PULSE POINTS:
❓WHAT HAPPENED: New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against flavored vape manufacturers, claiming they target minors, prompting backlash from conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who says the move is a politically motivated attack on small businesses and adult consumers.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Letitia James, Attorney General of New York; Charlie Kirk, conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA; independent vape manufacturers; former smokers and small business owners.
🧾KEY QUOTES: “This isn’t about protecting public health… It’s about scoring political points,” Kirk argued. He accused James of acting as a “political pawn” for Big Tobacco.
⚠️FALLOUT: Independent shops face potential extinction under burdensome regulations, while smokers may turn back to cigarettes or black-market alternatives. Critics warn of a de facto handout to Big Tobacco.
📌SIGNIFICANCE: Kirk frames James’s actions as a broader pattern of left-wing overreach—one that shields teenagers from conservative ideas but punishes adults seeking harm-reduction alternatives like vaping.
IN FULL:
Charlie Kirk is sounding the alarm over what he calls New York Attorney General Letitia James’s latest morally bankrupt crusade—this time, against the independent, American side of the vaping industry.
James, who rose to national prominence with headline-grabbing lawsuits against Donald Trump, has filed fresh litigation targeting flavored vape manufacturers. Her office claims these companies market to minors and violate state vaping laws. But Kirk sees something more sinister beneath the surface.
“This isn’t about protecting children,” he wrote in a recent op-ed. “It’s about scoring political points, consolidating power, and doing the bidding of Big Tobacco.”
Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a staunch advocate for small businesses and individual freedoms, admits he’s no fan of vaping. Still, he recognizes its role as a harm-reduction tool, especially for adults trying to quit smoking.
“Many of my hardest-working employees vape,” he revealed. “For them, it’s a way out of tobacco addiction.” He emphasized that flavored vapes—targeted by James’ lawsuit—are overwhelmingly used by adults seeking healthier alternatives, not teenagers.
According to Kirk, James’s crackdown will devastate independent vape shops and push consumers either back to traditional cigarettes or into the shadowy black market of unregulated products. “She’s forcing them back into the arms of Big Tobacco,” he wrote.
He compared the move to the suppression of off-patent COVID treatments like ivermectin or the resistance to nutrition-based solutions for obesity–attacks, he says, on methods that work simply because they don’t serve elite or corporate interests.
As for Letitia James, Kirk is blunt: “She must be stopped.” He urged her to focus on New York City’s crime surge rather than micromanaging what corner stores sell to adult customers.