Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is considered the “big, bad wolf of the vaping industry” by vaping advocates.
The co-founder of media site Bloomberg and former mayor of New York City is using his money and influence to curb vaping - but he’s doing far more harm than good.
His campaign, which many top scientists and researchers say spreads misinformation about vaping to the US public, is deterring people from switching cigarettes for far less harmful vapes.
Research by American Vaping Manufacturers (AVM) points to a deep-rooted and sycophantic relationship between Bloomberg, US regulators and the national media, who appear to work together to push an anti-vaping agenda.
But despite the glaring difference in size of opponents, the war against vaping is far from over.
That’s because the vaping industry has a secret weapon: its loyal customer base, many of whom credit it with helping them quit potentially fatal cigarettes.
The big, bad wolf
Speaking on YouTube channel ‘RegWatch’ by RegulatorWatch.com this week, host Brent Stafford says: “The big bad wolf of the vaping industry is none other than Michael Bloomberg.
“Over the past two decades, he spent nearly $1 billion on tobacco control initiatives, which means hundreds of millions of dollars directed towards misinformation and outright lies about vaping.”
Yet Bloomberg seems immune to criticism and faces no scrutiny from the US national media.
RegWatch guest Jim McCarthy, president of Counterpoint Strategies, which represents AVM, says: “What's alarming is that a billionaire who's working behind the scenes to strong arm public policy in a way that many scientists, leading researchers and academics think is harming public health is impervious to criticism.”
David vs King Kong AND Goliath
McCarthy says his agency is trying to help a small, nascent, innovative industry that's doing real good in terms of public health and tobacco harm reduction to fight against a “really massive juggernaut”.
He adds: “The odds are long - we're up against King Kong and Godzilla combined. We're taking on the full weight of the federal government and one of the richest Americans in U.S. history.”
The dynamics of such an unfair fight are not uncommon. McCarthy says: “They are similar to ones they see in other industries where you have regulators, press activists and litigants all collaborating and joining forces to drive hostility toward a client. And you see that in almost every other sector; energy, forest and paper, retail food and beverage.”
The difference here, he says, is that vaping is a new and growing industry without deep resources and deep roots. Those other sectors are able to hold their own and stand tall a lot more effectively - and they've got friends in the various spheres of influence.
Vaping is unique because it is helping to solve the number one cause of preventable death in the world.
“There ought to be a ticker tape parade,” McCarthy says.
Vaping’s powerful customer base
However, despite its relatively small size, the vaping industry has a strong and outspoken customer base.
McCarthy says: “It is rare to see the industrial trade association have so many good, helpful, collaborative allies among consumers and grassroots customers.”
Bloomberg, meanwhile, has been backed by a number of influential non-profits, including the anti-tobacco Truth Initiative, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association. They have all publicly called for a national ban on flavoured vapes.
McCarthy says: “It requires a lot of money. I wish I had, you know, $500 million to spend on vape advocacy. We could probably do a lot of good things.”
Bloomberg is also accused by AVM of bankrolling news organisations. McCarthy says: “He's paying outright payola to cover the issue the way he prefers. And I'm not even talking about the lobbying he conducts or the other ways he pressures policymakers behind the scenes.
“The media pushes all kinds of tenuous health harms no matter how flimsy the basis. It's all focused on scare stories. But the purpose of that is not simply to scare suburban parents, but to justify congressional measures, FDA regulatory policy, expand the regulatory state to give a kind of encouragement and implicit permission for the regulators to put that policy into effect.”
The power of money
McCarthy says there's a kind of “sycophantic relationship” with the regulators, especially in the leading major national press who depend on FDA and CDC and other regulators for access to scoops.
He says: “All of that is in contravention of what they promised the public, which is objectivity, neutrality, fairness and balance.
“It’s not just AVM or ‘New York PR flack Jim McCarthy’ saying that, it’s the studied opinion of dozens of leading scientists and academics that specialise in nicotine science and tobacco control research. It's a disturbing phenomenon that has got to be taken head-on.”
AVM researched the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax forms of the major foundations that Bloomberg is connected with - including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - and mapped out where they give money.
It discovered that, in many cases, they were giving cash to leading news organisations like CNN, National Public Radio (NPR), STAT News and Associated Press.
NPR was found to have received more than $25 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation - one of the most hardline anti-vape advocacy groups in the world.
A dog in the policy fight
McCarthy says: “Not only are they ideologically opposed to vaping, they have a dog in the policy fight: they're also heavily invested as a foundation in companies that make nicotine replacement therapies like Nicorette.”
Back in the 1950s and 60s, there was a major federal investigation that involved federal law enforcement and congressional hearings and criminal felony charges about the practice of payola. Record companies were found to be paying bribes to DJs to play certain records on in order to boost sales, and people went to jail.
“That was a major front-page scandal,” says McCarthy. “That's exactly what's happening in this situation, which is in some ways maybe even worse. I mean, what's the harm if someone hears ‘pop hit X’ versus ‘pop hit Y’. In this case, it's deterring people from quitting cigarettes.
“It's preventing the most effective smoking cessation method ever devised from getting to the market so that people can switch from cigarettes.”
AVM also chronicled the coverage on vaping by the news outlets receiving money from the foundations connected to Bloomberg.
McCarthy says: “For each one of these outlets, the grants they get have these sort of sanitised descriptions. You know, ‘$10 million to focus on issues of public health arising from tobacco abuse’. It sounds very generic and the news outlets themselves say ‘that doesn't affect our editorial choices’. So the clinical acid test is the coverage itself.
“For AP, for example, we've done at least half a dozen deep dive analyses of
specific articles of theirs that show how they are routinely slanted and exclude all other voices. Zero scepticism is applied to the FDA.”
McCarthy points to a comment on their research by a dean of media ethics at the Poynter Institute, that says “the donors don’t need to give specific marching orders”.
He says: “It's the same way that a pope or one of the Medici lords would commission an opera. You get the money, you commission the opera, and it's going to come out a certain way that's going to be pleasing to your ear.”
False heath scares
McCarthy says his agency gathered information on the various health harms falsely touted by the media as being connected to vaping. They include everything from hair loss, dental problems and erectile dysfunction.
“The falsehoods that they've been pushing about vaping,” he says. “And you see it in the data. The numbers are now like 80 per cent of the public wrongly believes that vaping is somehow as dangerous as or more dangerous than smoking. That misinformation has to be laid directly at the doorstep of the national news media.”
The Right to Switch Coalition
AVM is now set to launch a project called the ‘Right to Switch Coalition’. It will include manufacturers of the full range of low risk nicotine alternatives.
The campaign will rely on grassroots engagement and customers taking part in the public conversation and rallying stakeholders.
McCarthy says: “That happens in a number of different ways, and can be as basic as joining in on our social media and spotlighting things that need to be called out. I've been thrilled to see how many of our vape community folks have been applying community notes on Twitter [X] to the leading lights of anti-vape advocacy.”
‘It happened slowly then all at once’
But is it a fight that’s winnable?
“Yes, it is,” says McCarthy. “I mean the odds are long and the night is dark, and we're in Valley Forge, that's for sure. A lot of our fighters have no shoes and we're all hungry. But I think the sun could rise. And I think there's evidence of that.”
He adds: “At the height of prohibition, no one thought that that was ever going to end either. It seemed intractable and insurmountable.
“What's the old saying? It happened slowly and then all at once.”
