While the FDA and the CDC concentrated federal resources on hyping a fabricated epidemic of vaping, the nation sat vulnerable to pandemic.
In 2019, the CDC spent almost $1.2 billion on “Chronic disease prevention and health promotion,” allocating $210 million specifically towards funding on anti-tobacco initiatives, including its war on vaping. Funding for “immunization and respiratory diseases” and “public health preparedness,” projects each hovered around $800 million.
Michelle Minton, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in consumer policy and regulatory issues, told The Federalist the CDC and FDA failures in the wake of the novel coronavirus are a direct result of having shifted their attention away from deadly infectious diseases to concentrate on “diseases by and large caused by the person.”
“Their focus is on chronic diseases,” said Minton “Their myopic focus is really what left us unprepared.”
Minton argues that on vaping in particular, the government has “functionally just wasted their money” by hyping vaping hysteria among the nation’s young people. That in fact has likely driven more kids to experiment with the products.
“What is says to kids,” Minton said of the government’s anti-vaping campaign, “is everybody’s doing it.”