CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. Diana DeGette"

Interview

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SCIUTTO: For more on this vaping fight, I'm joined now by Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, Diana DeGette. She also serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and has been a leader on this issue.

So I'm a parent. And I've had concern about this for a long time. For folks at home who are watching, talk about the danger here because the industry will say it's just faulty inserts, you know, the kind of capsules, it's not the actual vaping itself. You've talked to health professionals about this.

REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Right. Right.

SCIUTTO: What do they tell you?

DEGETTE: Well, so -- so these vaping devices were sort of sold as safer than cigarettes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: But the problem is, of course, we have -- we were really reducing teenage use of cigarettes. Now, as we just saw, the amount of vaping among high school students and even middle school students is skyrocketing. I mean I guess with the vaping devices you don't have the tar, you don't have the smoke. But you do have much higher concentrations of nicotine, which are highly addictive.

So you have high school students getting a much higher dose of nicotine than they would with a cigarette and becoming addicted.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: Plus, many of them are using these flavored brands to get into it. And the data shows that once you get into it with the vaping devices, with the bubble gum or the gummy bear flavored vaping, then your chances of becoming addicted are 81 percent higher.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean it tastes like candy, right? I mean that's what it's designed.

DEGETTE: Right.

SCIUTTO: So you really have two dangers here, right? You have the idea of kids getting addicted to nicotine.

DEGETTE: That's right.

SCIUTTO: Not a good thing. Then you have this immediate danger, which is popping up in dozens of cases around the country. That poor kid, as a teenager, has the lungs of a 70-year-old now, which goes not just to the nicotine, but the actual vaping itself.

DEGETTE: Right. So I was talking to some pulmonary doctors at Children's Hospital in Denver. What they told me is the mechanism for the vaping, the very high temperature of oil to cause the vapor, to have the delivery system, is actually going into children's lungs. And children's lungs finish developing when they're 25 or 26 years old.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: So if you inhibit that, like the young man we saw, then he will never get the lung capacity of an adult.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Goodness.

DEGETTE: And a lot of this has not been researched. The FDA has not really researched how serious this is. So the vaping industry will say, well, it's THC or it's marijuana, but nobody really knows exactly what the extent of the damage that's happening to our children is.

SCIUTTO: Did they not do the necessary study before approving this?

DEGETTE: No, they didn't. And -- and now --

SCIUTTO: That's remarkable.

DEGETTE: You know, now, yesterday, President Trump said that he wants to ban the flavors --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: Which I'm very happy because in March I actually introduced a bill to do that. But I've been talking to the FDA for several years. And my chairman, Frank Pallone, who's the chairman of the energy and commerce committee that has jurisdiction, we've both been trying to get the FDA to tell us when they're going to take action on this. And it just hasn't happened.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

And, you note, you tweeted on Wednesday, I don't often agree with the Trump administration, but on this I do. The flavored nicotine products are causing real harm to the health of our children.

So this step is about banning the flavored ones --

DEGETTE: That's right.

SCIUTTO: Which is particularly about protecting children so they're not tempted to like kind of feel like this is just another form of candy. Is that enough?

DEGETTE: No. The other thing we need to do, we need to raise the smoking age to 21.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: And I actually have a -- SCIUTTO: To cover both old-school cigarettes and this kind of stuff.

DEGETTE: Old-school cigarettes and the -- the younger -- the younger people. I -- I -- I've been working on this for some number of years and what the data shows is, if you say that you're targeting 18-year- olds, really the industry is marketing to 15, 16, 17-year-olds.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: So if you raise the smoking age to 21, then that eliminates the marketing --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: To those high -- very vulnerable high school and even middle school kids.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean you had Juul, I mean, they were going into schools.

DEGETTE: Right.

SCIUTTO: Just very quickly, because I do want to move on to another topic. If parents are watching at home who have got kids in this age group, based on what you know, and you've done your homework one this issue, would you tell them to keep their kids from vaping?

DEGETTE: What I would say to every parent in America is, you need to talk to your children, even your middle schoolers.

[09:50:01]

You need to talk to your children today. You need to tell them about the very real health risks just today and through their lives of nicotine addiction. And you need to be just as vigilant as you would be with illegal drugs to make sure your kids are not vaping.

SCIUTTO: All right. Well, listen, I'm listening as a parent.

I want to move on to another topic, impeachment, because there is understandable confusion now among folks at home, but even, it seems, within the Democratic Party. Is an impeachment inquiry underway now or no?

DEGETTE: Well, so I'm an attorney. I'm a former constitutional attorney. And I also was in Congress when the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton. This is a very serious issue and we need to take it seriously. That and a declaration of war are the two most serious things we do.

SCIUTTO: You support impeachment.

DEGETTE: So I support an impeachment inquiry. I think we need to get all of the facts.

I think what's happening now is the Judiciary Committee has realized that they need to call it an impeachment inquiry so that they can get the evidence they need, the witnesses, the documents.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEGETTE: It's a higher standard. And I think we do have -- I think constitutionally we do need to do an inquiry.

SCIUTTO: You are a multi-term congresswoman. You know that the polls show there's not a great deal of public support for pursuing impeachment. Regardless of what people think of the president, is it smart, politically, for Democrats to pursue a formal inquiry, given they don't have that public support?

DEGETTE: I don't think that when you're talking about a find -- an investigation as to whether there are high crimes and misdemeanors, as the constitution requires, you can look at it through a political lens. I think that it's the responsibility of Congress to figure out, did President Trump engage in obstruction of justice and did that constitute a high crime or a misdemeanor. And I think, if you have the hearing, and the investigation, the public will understand what you're talking about. But I don't think you go into it with a foregone conclusion, yea or nay.

SCIUTTO: Right.

DEGETTE: You have to get the evidence and figure it out.

SCIUTTO: All right, Congresswoman DeGette, appreciate having you on and taking the time this morning.

DEGETTE: Great to be with you. Thanks.

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