A good reminder from John Tierney, former science editor at the NYT (you will notice that people who follow the evidence tend to give up and get out of that job after a while),
that Trump is just wrong about vaping, which is not the danger critics claim it is. I'm not sure how the president got to this conclusion, but my guess would be "jumping to conclusions."
One of the commenters there says that e-cigs are not taxed--and a drop in tobacco usage translates to a drop in government revenue.
ReplyDeleteIt might be interesting to see which states get the most revenue per capita from tobacco, and see where most of the noise is coming from. I'd bet New York scores high on both.
Let's see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236771/ and https://www.cdc.gov/statesystem/cigaretteuseadult.html
As of '93 NY taxes were 3'rd highest (they're a bit on the low side wrt per capita usage), and big media outlets lurk there. OTOH California is only in the top third, and their usage is low--and lots of big media lurks there too. Maybe following the money doesn't quite explain the whole panic.