The unchecked power of philanthropy

Last week, I gave a talk titled "The unchecked power of philanthropy" at an event called The Global Nicotine Forum in Warsaw. I explained how and why I'd decided to write about Bloomberg Philanthropies' campaign against electronic cigarettes, beginning with a long article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in March of last year and why I've continued to write about vaping on Medium.

The talk, delivered via Zoom, turned out to be timely.The campaign by Bloomberg and its allies surely contributed to the FDA's decision this week to ban products made by JUUL, a popular brand of e-cigarettes. That decision is misguided, in my view. Here's an excellent analysis by Jacob Grier in Slate.

For reasons that I don't fully understand, the edited version of my talk, which I posted to Medium, has generated a lot of praise and become my best-read story of the year. Here's a link.