Bill to raise tobacco age has unlikely allies: Altria, Juul
Congress is moving to pass the biggest new sales restrictions on tobacco products in more than a decade, with support from two unlikely backers: Marlboro-cigarette maker Altria and vaping giant Juul Labs. The legislation would raise the minimum age to purchase all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 to 21 nationwide, a step long-sought by health advocates. But in the past year Juul and Altria have emerged as the biggest supporters of the measure, blanketing Capitol Hill with lobbyists and advertisements touting their support for a national “Tobacco 21” law. Tobacco critics contend the companies’ support is calculated to head off even harder-hitting government action: a ban on all flavored tobacco products, including fruit and dessert e-cigarettes. Their stance puts them in the unusual position of criticizing a move they long supported, arguing that the sales restriction isn’t enough. “Altria and Juul clearly support this in order to argue that no other action is necessary,” said Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “If you don’t eliminate the flavors that the industry has used to fuel the epidemic, you won’t solve the youth e-cigarette crisis.” The bipartisan legislation, supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has been attached to a package of must-pass spending bills that will keep the government running into next year. Juul and Altria — the vaping company’s biggest investor — threw their support behind the bill earlier this year amid a backlash against e-cigarettes at the local, state and national levels. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that typically heat a flavored nicotine solution into an inhalable aerosol. Current federal law prohibits sales of e-cigarettes and all other tobacco products to those under 18. But more than one in four high school students report vaping regularly, according to the latest government figures. And health officials have called the vaping trend an “epidemic.” Until September, Juul argued that its sweet flavors — including mango, mint and fruit — could help adult smokers switch from traditional cigarettes to vaping. But the company dropped that message as President Donald Trump announced plans to remove virtually all vaping flavors from the market, due to their appeal to children. The Silicon Valley company has halted sales of all but two of its flavors, menthol and tobacco, and pledged not to oppose Trump’s plan. But momentum for the nationwide ban has faded amid push-back from vaping advocates and some conservative groups. And Trump has voiced support for alternative approaches to keep e-cigarettes away from kids, including raising the purchase age to 21. The age hike is expected to limit the supply of all vaping and tobacco products in high schools by putting them out of reach to 12th graders. Myers’ group and other health advocates say Congress should both raise the age limit and ban all “kid-friendly” flavors. Even with most of Juul’s flavors off the market, smaller companies continue to market an array of flavored products, including “grape slushie,” “strawberry cotton candy” and “sea salt blueberry.” And the industry’s main trade association is suing to keep e-cigarettes, including flavors, widely available. Altria, the nation’s largest tobacco company, said it supports a “clean” Tobacco 21 bill — focused exclusively on raising the age limit — because it is the “quickest and most effective” way to address the recent surge in teen vaping. For decades previously, Altria and other tobacco companies aggressively defended the 18-year-old minimum purchase age. Juul has similarly supported legislation that raises the purchase age without touching flavors. And while the companies say they lobby separately, both quickly backed the Tobacco 21 bill introduced in May by McConnell and Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine. The companies’ support sapped attention away from other proposals that would have gone much further. For example, a bill from New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone would have raised the purchase age to 21 and banned flavors from all vaping and tobacco products — including menthol cigarettes — and prohibited online sales. The bill was endorsed by a dozen health groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association. “Flavors attract kids and kids are the tobacco industry — including the e-cigarette industry’s — future,” said Erika Sward, a vice president with the American Lung Association. But efforts to advance flavor restrictions in the Senate fell flat, including a bill sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican-Alaska, and Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat-Illnois, that was withdrawn from committee consideration at the last minute. “Because I wasn’t certain that I had the votes at the time,” Murkowski told The Associated Press. “You don’t want to lose.” The logic for hiking the purchase age for cigarettes is clear: most underage teens who use tobacco get it from older friends. An estimated 90 percent of smokers start before age 18. Delaying access to cigarettes is expected to produce major downstream health benefits, with one government-funded report estimating nearly 250,000 fewer deaths due to tobacco over several decades. Still, anti-tobacco experts say age restrictions are only effective when they are vigorously enforced, and tobacco sales can fall through the cracks amid a patchwork of local, state and federal law enforcement. They point to underage drinking as an example of the limited impact of age-based restrictions. State laws banning tobacco sales to those under 18 evolved over several decades and were reinforced by a federal law in 2009. The same law banned all flavors from traditional cigarettes except menthol, which received a special exception at the behest of tobacco lobbyists. More than a third of U.S. states — including California, Illinois, New York and Texas — and the District of Columbia have already raised their minimum purchase age to 21. Anti-smoking groups have tracked the trend with measured support, noting the role of Juul and Altria lobbyists behind many of the efforts. In several cases, anti-tobacco advocates have flagged provisions that they say undercut the state laws’ effectiveness. These provisions, known as pre-emption, can stop city and county officials from imposing stricter tobacco
