Restrictions on e-cigarettes, hookahs, and other tobacco products are about to get a lot tighter. Free samples of the product will also be barred.
Advertisement
Proponents said the e-cigarettes are safer alternatives to traditional tobacco products but the FDA has long warned they are mostly unregulated and could present significant health issues.
The new regulations will start in 90 days.
They will also require products to have child proof packaging and warning labels.
“We have more to do to help protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, especially our youth”, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell said in a statement.
The manufacturers have been criticized for manufacturing them in flavors that appeal to teenagers and stressing those flavors in their marketing.
The most controversial addition will change how e-cigarettes are sold, treating them with the same scrutiny and limitations as tobacco-based cigarettes. That includes vape shops that mix their own e-cigarette liquid. He urged the FDA to go even further in regulating the product.
“Things just got really hard for over 200 vape shops in IN and their 2,500 employees”, said Evan McMahon, the chairman of Hoosier Vapers, Inc., an e-cigarette advocacy group. On Thursday, May 5, 2016, the Food and Drug Administration released long-awaited rules that bring the burgeoning electronic cigarette industry under federal oversight.
Until today, there was no federal law prohibiting retailers from selling e-cigarettes, hookah tobacco, or cigars to youngsters. The FDA says e-cigarette use among high school students grew 900 percent from 2011 to 2015.
Advertisement
Tobacco producers will need to receive FDA authorization to sell new products and to market them as “light”, “low” or “mild”. By looking at it, the coverage is practically every e-cigarette out there since the devices used for sniffing nicotine via vapor were literally inexistent before that particular date. “We can not let the enormous progress we’ve made toward a tobacco-free generation be undermined by products that impact our health and economy this way”, said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
