US Senate Hearing on Vaping ‘Epidemic’ Today
Credit: Dick Durbin
The US Senate Judiciary Committee plans to conduct hearings today at 10 am on “Combatting the Youth Vaping Epidemic by Enhancing Enforcement Against Illegal E‑Cigarettes.” The hearing will be chaired by Senator Dick Durbin, a longtime opponent of vaping products.
The hearing will take place just two days after the Justice Department and Food and Drug Administration announced they have created a multi-agency coalition of law enforcement organizations, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the US Marshals Service, the Federal Trade Commission, and the US Postal Service, to pursue the underground trade in vaping materials.
The federal task force will focus on several topics, including investigating and prosecuting new criminal, civil, seizure and forfeiture actions under the PACT Act; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), as amended by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA); and other authorities.
“The U.S. Marshals Service Asset Forfeiture Division stands ready to work with our Task Force partners in the seizure of unauthorized e-cigarettes from domestic distributors seeking to sell them unlawfully,” said Ronald Davis, director of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Both the legislative and executive branches are in a hurry to solve the teen vaping epidemic before the public realizes that there isn’t one, according to media reports.
As Michelle Minton wrote for the Reason Foundation last December, “The youth vaping epidemic, declared by the Food and Drug Administration in 2018, appears now to have been more of a teenage fad—one possibly partially fueled by media attention on the issue. But, while the vaping fad may be subsiding, the hysteria surrounding it continues unabated.”
