Adam Curry on the Great Vape Scare

It's just nuts how much money is involved in it and how many people look away. You know, people are trying to stop different flavored tobacco smoke. I see you're a vapor. Well, that, I actually looked into that very, very deeply. This was that the tobacco industry had a problem. The problem was this. I kicked cigarettes with this because it's just, you know, you can have nicotine in it or not, but, you know, it's not a tobacco. And if you had any health consequences from using that thing? Zero. Keep hearing about people getting lung issues. Well, okay. So a couple of things happened. The lung issues, and I don't know who you know personally, but there was a- I don't know anybody personally. There was a scare and the scare killed a couple of people, like 10 people. And what it turned out was that was people who had vaped THC cartridges. And some, you know, the people who put the, you buy your THC cartridges from a dispensary here, it's actually packaged by somebody else, not by that person. So you have, you know, King World or whatever, these different, you know, that's kind of a reputable brand, but it's packaged somewhere else. That means putting it, you know, putting the stuff in. And they put in some vitamin E acetate, and that just kind of like created a wet, you know, heat that up and became a web of some shit inside your lung and fucked you up. So that's a bad thing, but it had nothing to do with vaping nicotine with the typical chemicals that you get from reputable companies. Can I ask you this? Is the vaping from marijuana with their process is more problematic than the vaping of tobacco? Well, it certainly was in that case because if someone changed the formula, then you need to have some oil in there in order to keep it, you know, liquid and for it to, you know, just for it to be able to go into the vape and not be a part of the- So the issue was actually the vitamin E oil? Yes. Yes. And so that stopped, of course. Somewhere someone did something shitty and that happened. You know, a really high guy actually said this to me once. He told me that he uses organic MCT oil for his vapes and he was like handing me his vape. I'm like, bro, I'm not sucking on your vape. I don't even know you. You could be a crazy person. You could be, you could be DMT vapes. They have DMT vapes now. Somebody hands you a vape pen. You might be going into orbit. For 20 minutes. Yeah, for 20 minutes. What if you're driving? You know, I've flown a helicopter high. On DMT? No, no, on weed. Oh, that's a different animal. Yeah, with an instructor. You know, he wanted to see how I did it and it was perfect. Yeah, I play pool, which is a very sensitive thing. Not quite the same as death by helicopter, but- It's not. But you're controlling the rotations of a ball. It's very delicate. Yeah, isn't that nice? Like literally the amount of effort you put, if you watch a good player, the amount of effort they put really, accurately depicts how many revolutions of the cue ball. I'm sure, yeah. And after it's colliding with the object ball, and you get more sensitive to that when you're high. Yeah. Jiu-jitsu is another one. A lot of people do jiu-jitsu high. Really? Interesting. Yep. It's really, really, really common. Guys smoke out in the parking lot and then go roll. It's really common. Well, that was, I did the most perfect landing ever when I- Probably super into it. Oh, and it's very small input. The helicopter, you've seen it. Yeah. Very, very small. Anyway, so the tobacco industry had a real issue. And that also comes back to the states, because there's this master agreement that was put in place decades ago, that tobacco companies would pay a percentage of their sales to all states to- it's a pre-compensation for whatever fucked up shit people get from smoking tobacco. And all these states wrote big bonds against that money. And so when the income from the tobacco companies was decreasing significantly because of vaping, all of a sudden the states are going, especially this one, oh, what the fuck? We have these bonds, these bonds are going to become go bust. That's, you know, when you have your state bond go bust, you know, it's a real problem. It's a financial issue. States and cities and everything go broke. So everyone had an incentive to get rid of vaping and get people back on tobacco. So they, Altria, bought Juul, the vape- And the vape- I mean, this is, you know, hardcore, this is, you know, got a battery, it's all technical, you get the vape juice. Juul is a pre-packaged product, kids were buying it like- What's the benefit of that over Juul? You can control how much the draw is- Because I see dudes that look like dragons, they blow these gigantic- Yeah, and you can put whatever you wanted, not just limited by what Juul wants to sell you. Anyway, back to the- because you like this story. So tobacco states, everyone's keyed up. They buy Juul for 18 billion dollars. They buy it as a write-off. They want to get this company out of the market. Then they go to the FDA and they start all this shit about flavors, flavors, flavors, flavors. You saw it everywhere, it was massive. It was a perfect storm. We had 10 people