we will hear from north carolina attorney general josh stein and new hampshire attorney general gordon macdonald. you are watching live coverage year on c-span -- here on c-span. >> a lot of coverage on c-span this afternoon. we're at the national press club in washington, d.c., waiting on fromews conference attorney general josh stein and new hampshire attorney general gordon macdonald. while we wait for this press briefing to begin, we will look at some of today's washington journal. we represent the little guy. small businesses, independent business owners. our average business is five to 10 employees. one of the key things about nfib is you have to be an independent business owner to join. we are unique in the fact that we are truly a member driven organization. theted 75 years ago under guide of one member, one vote. members every year about their ballot at the federal and state level, and they set policy. we don't sit in a room in d.c. -- i'm also pleased to be joined by patrick halley of u.s. telecom as well as representatives from a number of major telephone companies. om

joining me now is north carolina attorney general josh stein.led the effort to bring together this coalition of companies and attorney generals. attorney general, i mean, i don't have anything to do with north carolina, but i am tempted to just move there now to just vote for you if you make this happen. what are you going to do for us? >> well, fortunately you don't need to do that because this is going to be national in scope. you know, this issue about robo calls, you've hit the problem. it's the number one complaint i hear when i'm out traveling across my state. and it's an annoyance, but it's also a source of incredible scams. one woman lost over $200,000 from a sweepstakes generated robo call. so it is imperative that we take action. and as state attorneys general whose job it is to protect the people of our state, we decided we couldn't wait on washington. we are pleased that congress is moving. we are pleased the fcc is moving. but we wanted to engage the phone companies directly and urge them to deploy technologies to help screen out th

josh stein joins me now. he's the attorney general of north carolina.orney general, good to see you again. let's just talk about this for a second. i feel like people of a certain age, i.e. mine, remember that cigarette companies got into a lot of trouble and had to pay a lot of money, specifically for marketing cigarettes to children as you we understood that if you target children you got customers for a long time and that they are more vulnerable than an adult body is to these damages. does none of that come into play with e-cigarettes? is it -- the law just doesn't sort of govern that? it didn't evolve to understand that this was going to be a thing? >> well, the settlement that was reached back in 1998 between the states and the major tobacco companies was called the master settlement agreement. and it dealt with traditional tobacco cigarettes. so there are limitations on marketing to kids. there are limitations on sales. and unfortunately, those rules do not automatically apply to vaping. and i think that the companies are trying to exploit this k

josh stein is taking other e-cigarette companies on. am concerned these companies are targeting children. they designed their product, they use flavors that appeal to children. they market on social media the children frequent, they use advertising to appeal to children. the ones i said yesterday either have no age verification or inadequate age verification on their website. that is against the law in north carolina. i care deeply about the health of north carolina teenagers. emily: many of these companies are saying they are giving adult cigarette smokers a safer alternative. if they take products off of store shelves as you want them to do, is that depriving adults of potentially a safer alternative? josh: i want them to stop marketing and selling to kids. ask kids, why do you do this? they love the flavors and they think it is not dangerous to them. so if these guys will market their product without these flavors that are clearly targeted to children and their packaging, they do them in juice boxes with an actual straw to replicate j

i'm attorney general josh stein of north carolina. i want to thank you as we are here to make this major announcement. i'm pleased to be here with my colleagues attorney general gordon macdonald and attorney general leslie, and patrick halley, of u.s. telecom and representatives a major telephone company spirit 12 companies have joined us today and they are at&t, bandwidth, comcast,nk, charter, consolidated, frontier, sprint, t-mobile, u.s. cellular, verizon, and windstream. today we are announcing major bipartisan public-private effort to stop robo calls. to first, i would like introduce my colleague and fellow cochair of this initiative, new hampshire attorney general gordon macdonald. stein forou general your leadership on this issue. the essence of our role as attorneys general is to protect the public. issue comes close to generating the volume of consumer complaints as robo calls. us, theually all of scam calls are ubiquitous and regular annoyance. a veryo calls are also effective device for illegal conduct conducted by financia

emily: that was north carolina attorney general josh stein speaking with me earlier. -- wessued a statementooperating with his office and have taken the most aggressive actions of anybody in the industry to combat usage. for more on concerns about vaping products, i want to bring in professor robert to ran. he finds vaping may not be safer than smoking cigarettes. also in washington, d.c., we have an ed lee. -- anna edney. you have lawsuits from the attorney general of north carolina, corporate attentional deals being made. you have new science coming out on this topic weekly. what do you expect to happen with this lawsuit? how impactful could it be? anna: i think it is interesting that the attorney general filed this lawsuit while at the same time the food and drug administration is looking at these issues he has raised, particularly the flavors that are out there but kids are able to get a hold of and stores, even though it is illegal. what is going to happen is one way or another, it seems these flavors will be restricted, whether that comes from attorneys general filing lawsuits or fda

take a listen to north carolina's attorney general josh stein. >> the fda should ban these products when they are not targeted to adults. if an adult wants to buy it, i have no problem. that is their right. if it helps them get off cigarettes, fine. what is happening is children are the buying a large number of ones these products. emily: quickly, what is the ftc investigating when it comes to the marketing of these products? anna: it is not just the ftc, it is also the fda, the health committee in congress is looking into juul's marketing practices. they want to know whether they targeted kids. obviously, kids got interested in these devices. they are extremely popular among under age vapers who shouldn't have these things yway and hands and they are trying to find out how much juul targeted them, if they did at all, and they knew that this is something kids might pick up. emily: lots to continue to follow and i know you will be both doing that. bloomberg's lizette chapman and anna edney. thank you. sticking with regulation, the head of france's antitrust unit has largely played second

