s more than 1,300 deaths a day.
I cannot think of another product on the market where 50% of its users want to quit that product.
If you are under 21 years old, you should definitely not use any tobacco or vaping products-and for that matter any other drug or anything nefarious. It’s really important to understand, especially for young teens, as your bodies are still developing, these products can have a greater negative impact on your body as you’re growing and learning.
Unfortunately, as we’ve covered in past hearings, severely misguided marketing efforts have contributed to what has become a vaping epidemic among teens and communities across our nation.
Social sourcing coupled with various counterfeit and black-market products found their ways in the hands of far too many teens and led to tragic and heartbreaking outcomes for far too many families.
We’ve made some progress, but there’s still more work to be done.
There’s some evidence this is a new industry and some evidence coming forward that vaping products could help with smoking session. If that’s true, I hope the FDA will take a good look at the science based on it. But, we need to do everything we can to make sure our youth do not have access to these products. I share, along with the Chairman, our first role before being a Member of Congress is being that of a father. We do not want to see a world where kids have access to these sorts of products.
I want to thank you all for being here today. I want to thank you for attending this hearing.
I want to thank you also Dr. Woodcock for appearing with us today.
I hope we will have a good healthy discussion that we will be able to hear from you but also make sure we aren’t unduly influencing-improperly-a process that is supposed to be evidence based. Hopefully it will be, and we will be able to use the right kind of science of being able to divide how we can protect our kids and, if the science does point out that this is a smoking cessation device, we will be able to have the right adults have access to this product.
Thank you, Chairman for this hearing and for your passion on this subject.
