Liz Essley Whyte

There was a real panic about these flavored vaping products and e-cigarettes that, you know, you'd walk into a high school bathroom and it was just a cloud of vape.

And this was really bad to, you know, get all these kids addicted to nicotine.

And you would come and smoke how often?

Oh, I couldn't go longer than like 10, 15 minutes without hitting it.

And then there was a time period where there was kind of an outbreak of lung disease and respiratory issues.

In tonight's Healthwatch, more disturbing news about the dangers of vaping.

And people became increasingly concerned that something was going on with these products or they had been contaminated in some way that were harming the lungs of our young people.

We had reported at the time that Trump's wife, Melania Trump, was an influential figure during this time and being concerned about her own son's health and safety and talking to her husband about that.

And they ended up with sort of a compromised position where they said, we will allow menthol and tobacco-flavored vapes to remain on the market, but everything else is getting the boot.

Yeah, the flavoring is thought to be more appealing to children and to teenagers.

The thought is, you know, you're not going to go try a tobacco-flavored vape as a 13-year-old, but maybe blueberry would sound really fun or maybe, you know, watermelon fantasia would sound amazing or things like that.

These Chinese vapes, you know, that were illegal and possibly contaminated were just everywhere at any gas station.

And there are a lot of people who say, we don't really even know what's in these products.

So there was really no healthy, robust, regulated market

It was mostly an illegal market that had sprung up.

They are in gas stations.

They are in smoke shops.

You know, it is not hard to get your hands on a flavored vape.

We know that his advisers really identified vaping as a way to reach young men who were a key constituency in the MAGA coalition.

And it appealed to Trump's brand of, I'm going to do what's right for the American people.