Liz Essley Whyte

I'm not going to basically let big government trample on your rights.

Skepticism of the public health establishment that followed the pandemic

Yeah, I heard a lot of optimism at the beginning of the administration, but then there wasn't much action.

You know, there was very little movement from the FDA.

And my understanding is the industry came to the conclusion that the person standing in their way was Dr. Marty McCary.

You have to have an app on your phone, and you have to prove your age, and you can't use the device without it being near the phone, and it'll randomly at other times make you kind of reprove your age.

In addition, they had a range of flavors that they were seeking approval for.

So they had tobacco flavors, menthol flavors, and they had what they called golden sapphire flavors, which were mango and blueberry.

But after that, a memo came from the commissioner's office.

And the memo said, actually, you know, we need more time.

We're not really sure about whether this age-gated technology is adequate.

So the application was ultimately stalled by FDA Commissioner Marty McCary.

Yes.

Yeah.

And, you know, this is years into this process for this company.

And it was viewed as this kind of...

abrupt turnaround from them working with the FDA closely, they were feeling like this was political interference.

According to the people I've talked to, McCary thinks fruit-flavored vapes are a huge public health risk and children should not have any access to them.

He doesn't want to be seen as the doctor who allowed those onto the market.

He's worried that the statistics around youth vaping are inaccurate, that it's actually really bad still.