US Sen. Commerce, Sci. & Transport Cmte Hearings Weds 6/18 2:30p - advertising and marketing
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Sure you can and sure he is. You just can't type it on ECF
He and Myers appeared to be having a moment, remembering all the fine regressive work they fantasize that they've accomplished.
Steve K's essay on yesterday's hearing: Windbag Senators Hold Kangaroo eCig Hearing
Let's see, Jay Rockefeller has spent 30 years in the Senate after 8 years as WV Governor. He got his political training as a State Rep almost 50 years ago. A member of the sixth generation of relatives living their lives off the teat of John D money. Never having lived in the real world, never having had a real job, he knows well what's wrong with this country. Right!
"The sale and marketing of any and all nicotine and tobacco products ... "
Does this include vegetables?
Once a child gets his/her first taste of a a tomato, eggplant, cauliflower, pepper or even green tea, the gateway to a lifetime of nicotine is opened. Why do I feel like a scene from ...... Madness.
*edit- Really? The name of a movie based on what is now legal in several states gets auto censured. Now I feel like 1984.
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I think I've read all of the 50 or so pieces written on the hearing - a surprisingly high fraction of which came from abroad. That fact alone suggests a certain level of ennui on the part of the US media. What garnered hundreds of headlines in a period bookended by the Feb 26th introduction of PCECAA and the April 14th release of the Durbin report has now been apparently reduced to the status of a summer sitcom re-run.
The vast majority of these recent reports on Weds' hearing took their cues from the AP's piece by Jennifer Kerr - which was widely resyndicated and/or exerpted:
http://www.wtop.com/267/
3646322/Electronic-cigarettes-makers-under-fire-in-Senate
[You can paste that entire link into your browser. The extra line won't matter.]
First, most articles included at least some information that was helpful to our side, such as the points about cessation made by both Healy and Weiss, or Healy's observation that Blu's surveys show that the average age of their consumers is 51, or even (in a few cases) the CDC's recent Youth Risk Behavior statistics on the lowest-ever reported rate of teen smoking since 1991 (sadly, this latter point was somewhat harder to locate, but I think I saw it mentioned a couple of times). This stands in sharp contrast to the vast majority of articles published during the two "minor-gateway-to-tobacco" feeding frenzies, which were separated by the "e-cigarettes don't help smokers quit" media storm started by Grana, Popov & Ling, and the poison party started by Matt Richtel's NYT ("poison by the barrel") article and culminating in Frieden's CDC "skyrocketing" press release that accompanied the CDC's jimmied Morbidity and Mortality report at the beginning of April.
During both "minor gateway to tobacco cigarettes" periods, few if any pieces contained even the slightest hint that vaping may have any benefit whatsoever to public health, instead it was portrayed as a merely recreational activity that BT was using to lead millions of American teenagers down the primrose path of combustible tobacco use
Which brings me to the second major difference, and that is that relatively few of the articles treated the allegations as fact. It's one thing to say that a bunch of Senators were "excoriating" CEOs for doing something, and quite another to report that the evil in question is actually ocurring. Compare these two headlines:
Law would stop Big Tobacco from marketing e-cigs to kids
versus
Senators Slam E-Cig Marketing
(We might not like either one. But there is a difference between reporting an accusation, and reporting that the accusation is true.)
Relatively few pieces followed the example of Eliza Gray in Time, by completely obfuscating the difference between opinion writing and standard journalism (as is so often the case with media coverage of vaping, and which was certainly true during the minor gateway-to-tobacco feeding frenzy periods):
http://time.com/
2896962/electronic-cigarette-executives-get-schooled-in-senate-hearing/
(Eliza Gray has written several such pieces for Time, this is by no means the first anti-vaping diatribe that she's penned under the pretense of "covering a story.")
We even got a few relatively decent artcles for a change from semi-mainstream sources, such as Steven Nelson in US News, who actually quotes Greg, Carl, and Julie (in that order);
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/06/18/
major-e-cigarette-companys-president-wants-flavor-restrictions
Or this one in the Washington Examiner:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/
you-are-what-is-wrong-with-this-country-jay-rockefeller-and-senate-democrats-open-fire-on-e-cigarette-presidents/article/2549946
The Examiner was the only piece that I've seen that picked up Healy's boast that he is now a dual user. (Personally, I wish he hadn't put it quite that way.) Weiss also made a comment about "renormalization" that I didn't find particularly helpful to our cause, which mirrors the remark made by his marketing dir. last Oct (reported by our bosom buddy Matt Richtel in NYT). Happily, that seems to have gone unnoticed. Blumenthal's use of the phrase "big nicotine" also doesn't yet appear to have spread. (I'm surprised about that - sounded to me as if it had a lot of incendiary potential.)
The bottom line is that these hearings didn't seem to have had much of a media impact. Although I still feel that we should be bracing for a "back to school" impact after Labor Day. Remember, we stil have the survey of 20,000 kids that the CDC is working on, or the 400,000 in the state of CA's report. No matter what the data actually shows, we can rest assured that it will be 'cooked' in order to produce timely screaming headlines.