dying from vaping, something completely unrelated, but vaping, e-cigarettes. He had an e-cigarette, he died. It was actually- yeah, he vaped, but he vaped a bad THC cartridge and, you know, got a severe problem. So you know how the media plays that and it just kept on spinning and spinning. They're like, well, we have to stop the children, and the way you stop it is by taking away the flavors, because children, they want flavors, that's what the problem is. So that fucked Juul over. And actually, Altria, who used to- they bought Philip Morris, basically, so it's the biggest tobacco company. They start- they already wrote down half of it. Just taking the fucking L on it. They want to get rid of it, because in the wings, they had their competing products, which is IQOS. I quit ordinary smoking, small i, capital QOS. And it heats tobacco. So it's a- it looks like a vape pen, it has- but it actually runs on tobacco and it doesn't burn it. It heats it up, has whatever- some kind of mechanism in the filter, you inhale, and it's almost their dream, which is the smokeless cigarette, very close to it. But most importantly, it's not a nicotine- synthetic nicotine, it is tobacco product, which is their business. And they got- they really ratcheted this up so high that they got Trump involved. And Trump actually, with Melania, they did a thing with Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary. He said, well, you know, this vaping is very dangerous, we have a kid, actually, you know, it was one of those moments where everyone loves to jump on Trump. He said Melania has a kid, you know, he forgot to say it was his, whatever it was. And now he's actually been overheard saying, I wish I'd never gotten involved in that fucking thing, because he figured it out. He figured out it was a huge scam. The bill has been stopped, but now they're still trying to push through a bill that will help the tobacco companies even more by outlawing any type of flavored e-cigarettes or juice, liquid, or- they just want to get rid of it. So it's really like who killed the electric car? It's exactly that. And they just- look at it now. IQOS, they're launching this new stories today that say, oh my God, it's the saving grace. We have the new product we've all been waiting for right at the moment that vaping is going to kill you. It's hooking children because of flavors. So do you think they're hiring people to write news stories and the news organizations are picking you up because they're being told to do this? Just do a press release. Just do a press release. Come on. It's so easy in the media to do a press release and- oh, by the way, we're Altria, so we're going to buy $500 million worth of advertising over the next five years. Would you please run our story or, you know, you might want to look at this. Come on. Tobacco. So do you think that they make a deal before they accept the press release to do advertising or do they wait a little bit? You don't even have to say anything. It's just- Yeah. It's implied. Why do you not hear the discussion about over-medication of children on television? Look at the number one advertiser. If you start talking, it's just not discussed. You can't have this discussion. Because it is a controversial subject and it would be a good subject for television because it would get a lot of people paying attention to it. It would get a lot of ratings if you have a lot of stories about over-medication of children. People would be like, what is going on? It would be something people would be interested in. Yeah. And yet, they don't do it. Because the advertising- Right. Right. I mean, just look at your advertising. I have to turn off the sound these days because I'm sure that I'm being blanketed with so many ads that eventually I'm going to get propetia. Eventually I'm going to get high blood pressure. My dick's not going to work. Because that's what you're telling you. Every commercial block. Yeah. Everyone. It's pharmaceutical. Like cable news especially because it's an older demographic. But even watch- what is it? What do they have? Where they have two and a half men running all- TV land. Two and a half men and what's the other one? Doug and Carrie. I love that. Come on. Kevin James. Two and a half men? No, no, no. Doug and Carrie. Where is the UPS driver? Oh, King of Queens. King of Queens, yeah. But I don't watch sitcoms anymore. I can watch that. That's a funny show. I can just watch it over and over again. Kevin's a good dude. But then- Every commercial break? Boom. Drugs. Yeah. What is it- which documentary was it that had a description about the United States saying that we are one of two countries in the world that allows advertising pharmaceuticals. Yes, I think Australia is the other. I think it's New Zealand. Okay. It's either Australia or New Zealand. Either one because it's like a real fuck up. It is, yeah. Call out the wrong one of those two. I think it's- I'm pretty sure it's New Zealand. Uh-huh. But that, for whatever reason, everybody else is like, what are you crazy? Yeah. And once we got it in there, it's like once something becomes something that everybody does- We are crazy. It's really difficult to fix. It's crazy.