Dr. King's #WordsMatter (Yours, too!)
Written while missing my mother's basement.
They really do!
Dear Dr. King,
While attending the two FDLI events in Washington, D.C., I met Mike Cummings. He knew I was headed to the NTSC event in Charleston, SC, in a few days. Mike asked me if I was planning on listening to you speak at the Susan Rosenblatt Lectureship event.
When I told Mike no, he was curious enough to ask why. I was blunt with my response. I said I had heard you speak a few times, and your schedule is so busy you always have to dash off as soon as you’re done speaking. There is rarely an opportunity to ask questions or meet you.
It bothers me that your schedule is so full that while many of us sit and listen to you speak, you cannot stay and listen to the other presenters and panelists. I didn’t want to hear the things I’d heard before. I already know how many PMTAs the CTP received and that most were denied authorization to sell. I know about the enforcement efforts.
It is also known that many at the CTP feel overwhelmed by the mountains of PMTA and SE applications and desire more funding to help process them. We’ve heard about the litigation, the FOIA requests, and how nasty the public can be to people who work at the FDA (more on that in a minute).
So, I told Mike I didn’t want to spend the money on an Uber when I could sit in the comfort of my hotel room and watch the lecture virtually. That’s the day I learned that Mike can be charming and persuasive! He told me that the lecture event would allow more time for questions, that the presentation would be interesting, and that if he had his way, I’d get to meet you.
I attended the event and heard things I hadn’t heard before, learned new things about you, and heard audience members ask questions. As you left, Mike lived up to his word and introduced me to you in the hallway.
You impressed me with your incredible memory skills when you said my name was familiar and asked if I had asked you a question during a webinar. You made my day when you smiled, and your face lit up with recognizing who I was when I told you I once asked you if you thought the word “smoker” was stigmatizing, and you agreed it could be. You meet so many people. How can you remember my name from a webinar question from a long time ago?
When listening to people in the nicotine space give a presentation, I often wonder if they or a loved one ever smoked. Do they have any lived experience that would help them understand what it’s like to be someone who smokes and how hard it is to quit?
I liked hearing that you once worked the quitlines as a tobacco treatment specialist. That gave me a bit of common ground with you, as I have also spent time helping people stop smoking and have been through tobacco treatment specialist training.
I love themes, and your presentation grabbed my attention when you used the Hitchikers theme. Yes, some of your lecture contained information that many of us already knew, but it was presented engagingly, and a dose of humor was injected here and there, which kept things moving.
I would like to hear more during a presentation about how many people are being helped to reduce or quit smoking. I hear much about youth but would like to hear more about adults. I want to learn what more the FDA and all of us can do to help those adults.
It was good to be reminded of the communities that still have higher rates of smoking. You spoke of them in a factual yet compassionate way. I’m big on kindness and compassion, so I honed in on that.
You also spoke of how frustrating it can be to work at CTP. That is easy to understand, as no matter what you do, someone will not be happy with you. You couldn’t pay me enough to work there. I don’t have thick enough skin!
I appreciated your discussion of the need for constructive dialogue between the CTP and stakeholders. This is another area where we have common ground. I'm not too fond of the derogatory way some people speak about others in this space. The conversations would be more constructive if people were more kind to each other.
I hope that your definition of stakeholders includes consumers. After all, there wouldn’t be an industry or the need to regulate it without us. The decisions made by regulators and industry directly affect us. Consumers are most likely trying to communicate with the CTP through social media.
Overall, I felt the lecture went well. It was worth listening to. I agreed with some things, disagreed with others, and was left wishing that parts of the process could be changed as I think it would help achieve our public health goals.
Towards the end of the Q&A, I suddenly became angry. You repeated a comment you made at the 2023 SRNT Annual Meeting, which upset me then, and I found myself more upset to hear it said again.
“It’s easy to criticize from a twitter handle in your mother’s basement,” is the quote from 2023. It is almost identical to this year’s comment.
You impress me as a kind and caring person, and I’m guessing the mom’s basement comments are more of a joke or an expression of your frustration at being confronted by a group that comes across as angry hornets.
I’d appreciate it if you would consider how much that comment hurts. Some of us, including me, would give anything if there were still a mother’s basement to go to.
Please remember that those who are economically disadvantaged smoke at higher rates than people living a life of privilege. Wouldn’t we prefer they lived in their mom’s basement than sleeping on the sidewalk?
It is also insulting to those who are self-supporting yet feel stigmatized by that comment. Just because they are unhappy with the CTP and the lack of authorized products does not mean they have less value than anyone else. A quick search of social media about “people living in their mother’s basement” clearly shows that it is meant as an insult.
Many people have also had their livelihoods ripped out from under them because of a lack of authorized products to sell or not having their products authorized to be manufactured. Some people have lost everything: their businesses, homes, and means of supporting their families. While you aren’t directly to blame for that, the process is.
Many of these people were led to believe that there would be procedures put in place to help small businesses with a pathway to help them achieve authorization. That didn’t happen. Although unfair, their anger is sometimes directed at you as you are the face of the CTP.
At the end of your lecture, you provided CTP contact information and mentioned that it doesn’t go to you personally. I’m not in love with that, but I understand why it’s impossible for you to personally handle every email, tweet, letter, and phone call the CTP receives.
I would prefer to say all this directly to you, but I don’t know how to do that. So, I turn to the internet as my only means of reaching out to you. I hope that someone who knows you will bring my request to your attention and that you will choose different words when discussing people who use social media to communicate with the CTP.
While their words may not always be the best, the people on social media using them need compassion and understanding from people like you. They are angry, frustrated, and afraid. They don’t see anyone curious about why they feel like they do. It seems that no one cares about them or their loved ones.
Your views of the people on social media and how you speak of them will open or lock shut the doors to the constructive dialogue you so eloquently said is needed for the benefit of public health. Please don’t slam that door in their faces by referring to them as people living in their mother’s basement!
I hope everyone (not just you) thinks about what they say to or about others. We will never heal what ails the world as long as we continue to use a keyboard or insulting comments to sling hate at each other.
We all must do better. I look forward to you taking the lead by showing us how to put the civil back into being members of a civil society. In a world where you can be anything, please be kind. Words matter.
Sincerely Yours,