BTW it appears that SFATA knew about the hearings on Thursday of last week, which was a full four days before they hit ECF in the form of this topic, and three days before the first mainstream media report.
The vast majority of these recent reports on Weds' hearing took their cues from the AP's piece by Jennifer Kerr - which was widely resyndicated and/or exerpted:
http://www.wtop.com/267/
3646322/Electronic-cigarettes-makers-under-fire-in-Senate
[You can paste that entire link into your browser. The extra line won't matter.]
First, most articles included at least some information that was helpful to our side, such as the points about cessation made by both Healy and Weiss, or Healy's observation that Blu's surveys show that the average age of their consumers is 51, or even (in a few cases) the CDC's recent Youth Risk Behavior statistics on the lowest-ever reported rate of teen smoking since 1991 (sadly, this latter point was somewhat harder to locate, but I think I saw it mentioned a couple of times). This stands in sharp contrast to the vast majority of articles published during the two "minor-gateway-to-tobacco" feeding frenzies, which were separated by the "e-cigarettes don't help smokers quit" media storm started by Grana, Popov & Ling, and the poison party started by Matt Richtel's NYT ("poison by the barrel") article and culminating in Frieden's CDC "skyrocketing" press release that accompanied the CDC's jimmied Morbidity and Mortality report at the beginning of April.
During both "minor gateway to tobacco cigarettes" periods, few if any pieces contained even the slightest hint that vaping may have any benefit whatsoever to public health, instead it was portrayed as a merely recreational activity that BT was using to lead millions of American teenagers down the primrose path of combustible tobacco use
Which brings me to the second major difference, and that is that relatively few of the articles treated the allegations as fact. It's one thing to say that a bunch of Senators were "excoriating" CEOs for doing something, and quite another to report that the evil in question is actually ocurring. Compare these two headlines:
Law would stop Big Tobacco from marketing e-cigs to kids
versus
Senators Slam E-Cig Marketing
(We might not like either one. But there is a difference between reporting an accusation, and reporting that the accusation is true.)
Relatively few pieces followed the example of Eliza Gray in Time, by completely obfuscating the difference between opinion writing and standard journalism (as is so often the case with media coverage of vaping, and which was certainly true during the minor gateway-to-tobacco feeding frenzy periods):
http://time.com/
2896962/electronic-cigarette-executives-get-schooled-in-senate-hearing/
(Eliza Gray has written several such pieces for Time, this is by no means the first anti-vaping diatribe that she's penned under the pretense of "covering a story.")
We even got a few relatively decent artcles for a change from semi-mainstream sources, such as Steven Nelson in US News, who actually quotes Greg, Carl, and Julie (in that order);
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/06/18/
major-e-cigarette-companys-president-wants-flavor-restrictions
Or this one in the Washington Examiner:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/
you-are-what-is-wrong-with-this-country-jay-rockefeller-and-senate-democrats-open-fire-on-e-cigarette-presidents/article/2549946
The Examiner was the only piece that I've seen that picked up Healy's boast that he is now a dual user. (Personally, I wish he hadn't put it quite that way.) Weiss also made a comment about "renormalization" that I didn't find particularly helpful to our cause, which mirrors the remark made by his marketing dir. last Oct (reported by our bosom buddy Matt Richtel in NYT). Happily, that seems to have gone unnoticed. Blumenthal's use of the phrase "big nicotine" also doesn't yet appear to have spread. (I'm surprised about that - sounded to me as if it had a lot of incendiary potential.)
The bottom line is that these hearings didn't seem to have had much of a media impact. Although I still feel that we should be bracing for a "back to school" impact after Labor Day. Remember, we stil have the survey of 20,000 kids that the CDC is working on, or the 400,000 in the state of CA's report. No matter what the data actually shows, we can rest assured that it will be 'cooked' in order to produce timely screaming headlines.
BTW it appears that SFATA knew about the hearings on Thursday of last week, which was a full four days before they hit ECF in the form of this topic, and three days before the first mainstream media report.
Excellent background summary and analysis!
Actually, the fact?rumor? that there would be a hearing was bruited about several weeks ago. (I may have seen it on twitter, or possibly a blog, but it's too early today for the reliable-memory neurons to be firing. And I can't remember who did the bruiting; it may have been SFATA) At that time, I checked the committee website: nada. Then it dropped off the radar until the "official" announcement.
Perhaps Congress is taking a page from the ANTZ legislators' playbook: hold a hearing but don't announce it until just before, so the vapers won't have time to get in place and organize opposition.
A bit OT: I'm pleased to see that the Senators (Boxer and Rockefeller in particular) are being inundated with tweets by Adult Vapers Who Like Flavors.
A good read Roger.
Let's hope the 2014 circus doesn't let us down in this regard.
I'm thinking the election coverage might trump evil e-cigs. By September we'll be seeing politician's skeletons walk out of closets and there will be enough juicy gaffes on both sides to make both FOX and MSNBC squeal with glee.
Let's hope the 2014 circus doesn't let us down in this regard.
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