Read articles from United States of America

July 03, 2023 by inquirer.com

When the FDA first asserted the authority to regulate e-cigarettes in 2016, many people assumed the agency would quickly get rid of vapes with flavors like cotton candy, gummy bears, and Froot Loops that appeal to kids.

Instead, the FDA allowed all e-cigarettes already on the market to stay while their manufacturers applied for the OK to market them.

Seven years later, vaping has ballooned into an $8.2 billion industry, and manufacturers are flooding the market with thousands of products — most sold illegally and without FDA permission — that can be far more addictive.

June 30, 2023 by cato.org

Cigarette smoking continues to be a leading cause of avoidable death in the United States. Nearly half a million Americans die each year from smoking‐​related diseases according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Understandably, this makes reducing smoking and discouraging youth smoking significant public health priorities.

Fortunately, there are less dangerous ways for smokers to satisfy their nicotine habits than smoking cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes and other vaping products (so‐​called “electronic nicotine delivery devices” or ENDS) appear to be a substantially safer substitute for combustible cigarettes. [...]

June 30, 2023 by cbsnews.com

Sales of e-cigarettes have climbed nearly 50% over the past three years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported [...] rising from 15.5 million in January 2020 to 22.7 million in December 2022. "The surge in total e-cigarette sales during 2020-2022 was driven by non-tobacco flavored e-cigarette sales, such as menthol, which dominates the prefilled cartridge market, and fruit and candy flavors, which lead the disposable e-cigarette market," Fatma Romeh, lead author of the CDC's market analysis, said in a statement. 

June 29, 2023 by apnews.com

The number of different electronic cigarette devices sold in the U.S. has nearly tripled to over 9,000 since 2020, driven almost entirely by a wave of unauthorized disposable vapes from China, according to tightly controlled sales data obtained by The Associated Press.

The surge stands in stark contrast to regulators’ own figures, which tout the rejection of some 99% of company requests to sell new e-cigarettes while authorizing only a few meant for adult smokers.

June 28, 2023 by fda.gov

[...] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is announcing it has issued warning letters to 189 retailers for selling unauthorized tobacco products, specifically Elf Bar and Esco Bars products. Both brands are disposable e-cigarettes that come in flavors known to appeal to youth, including bubblegum and cotton candy.

“The FDA is prepared to use all of its authorities to ensure these, and other illegal and youth-appealing products, stay out of the hands of kids,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. “We are committed to a multipronged approach using regulation, compliance and enforcement action and education to protect our nation’s youth.”

June 27, 2023 by natlawreview.com

As we previously reported, the Reagan-Udall Report evaluated FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) and reported that stakeholders were concerned over, among other things, a lack of clear guidance and transparency regarding regulations, the premarket review process, and enforcement priorities. On February 24, 2023, CTP responded to the report and committed to addressing all 15 of the recommendations outlined therein as expeditiously as possible.

June 26, 2023 by reason.com

Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco products is supposed to help protect public health. Yet since the FDA endeavored to regulate electronic cigarette and other vaping products through its tobacco regulation program, Americans' understanding of the relative risks posed by various types of tobacco products has gotten worse. Today fewer Americans understand that vaping poses less risk than smoking, and this ignorance could have significant consequences for public health.

June 20, 2023 by journalnow.com

June 16, 2023 by regulatorwatch.com

While the FDA didn’t necessarily create the moral panic over teen vaping, the agency appears to have stoked the fire, doing very little to stop it.

There may be no excuses for the FDA’s handling of nicotine vaping products, but regulating in an environment prone to moral panics isn’t easy.

In this episode of RegWatch, Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, health and behavior researcher and behavior science advisor at McKinney Regulatory Science Advisors, discusses FDA’s struggle to follow the science and the parallels she sees between the moral panic over teen vaping and the long-simmering moral panic over violent video games.

June 12, 2023 by filtermag.org

Moves by regulators to limit the nicotine content of cigarettes would encourage people to buy full-nicotine cigarettes from illegal sources, according to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. But the availability of affordable vape products, the paper also suggests, would curb that migration to the illicit market.

In June 2022, the Biden administration announced a proposal to “establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and other combusted tobacco products,” The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authority to set nicotine limits under the 2009 Tobacco Control Act.