United States Food and Drug Administration takes further drastic steps to curb its teen vaping

The Food and Drug administration in the US has just issued new guidance to change how vaping products are marketed which could make various vaping products more difficult to get hold of than standard cigarettes for teens.

Publishing a new policy online “Modifications to Compliance Policy for Certain Deemed Tobacco Products”. The document gives guidance details for retailers for premarket requirements for “certain deemed tobacco products” and lays out the way in which it will allow vape products to be authorised for sale.

The FDA describes in this new policy how they intend to “prioritise our enforcement resources with regard to the marketing of certain deemed tobacco products that do not have pre-market authorisation.”

They hope that by issuing this new policy it will begin to cut the number of teenagers who vape across the US, but pro vaping groups worry that for the teens that are going to smoke or vape one way or another it will just make them return to smoking instead of vaping.

The exact proposals that this new policy underlines are that the FDA wishes to “prioritise its enforcement of flavoured Electronic devices or liquids only allowing tobacco flavoured, menthol flavoured and mint flavoured ENDS products for:

• Products sold in locations that minors are able to enter at any time  – so that would include all regular shops, convenience stores, gas stations etc;
• Products sold through retail establishments and online retail locations that have sold to minors after issuance of the guidance
• Products sold online with no limit on the quantity that a customer may purchase within a given period of time; or
• Products sold online without independent, third-party age- and identity-verification services that compare customer information against third-party data sources, such as public records.

The FDA hope that by only allowing the 3 flavours of eliquids, E juices, that would be able to be purchased in cigarette form that US teens will not find vaping them as attractive as perhaps a strawberry or cherry cola flavour e juice.

Pro vaping groups are concerned that this will begin a new trend of smoking teens just when smoking figures are at an all time low and the many Public Health groups across the world still stand firm on vaping being 95% safer than smoking regular cigarettes.