A fresh round of funding for the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use has been announced by billionaire Michael Bloomberg's non-profit funding arm, Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is part of his activist philanthropic enterprise. With this latest donation, Bloomberg has spent about $1.6 billion on tobacco reduction since 2005.
Over the next four years, the 80-year-old former mayor of New York City has committed to investing $420 million in total. The remaining $140 million will be used to "reduce e-cigarette use among teenagers in the United States," with the remaining two-thirds going toward decreasing tobacco use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Regulating flavored goods that are popular among adults is, sadly, Bloomberg and his affiliated groups feel is the only way to stop teenage vaping experimentation in the United States—even if doing so drives millions of people back to using combustible tobacco.
Dogma, paternalism, and selective evidence
To win over the public, Bloomberg Philanthropies frequently confuses the well-established fatal consequences of smoking with the far more innocuous (and largely hypothetical) risks of vaping. The organization also meticulously cherry-picks data to support their favored authoritarian remedies to smoking disease and death.
It is well known that Michael Bloomberg fabricates "facts" regarding smoking and vaping to justify his prohibitionist views. 2019 saw Bloomberg claim to a TV interviewer that teens who smoke had lower IQs. Juul's refill pods "deliver as much nicotine as 20 packs of cigarettes," the billionaire stated in defense of the FDA's marketing denial order on Juul products. Naturally, both claims were utterly false.
For many years, no one questioned Bloomberg's falsehoods or his dictatorial anti-tobacco actions, but in recent times, harm reductionists, proponents of low-risk nicotine substitutes for cigarettes, and even the charitable sector have called for an end to Bloomberg's actions. Marc Gunther questioned whether the billionaire's anti-vaping zeal has caused more harm than benefit in a 2021 Chronicle of Philanthropy piece.
Bloomberg funding purchases prohibition in developing nations
Cash is king in underdeveloped nations. The Union and other international tobacco control partners of Bloomberg have pushed LMIC nations to enact complete bans on vaping. Through local prohibitionist organizations they sponsor, public health jobs they create (filled by loyalists), and lobbying cash-strapped LMIC politicians and regulators, they use the billionaire's money to promote prohibitionist policies.
The Bloomberg LMIC tobacco control model is what the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organizations (INNCO) refers to as "philanthropic colonialism."
Bloomberg fully sponsors or contributes significantly to numerous groups that support his preferred policies around the world. The CDC Foundation, the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, Vital Strategies, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the University of Bath (UK) Tobacco Control Research Group, the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), the South-East Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), the Anti-Tobacco Trade Litigation Fund, and the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use are a few of them.
Bloomberg also has a lot of influence on the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is its tobacco control arm. The WHO has appointed the paternalist millionaire as the Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries.
Bloomberg supports taste bans in the United States
Just when Bloomberg's previous anti-vaping campaign is coming to an end, new funding has been allocated specifically to combat vaping in the United States. The billionaire pledged $160 in late 2019 to a three-year campaign advocating for curbs and prohibitions on vaping devices, with the primary goal of outlawing flavored vape pens.
The largest anti-tobacco (and anti-vaping) group in the nation, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (TFK), handled the majority of the 2019 donation administration. The main heart and lung associations were among the "health" organizations that received funding from TFK. These organizations used the money to launch anti-vaping efforts that were consistent with the beliefs of TFK and Bloomberg.
With funding from Bloomberg's $160 million, almost every flavored vape ban that has been proposed in US towns and states over the past three years has been overseen by TFK from start to finish. Since 2019, flavored vapes have been outlawed in five states in the United States, and several more have passed or nearly passed similar legislation. After lobbying by TFK operatives backed by Bloomberg, several cities—most recently Columbus, Ohio—passed anti-vaping ordinances.
