In This Episode
Meredith Berkman, the co-founder of Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes, joins us today to expose the truth about the real harm that E-cigarettes are causing, in particular, the brand Juul.
She talks about the chemistry of the new nicotine compounds, the very shrewd and insidious marketing to kids, and what her foundation is doing to get the production halted on flavored cartridges.
Topics Discussed
- How E cigs are undoing the anti-smoking campaigns
- Use of flavored compounds to hook kids
- What nicotine does to developing brains
- What exactly is vaping
- Juul patenting nicotine salts
- What is nicotine salt
- Kids don’t know that nicotine is in vape juice
- How she came to found her organization
- Juul marketing to kids on social media and other shady business practices
- Comparison to the opioid crisis
- How to help get flavored cartridges banned
All About Meredith Berkman
Meredith Berkman is a co-founder of Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes, a national grassroots advocacy group formed by three New York moms as a response to the youth vaping epidemic. I
n less than a year, PAVe has emerged as an influential stakeholder actively engaged, along with its many partners, in the fight for regulatory and legislative changes necessary to slow the explosive growth of vaping among teens, particularly the use of JUUL, and keep younger kids from starting to JUUL.
PAVe’s advocacy is focused, for the moment, on banning e-cigarette flavors (research has proven that flavors hook kids) and raising the minimum age for tobacco purchase from 18 to 21.
Berkman, a mother of four, is a graduate of Brown University, where she is a longtime Hillel board member, and of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
A former journalist, she was a magazine writer for magazines including New York and Entertainment Weekly, and a columnist for newspapers including the New York Post.
