| Section | Link to Section |
|---|---|
| Tobacco Business | Myers' Concessions To The Tobacco Business |
| Myers Thought | Myers Thought Vaping Sounded Amazing Before It Was A Thing. |
Matthew Myers, a leading opponent of vaping, will leave his position as head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. He will still provide the group with advice.
Since the 1980s, Myers has been a part of nearly all significant tobacco control-related events. He has played a significant role in reorienting the focus of tobacco control from going after tobacco businesses to preventing the use of low-risk nicotine products like vaping.
For the purpose of funding the group and advancing his anti-tobacco message, he has established a fundraising behemoth. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (TFK) stated in its most recent annual report that it received grants and contributions totaling around $40 million in the previous year. Nearly $47 million was given to the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, its lobbying arm.
Since 2019, Tick Kennedy has overseen donations from billionaire Michael Bloomberg to support legislative initiatives aimed at preventing the use of vaping and other non-flammable nicotine products. In order to counteract flavored vapes, Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded TFK a $160 million grant in 2019 and another sizable grant in 2023.
Yolonda Richardson, who serves as TFK's executive vice president of global programs, will take over as president. The organization's foreign initiatives, which concentrate on low- and middle-income nations (LMICs), have been under Richardson's supervision. TFK's global operation, a major participant in the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, has pushed for prohibitions and limitations on vaping and other safer nicotine products, especially in nations with high smoking rates. The Action Fund will also be managed by Richardson.
Myers' Concessions To The Tobacco Business
Under Myers' leadership, TFK has emerged as a significant influence in legislation that restricts access to nicotine products that aren't combustible. He has played a major role in fomenting a moral panic around Juul use among teenagers and has mostly directed the dissemination of false information that keeps many smokers from transitioning to e-cigarettes.
Myers, a former congressional staffer, has developed close ties with D.C. officials and the press and established himself as the authority on any topic pertaining to tobacco and vaping. It is probably not hyperbole to state that without Matthew Myers' advice and final approval, no law or regulation that has made it harder for smokers to convert to low-risk nicotine products has been considered or approved.
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (established by the heirs to the Johnson & Johnson pharma business), the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Medical Association, Myers founded TFK (then known as the Center for Tobacco-Free Kids) in 1996.
Myers was instrumental in the development of two significant agreements with large tobacco companies: the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement and the 2009 Family Smoking Protection and Tobacco Control Act (TCA).
Myers and state attorneys general had covert talks with tobacco industry lawyers to establish a perpetual annual payment mechanism to the states based on tobacco sales, which resulted in the MSA.
The Center for Tobacco Products was established by the FDA with authority over tobacco products granted by the TCA. The Center's staff was primarily composed of individuals who shared Myers' purported goal of controlling the tobacco industry. In actuality, the big tobacco corporations have consolidated their market dominance by destroying or acquiring smaller rivals since the TCA was passed.
Cigarette behemoth Philip Morris (after called Altria) co-wrote and supported the TCA, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2009. All cigarettes and tobacco products that were accessible in February 2007 were grandfathered into the market under the law, but low-risk, non-combustible goods that were released after that faced a challenging route to FDA clearance. The legislation was named the "Marlboro Protection Act" by one U.S. senator.
Myers Thought Vaping Sounded Amazing Before It Was A Thing.
Myers stated prior to the TCA's passing that he was not against low-risk nicotine products that would supplant cigarettes in the market and compete with them. He told the New York Times in 2006, as the legislation was coming to an end, that non-combustible nicotine products wouldn't be any more harmful to health than coffee.
Columnist Joe Nocera was approached by Myers, who said, "The challenge to me is not to eliminate smoking, but the death and disease from smoking." "That ought to be the ultimate aim. I would take that offer if you had a product that killed zero deaths and addicted 45 million people. You would then sip coffee! I have to assume that people would swarm to a product that eventually someone could develop that would provide the same satisfaction as tobacco but wouldn't kill them if the incentives in the market were right."
After those products were out and people started going crazy for them, he had a change of heart. Myers has been against vaping since its inception and has argued for taste bans and other limitations in the US and outright banning in LMICs like Mexico and India. Myers has opposed every FDA approval for a vaping product.
With his retirement, Myers becomes the second well-known opponent of vaping tobacco regulation to leave the field this year. Truth Initiative CEO Robin Koval declared her retirement in February.