the state attorney general, josh stein, filed lawsuits against eight companies for allegedly targeting marketing, one day after johnson & johnson was found partly responsible for the opioid crisis in oklahoma, that also revolved around marketing. let's bring in brian ratel to talk about all of this. the similarities are interesting. e-cigarettes, children, marketing, is there a legal case to be made? >> good morning, cheryl. and more than the similarities over the opioid case, i think what the best analogy here is the big tobacco from the 1990s and what's missing here is we've got a lot about vaping devices, what we don't have is anyone that i've heard of blowing a whistle against the vaping companies. you remember the movie from the late '90s, the insider, jeffrey wigand, that was a high level person at brown and williamson who said we knew that cigarettes were bad for people, we were in the business of delivering that. i haven't heard anything with regard to vaping. cheryl: we have seen injuries with regard to children. and there's a google employee, a former engineer, he's now accus

joining forces with the 12 biggest telecom companies leading the fight, north carolina, ag josh steinnnoyance, it's a source of massive fraud where people are losing their entire life savings to these criminals. >> reporter: in july alone, 4.7 robo calls. >> this call is from the legal department of social security administration. >> reporter: another call every 1.7 seconds. >> that was an invalid entry. >> if you wish to speak with our executive, press one. >> reporter: and another. >> receive coverage for unlimited doctors visits, emergency rooms, hospitalizat n hospitalization. >> reporter: most trying to steal your identity or money. >> i'm very busy when my phone rings i think it's a client or emergency. when it's a robot, it's very frustrating. >> reporter: all too often the victims are elderly, trusting and vulnerable. the cities receiving the most include washington, d.c. with 48 calls per person last month. baton rouge, 43, memphis with 35, and san antonio with 31. now the telecom companies have agreed to deploy new call blocking technology, free to customers to use screening

here's what josh stein had to say. >> it has to be education of young people.y're the ones manufacturing the products, they're the ones who are advertising to young people to try to induce them to use and ultimately become add indicteaddicted to their produc. it's unlawful in north carolina. i want to shut them down. dagen: joining us now, doctor mikmikhail varshavski, known as. mike. what is your take on this? >> i really just want to get out there and say right away, it is horrible to have these companies advertise directly to the youth and that's exactly what they're doing when they're selling products that are gummy bear flavored, graham cracker flavored, showing young people vaping and putting it on instagram, on snapchat, going to schools and talking about it as a healthier alternative to smoking. here are startling statistics for us. in 2000, we had about 20, 25% of children smoking, teen smoking. that dropped to below 5% in 2017, 2018. now, guess what it's getting replaced by? vapeing. 30% of our high school teens have vaped at some point. that's horrib

eight e-cigarette companies are facing a lawsuit from the north carolina attorney general josh stein. sued the leading manufacturer juul back in may, kay accusing the company of aggressively targeting minors and misrepresenting the dangers posed by its product. the centers for disease control saying it has identified 193 possible cases of severe lung disease tied to vaping. in illinois vape user died last week after being hospitalized with severe respiratory illness. to a doctor who practices family and emergency medicine. good to see you as always. >> good to see you. connell: i want to point out before we start, don't forget to mention this, we called all eight companies about this lawsuit. none responded to our request for comment. what is your impression of dealing with young people that are vaping in terms of how the companies marketed? not the legal questions what the merits might be but what you see in your practice? >> connell, i'm not surprised they didn't respond. it is disheartening to me they targeted children through cotton candy and fruit punch, these artificial flavorin

leading the fight, north carolina ag josh stein. >> more than an annoyance.ng this action. >> reporter: in july alone, 4.7 billion robocalls. >> this call is from the legal department of social security administration >> reporter: another call every 1.7 seconds. >> that was an invalid entry. >> if you wish to speak with our executive, then press 1 now. >> reporter: and another. >> receive coverage for unlimited doctors visits, emergency room, hospitalization. >> reporter: most trying to steal your identity or your money. >> i'm very busy, and when my phone rings, i think it is a client or an emergency when it is a robot, it is just very frustrating. >> reporter: all too often, the victims are elderly, trusting, and vulnerable the cities receiving the most include washington, d.c. with 48 calls per person last month. baton rouge, 43. macon, georgia, 36 memphis,5. san antonio, 31. the telecom companies agreed to deploy new call blocking technology, free to customers, to use screening technology to determine if a number is being spoofed to look like someone you

i want to welcome back ag stein. josh: thank you, general rutledge for those remarks, general mcdonald. the stories you spoke of underscore the importance of what we are doing today, putting an end to these unwanted robocalls. they are affecting people in new hampshire, arkansas, people in north carolina. they are affecting americans all across this country. in north carolina, it is the number one source of complaints we receive. we did a petition a couple days ago, and we had 10,000 signatories expressing their outrage at these illegal phone calls. too many of us, it is an annoyance, but to others it is their life savings. a woman in hickory, north carolina, similar to what you said, gordon, she fell victim to a robocall about a sweepstakes and lost $220,000 as a result of these scams. it to the most vulnerable in our community to do everything in our power to protect them. that is why attorney general mcdonald and i got together 18 months ago and said we want to tackle this, and do it in such a way that we work with a t