U.S. Food & Drug A dministration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has released a new statement on the agency’s future plans for keeping vapor products out of the hands of underage users. While most of the release is known and reported information, there are a couple new wrinkled you may find interesting.
Part of Commissioner Gottlieb’s statement reads:
“For the e-cigarette industry, my message was simple: Step up. Even as the FDA builds a framework to mandate additional restrictions and actions to address these trends, we welcome voluntary steps by companies to address these concerns. I asked five manufacturers whose products, collectively, represent more than 97 percent of the current market for closed-system e-cigarettes to meet with me personally to discuss this vital public health challenge, as well as to submit written plans outlining the steps they intend to take to confront the rising trends in youth use. Each of these companies market products that recently had been sold illegally to minors, either through brick-and-mortar stores or online retailers. Everyone involved in this market has a shared responsibility to address this public health crisis.”
As we have long maintained, enforcement of age verification and I.D. verification is the answer to this problem, far and away more effective than restricting access to adults of products that will help them transition away from smoking. There is a rational way to do both, and as Vape News has noted, that is to limit brick and mortar sales of vapor products to smaller, more responsive vapor-specific retailers and to mandate the adoption of standardized age and I.D. verification models for online retailers while prohibiting sales of vapor products from retailers, online or offline, which do not feature these verification capabilities.
Gottlieb echoes exactly this train of thought:
“The companies acknowledged the role that flavored e-cigarette products play in appealing to kids, as well as the role that flavored e-cigarettes can also play in helping adult smokers quit. On this point, their proposals at the meetings reflected a range of ideas: for instance, that the FDA restrict distribution of certain flavored products to channels with enhanced age verification processes. Or that the agency require certain products that are more appealing to kids to come off the market until these products receive premarket authorization from the agency.
The companies also acknowledged the power of social sourcing of tobacco products – in other words, of-age purchasers sharing or selling products to underage friends – in contributing to youth tobacco use. To address this issue, some companies said that they would support raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco to 21 years of age. Companies also described their current actions to promote retailer compliance with age- and identification-verification requirements, and they committed to providing more information in their written submissions to the agency.”
The companies also acknowledged the power of social sourcing of tobacco products – in other words, of-age purchasers sharing or selling products to underage friends – in contributing to youth tobacco use. To address this issue, some companies said that they would support raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco to 21 years of age. Companies also described their current actions to promote retailer compliance with age- and identification-verification requirements, and they committed to providing more information in their written submissions to the agency.”
At the same time, most vapers would rightfully want to see the FDA exercise the same vigor when combatting underage smoking, which both predates the advent of vaping and still continues concurrently with it. The impression, frankly, is that the FDA is going gangbusters about a relatively recent form of nicotine consumption by underaged users while totally ignoring its far longer running competition.
Take away their JUULs, by all means, but what do you plan to do when they go back to Camels? Are their lungs worth sacrificing?