Donald Trump conservative critics launch PAC to fight reelection
A small group of President Donald Trump’s fiercest conservative critics, including the husband of the president’s own chief adviser, is launching a super PAC designed to fight Trump’s reelection and punish congressional Republicans deemed his “enablers.” The new organization, known as the Lincoln Project, represents a formal step forward for the so-called Never Trump movement, which has been limited largely to social media commentary and cable news attacks through the first three years of Trump’s presidency. Organizers report fundraising commitments exceeding $1 million to begin, although they hope to raise and spend much more to fund a months-long advertising campaign in a handful of 2020 battleground states to persuade disaffected Republican voters to break from Trump’s GOP. The mission, as outlined in a website that launched Tuesday coinciding with a New York Times opinion piece, is simple: “Defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.” The group is led by a seven-person advisory council that features some of the GOP’s most vocal Trump critics. Most, but not all, have already left the Republican Party to protest Trump’s rise. The principals include former John McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich adviser John Weaver, former New Hampshire GOP chair Jennifer Horn, veteran Republican operative Rick Wilson and George Conway, a conservative attorney and husband of Trump’s chief counselor Kellyanne Conway. In an interview, George Conway said that he encouraged the new super PAC to involve Anonymous, an unnamed Trump administration official who authored a recent book warning the public against Trump’s reelection. The rest of the group ultimately decided not to take Conway’s suggestion. “I think the more the merrier,” George Conway told The Associated Press. “And I hope maybe he — he or she, I don’t know who Anonymous is — will come out someday and join the effort. Because everyone who believes as we do that Donald Trump is a cancer on the presidency and on the Constitution needs to help and join this effort.” The inception of the Lincoln Project is significant, but to say it represents a minority of Trump’s Republican Party would be an understatement. Roughly 9 in 10 Republican voters approved of the president’s job performance and have all year, according to Gallup. And with very few exceptions, Trump has the public backing of virtually every Republican member of Congress. Yet recent elections suggest that Trump’s party is losing ground with educated voters and women, particularly in America’s suburbs, which have traditionally leaned Republican. This new group hopes to push those voters further toward the Democrats. It is very much a work in progress, despite Tuesday’s official launch. While the core players don’t yet have titles, day-to-day operations will be led by Horn and Reed Galen, a veteran Republican operative who worked for McCain but left the GOP after Trump’s nomination in 2016. The group begins as a super PAC, which means it can raise and spend unlimited sums of money and must disclose its donors. “You’re seeing a shift from talk into action,” said Galen, describing the launch as “a big turning point for the political season and for the president’s reelection.” Specifically, the group plans to focus on blocking Trump’s reelection and defeating Trump-allied Senate candidates in a handful of key 2020 battlegrounds. To do so, it’s targeting a narrow but important slice of the electorate: disaffected Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. While there is no concrete road map, Weaver said the organizers plan to fight the president’s reelection in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with Arizona and North Carolina. Their Senate efforts likely would focus on Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Maine and possibly Kansas and Kentucky. Weaver said the group is already reviewing scripts for new ads, which are expected to begin running early next year. “This is organic, and we’re going to be flexible,” he said. “We have to go out and prove ourselves and prove that we can be efficient and effective.” Meanwhile, George Conway, who formally left the GOP last year, said he likely would serve in a “cheerleader” capacity for the new organization because of his limited political experience. “I’m not a fundraiser or political consultant, but if I could help in that way and learn how to do that — even to raise a nickel or two — I’ll do it because it’s important,” he said. “For this, I think I can make an exception.” He suggested the Lincoln Project would pay particular attention to Congress’ impeachment proceedings. “If he’s not removed by the Senate, he needs to be removed at the ballot box,” he said of Trump. “The people in Congress who are enabling him, either actively or passively, they, too, are violating their oaths of office. … And they need to be removed, too.” Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.” By Steve Peoples AP National Politics Writer Republished with the Permission of the Associated Press.
