This week’s episode highlights Sara, a New York State pediatrician who has been fighting the tobacco industry’s targeting of teens on multiple fronts: as a doctor seeking to protect her patients; as a PAVe volunteer warning other parents; and, most importantly, as a mom desperate to help her college-age son quit vaping.  ..read more

On today’s episode, we learn more about the science behind e-cigarette dependence and nicotine addiction with Dr. Nora Volkow, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health.   Dr. Volkow, a leading expert on drug use, addiction, and the human brain, explains how and why flavors have been and continue to be a key component in hooking millions of our kids on vaping ..read more

On today’s episode we interview Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, Chief Medical Officer for Prevention at the American Heart Association, about the public health lessons learned from the fight against smoking that can help solve the youth vaping epidemic.  Sanchez, a former Texas Health Commissioner and father of four, explains why a multi-pronged approach that simultaneously focuses on identifying treatments for teen nicotine addiction, researching short and long term harms of vaping, and pushing for regulations at the state and federal levels must be the way forward.  ..read more

Decades ago, tobacco Industry research  revealed that menthol amplifies nicotine addiction, especially in African Americans; the more melanin in a smoker’s skin,  the greater menthol’s impact. Armed with this knowledge, Big Tobacco methodically marketed menthol combustible cigarettes to African Americans; the more melanin in a smoker’s skin, the greater menthol’s impact. (In 2009, when the federal government banned flavored cigarettes, menthol was the blatant exemption.) Last April, after years of inexplicable delay, a federal lawsuit brought by plaintiffs including the African Amer ..read more

On this week’s episode, we interview Dr. Philip Gardner, Co-Chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) about Big Tobacco’s historic targeting of African-Americans, his group’s recent landmark lawsuit against FDA, and how parents can join the fight to ban menthol cigarettes.  ..read more

On today’s episode we meet the elected official who kicked JUUL’s butt out of San Francisco.  SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera made clear that if the Federal Government would not act to stop JUUL from addicting a generation of kids, he would. We hear his story and discuss why cities and states must take leadership in the absence of federal guidelines and how parents can make a difference. We CAN win the fight to protect our kids ..read more

Have you ever heard your kids refer to the “JUUL room”?  While we don’t yet know if and when schools will fully reopen this year, we do know that 1-in-4 high-school kids are vaping, and that the school bathroom has unfortunately become a vaping clubhouse. What are administrators doing to keep kids from using flavored e-cigarettes inside their buildings?  On this week’s episode, we learn about vape detectors, innovative devices that schools across the country are installing to take back the bathrooms. In a conversation with Derek Peterson, CEO of Soter Technologies and creator of Fly ..read more

On today’s show, PAVe moms Meredith Berkman and Dorian Fuhrman discuss with Stanford’s Dr. Robert Jackler, an expert in tobacco advertising and its social impact, how JUUL repurposed Big Tobacco’s marketing playbook for the social-media generation. We also learn how Puff Bar--among the most popular of the disposable flavored e-cigarettes that are the new teen favorites--has taken JUUL’s playbook and changed the game ..read more

This is the last chance for parents to make our voices heard before FDA rules on JUUL! Between now and September 9th the agency must decide whether or not to approve Juul and any flavored e-cigarette. Over the last several weeks, over two thousand parents have signed our letter urging FDA to deny all applications for these dangerous products. Send YOUR letter to FDA by clicking HERE. In this week's podcast episode, part of our “Back to school, not back to Juul” campaign, we interview Dr. Rachel Boykan, Clinical Professor, of Pediatrics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook Unive ..read more

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) just released the latest figures about the youth vaping epidemic, the 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS). On today’s episode, Meredith and Dorian discuss how this important federal report contains some promising news: a decline in the number of teens regularly vaping, from 5.4 million to 3.6 million. However, these numbers, a return to 2018 figures, remain at “epidemic” levels, the term used then by FDA and the Surgeon General. The difference now is that these teens report more frequent use, possibly a sign of greater nicotine addiction. We’re also ..read more