◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek September 23, 2019
35that he wouldn’t have done the same thing if he
knew what he knows now about the vaping epi-
demic. “Absolutely not,” he said. He keeps coming
back to the point: “Had we known what we know
now, or learned in 2018,” he says today, “there’s lit-
tle doubt we would have made different decisions.”
He adds that one of his reasons for pushing back the
review was that the FDA hadn’t yet created applica-
tion guidelines, which are only now being finalized.
Still, in September 2018, reports of a marked
increase in youth vaping led Gottlieb to threaten a
stop to sales if five major e-cigarette manufacturers
didn’t come up with plans to stem what he called
an “epidemic.” He met with representatives of Juul
and Altria. He followed up in March 2019—not by
stopping sales, but by proposing to move the dead-
line for review of flavored e-cigarettes up a year to
August 2021. After Trump and Azar announced plans
to dramatically revise the administration’s e-cig pol-
icy, Gottlieb tweeted, “If I seem personally upset by
this turn of events today, it’s because I’ve watched
Juul actively work to try and thwart public health
efforts to get better regulation over products that we
know are hurting children.” Juul said in an emailed
statement that it supports “aggressive category-wide
action on flavored products” and would comply
with any forthcoming FDA guidance.
It’s unclear exactly when this will arrive. Azar
said the FDA is in charge of issuing guidelines, which
he expected would take several weeks. But details
were sparse, and nothing is yet on paper. Indeed,
who’s in charge of the new policy and its formula-
tion is unclear. By law, Sharpless’s term as acting
commissioner is up on Nov. 1, and Trump may
choose not to nominate him to head the agency
permanently. The president has been considering
Stephen Hahn, who helps run the MD Anderson
Cancer Center, for the job. And once Trump makes
his choice, it will take time for the Senate to hold
a hearing and vote to confirm the nominee. Many
legislators are distracted by the long runup to next
year’s presidential elections.
Scientific investigation into the risks continues.
Health officials have warned that vapes that include
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, have largely
been to blame for the illnesses, but they haven’t
ruled out nicotine vapes. Meanwhile, the vaping
industry has time to try to water down any restric-
tions. Last year, Josh Raffel, a former White House
spokesman who was close to Jared Kushner and
Ivanka Trump, joined Juul as spokesman. The com-
pany also hired Johnny DeStefano, a former Trump
adviser, as an outside consultant.
In recent months, Juul has said it’s trying to keep
kids away from addictive flavors such as mango and
cucumber and blamed counterfeit flavor pods that
work with its devices for spurring underage vaping.
That was echoed by the White House just two days
after Trump’s tough talk. The president tweeted:
“While I like the Vaping alternative to Cigarettes, we
need to make sure this alternative is SAFE for ALL!
Let’s get counterfeits off the market, and keep young
children from Vaping!”�Anna EdneyHow a Foreign Investor Rattled a
Tiny African Economy
Southern African mountain kingdom, meaning that
Moteane and other small brokers would have to shut
down. Since then, thousands of farmers have had to
wait a year or more to be paid by Shi’s brokerage;
some say they’ve been underpaid, and others say
they haven’t been paid at all. Approximately 75% of
Lesotho’s population lives in rural areas and relies
on wool and mohair for income. Some herders have
been forced to eat their flocks to survive.
At $67 million, Lesotho’s wool industryTHE BOTTOM LINE A regulatory delay allowed the
vaping industry ample time to grow while safety questions
went unanswered.● Guohui Shi secured a monopoly on Lesotho’s primary export, then stopped paying producers
2011 2019*24%120● Share of U.S. middle
and high school
students who reported
use within the past
30 days
◼Cigarettes
◼ E-cigarettesMohlalefi Moteane runs his wool and mohair
brokerage out of his veterinary practice, housed in
a small building on a dirt road in Maseru, the ram-
shackle capital of Lesotho. When a young Chinese
businessman visited in 2012 asking to join the busi-
ness, Moteane turned him away. He saw no need for
taking on a partner he didn’t know.
Six years later the same businessman, Guohui
Shi, and his Lesotho Wool Centre were awarded a
monopoly over the wool and mohair trade in the