Bradley Byrne: Answering the call – fighting a phony impeachment
This year Democrats finally did what they have wanted to do since November 2016 – move to impeach President Donald Trump. This plan was politically motivated from the beginning, and I decided to lead the fight against it. This initial investigation into Donald Trump should never have begun in the first place. During the Obama Presidency, partisan government officials abused their power and used a phony dossier paid for by Democrat political operatives to justify the investigation. How could they run a phony investigation into then-candidate Trump while giving Secretary Hillary Clinton a pass on her many clear violations of the law? I introduced a bill called the Investigate the Investigators Act to get the answers the American people deserve. This bill would enable the Department of Justice to determine what President Barack Obama and his Administration knew and when they knew it and why numerous questionable decisions were made in 2016 and beyond. As expected, Nancy Pelosi had no interest in bringing to light answers that could undermine her impeachment scheme. One of the key facets of her plan was to hold proceedings in the House Intelligence Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee. The Intelligence Committee is one of the House’s smallest committees, where the Speaker essentially handpicks its members. Pelosi had a ready-made impeachment team loyal to her, led by Chairman Adam Schiff. Another characteristic of the Intelligence Committee is that it often examines classified material and has wide latitude to hold secret hearings to protect classified information. Schiff and Pelosi abused this to hold hearings in a classified meeting room called a SCIF, deep in the basement of the Capitol where the public and press could not access the facts. Even though the information they reviewed was not classified, the public was kept out. Several of my colleagues and I had enough. We entered the SCIF to observe the proceedings as we should be entitled to do as the people’s representatives. Amazingly, Adam Schiff shut down the hearings. But we kept up the pressure. Eventually Democrats agreed to release their secret transcripts. Let’s not forget what started this whole Ukraine mess – Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings. While Hunter’s dad, Joe Biden, was Vice President of the United States, Hunter was making lucrative deals in countries like Ukraine and China. In Ukraine, where his dad was leading U.S. foreign policy efforts, Hunter was serving on the board of a sketchy energy company called Burisma Holdings. In the past, Joe Biden has bragged openly about successfully pressuring the Ukrainian government to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor or risk losing United States assistance. That same prosecutor was allegedly investigating Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat at the time! President Trump recognized the importance of rooting out corruption in a country to which we give millions of dollars in foreign aid, and he was totally justified in being skeptical of a new administration in a notoriously corrupt country. If the same facts in the Biden case occurred with someone named Trump or Byrne, Democrats would have already launched a full-scale investigation. I decided to expose this hypocrisy. In October, I introduced a House resolution calling for an investigation into the Bidens’ shady business dealings. Democrats will not consider it. The fact that they are continuing their sham Trump investigation while ignoring the real Biden scandal reveals their political motivations. Throughout this investigation, I’ve continued to lead the charge against Democrats’ phony charges and hypocrisy. Democrats will not let up working to remove President Trump from office, even after he is acquitted by the Senate. You can rest assured I will continue to be a strong leader in the fight to protect President Trump.
