In a statement filled with misinformation, faulty science, and downright lies, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), announced they were filing a bill to create a new government program using taxpayer funding to lobby for smokers to lose access to life-saving tobacco alternatives.
Under the newly introduced PROTECT Act, a staggering half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds would be funneled to prohibitionist advocates to create “messaging” against lifesaving reduced risk products proven to help smokers quit.
As a result of previous taxpayer-funded misinformation campaigns, 59 percent of adults now falsely believe vaping is as harmful as or more harmful than smoking, despite the scientific consensus that combustible cigarettes are substantially more dangerous. This bill would only exacerbate this problem, resulting in more adults smoking, and dying as a result.
Most strikingly, the press statement was rife with downright falsehoods, claiming “Youth vaping is a public health crisis”. According to official data from the Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey in 2025, only 1.43% of all middle and high school students use e-cigarettes daily, while a meager 5.2% have tried one in the last 30 days
Meanwhile, youth cigarette smoking is practically nonexistent. Put those numbers in perspective. Just 15 years ago, 15.8 percent of high school students smoked cigarettes, and 5.3 percent smoked every single day.
Today, politicians are demanding half a billion dollars to combat a supposed “crisis” in which roughly 1.4 percent of students vape daily, even as the far deadlier behavior of youth cigarette smoking has virtually disappeared.
Make no mistake, this bill is nothing more than a blatant attempt to slug taxpayers $500 million dollars to create a new bureaucracy that would funnel the money to radical activists at precisely the moment Americans have become dangerously misinformed about the relative risks of smoking and vaping. It is anti-taxpayer, it is anti-consumer, it is anti-choice, and the only thing the Protect Act would protect is more people dying of smoking and radical bureaucrats getting rich from it.
