Sweeping New Regulations For E-Cigarettes In The US May Be Coming Soon: FDA Needs To Hear From You

E-cigarettes look like cigarettes. When they are held, they feel like cigarettes. They generate "smoke" like cigarettes, and they can provide a pop of nicotine like cigarettes.

E-cigarettes, of course, aren't cigarettes. They are electronic devices that create a fine mist of "smoke" that may contain relatively harmless aromatic ingredients and/or nicotine, without the dangerous tars and carcinogenic chemicals found in tobacco-based cigarettes, and they don't leave behind ash or butts, either.

People who are trying to quit smoking, however, sometimes find vaping to be an easy way to maintain the feel of holding a cigarette and the energy burst from nicotine without all the other problems of tobacco products. 

But e-cigarettes are not completely problem free:

• Most people who use vaping products develop dry throat.
• E-cigarettes don't cause users to become winded the way regular cigarettes do, but they do reduce lung capacity temporarily.
• Vaping is sometimes a gateway drug to hookah pipes, that is, people who try e-cigarettes often try hookah.
• Switching to e-cigarettes to stop smoking produces variable results, although more people manage to step down the number of times they smoke each day with e-cigarettes than without.

And e-cigarettes are becoming extremely popular with teens and even children, who can use the devices legally even in states where it is illegal for them to be sold conventional cigarettes. There is concern that the widespread popularity of e-cigs could create a new generation of smokers, especially since the major tobacco companies have gotten on the tobacco bandwagon with their own e-cig brands.

On April 24, 2014, implementing the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed by the President in 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration proposed a new rule extending its tobacco authority to electronic cigarettes. This new rule would not allow the FDA only to regulate e-cigarettes. It would also implement the act to give the FDA control over cigars, pipe tobacco, hookahs, and the products dissolved in water used in hookah pipes. The FDA would also exercise authority over age restrictions, packaging, distribution, and packaging of all of these products.

See Also: Exposing Ten Little-Known Facts About E-Cigarettes

And when this happens, the following regulations are likely to be implemented quickly:

• Age restrictions for the use of e-cigarettes, nicotine patches, and hookahs.
• Rules prohibiting vending machine sales, except in locations that do not admit minors.
• Bans on free samples.
• Registration requirements, companies will have to register their products with the FDA and list ingredients on labels.
• New products will have to approved by the FDA before they are sold.
• Any claim of a health benefit will subject the product to FDA scrutiny, the FDA requiring substantial scientific evidence, in the form of a (very expensive) clinical trial, to substantiate the claim.
• Claims that e-cigarettes reduce the risk of smoking-related diseases will also be regulated by the FDA, which will permit these statements only if they benefit the health of the public as a whole.

FDA Getting Ready to Regulate E-Cigarettes

The proposed new rules do not cover candy cigarettes or candy-flavored e-cigarettes.

The Food and Drug Administration opened this proposed new rule to public comment on April 24, 2014. The agency specifically has requested public input on whether it should start regulating cigars, but will accept comments on any aspect of the implementation of this law for 75 days. (The comment period was later extended to August 8, 2014.) Comments received after that time will not affect the rollout of new rules, but may be considered in how they are implemented.

Don't be surprised, however, if manufacturers come out actually in favor of new regulations. Believing some regulation of e-cigarettes to be inevitable, most manufacturers are hoping that any regulations that are actually applied will be reasonable and based on science, rather than fear of unproven ill effects.

When the FDA announced its comments period for the new rule, President and CEO of e-cigarette manufacturer NJOY Craig Weiss issued a press release stating "By resisting calls to regulate ahead of – and indeed in opposition to – the science and data, today the FDA has brought NJOY a giant step closer to achieving its corporate mission of obsoleting cigarettes.” And Christian Berkey, CEO of cigarette liquid manufacturer Johnson Creek told Time Magazine, "“People worried the regulations would be unreasonable and onerous. What we are seeing is they are not.”

"I would say that there were certain people that went into this thinking the FDA would be a foe — an irrational, illogical opponent to these devices,” said Miguel Martin, president of Logic Premium Electronic cigarettes, another top e-cigarette manufacturer, to a reporter for Time Magazine, but “They’ve hit the ball right down the middle of the fairway. It is early, I might change opinion,but the original set up on the process seems extremely fair.”

US manufacturers of e-cigarettes and vaping supplies believe that the FDA is taking a business-friendly approach. And e-cigarettes are not a small business.

See Also: Teen Use of E-Cigarettes Doubles In US in Just One Year

The FDA is not proposing to ban advertising of electronic cigarettes, and it is not regulating Internet sales of the product. Candy flavors, obviously aimed at children, will not be regulated, and even if new regulations are applied, manufacturers and vendors of e-cigarettes and supplies will have two years to continue selling existing products without need of additional registration.

Still, the future of e-cigarettes is not absolutely certain. Which way you feel about the product, let the FDA know what your reasonable beliefs are for the way e-cigs should, or should not, be regulated. Americans have relatively little opportunity to influence the actions of the federal government. Here is one opportunity to make your voice count.