F.D.A. Plans to Ban Most Flavored E-Cigarette Sales in Stores

 

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration plans to ban sales of most flavored e-cigarettes in retail stores and gas stations around the country, in an attempt to scale back the recognition of vaping among children.

The agency also plans to need age-verification measures for online sales to undertake to make sure that minors aren't ready to buy the flavor pods.

F.D.A. officials are weighing measures to undertake to curb the utilization of flavored e-cigarettes among teenagers. A senior agency official said details of the plan would be announced next week, which menthol and mint flavors would be exempt from the restrictions.

The F.D.A. stopped in need of including menthol flavors within the vaping sales ban, partly out of concern that some users would switch to traditional menthol-tobacco cigarettes.

In a recent interview that predated this plan, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the agency’s commissioner said he considered youth vaping a pernicious public ill-health.

“In order to shut the on-ramp to e-cigarettes for teenagers, we've to place in situ some speed bumps for adults,” Dr. Gottlieb said.

Tobacco companies have fought cutting flavors from e-cigarettes, saying they're not aimed toward youths but at adults who need them as to how to transition from tobacco cigarettes.

But health advocates point to the packaging and youth appeal of a spread of flavors, including chicken and waffles, rocket Popsicle, and unicorn milk also as fruity tastes like mango.

Dr. Gottlieb has called the attacks on flavored products an “unfortunate trade-off” because they might restrict access to alternatives for adults trying to quit smoking.

But, he also said parents should consider their children’s use of e-cigarettes a significant health threat.

“I think that there’s a perception that e-cigarettes are a safer alternative for teenagers,” he said, “but it can cause a lifelong addiction, and a few percentages will migrate to flammable products.”

The agency’s plans were reported earlier by the Washington Post.

The F.D.A.’s crackdown on flavored e-cigarettes began earlier this year because the numbers of teenagers vaping reached epidemic proportions and therefore the popularity of such devices soared.

Juul, the blockbuster start-up has been a primary target of agency regulators, lawmakers, and anxious parents due to its dominant share of the market.

Its device resembles a flash drive and has had a shocking appeal among youths ever since it had been introduced.

Dr. Gottlieb focused on Juul and a number of other major e-cigarette makers in September, warning them to prevent marketing to teenagers or risk being banned.

He set a 60-day deadline for the main companies to prove they might keep their devices faraway from minors, which timetable ends this weekend.

At an equivalent time, the F.D.A. also warned 1,100 retailers to prevent selling the devices to minors, and issue fines to a number of them.

The latest actions follow months of meetings between the F.D.A. and e-cigarette makers over the way to prevent teenagers from getting hooked on their products.

Juul, which has quite 70 percent of the nation’s e-cigarette market and has become ubiquitous in many high schools and middle schools, submitted thousands of pages of selling documents and related materials.

But the regulators, not satisfied, then visited the company’s, San Francisco headquarters in September and seized more.

The four other products facing the 60-day deadline were RJR Vapor Co.’s Vuse, Imperial Brands’ blu, and devices made by Logic. None of the businesses skilled immediate requests for comment.

RJR, Imperial and Altria are all major tobacco companies, which alongside other industry heavyweights have viewed e-cigarettes as critical to their survival now that smoking rates have declined to their lowest levels within us.

In a new report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the cigarette smoking rate within us dropped to an estimated 14 percent of adults in 2017.

That is a 67-percent decline from 1965 when a national health survey began tracking smoking rates.

In a statement last week, Dr. Gottlieb said that a number of the businesses he had met with also appeared to support raising the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products sales to 21 years.

Last year, Dr. Gottlieb gave the e-cigarette manufacturers five more years to satisfy standards that they prove their products are a secure alternative to tobacco cigarettes.

The agency is additionally considering requiring lower levels of nicotine in cigarettes, although some companies have questioned what proportion authority the F.D.A. has got to impose tougher limits.