A House spending committee last month approved industry backed legislation that would prohibit the FDA from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes that are already on the market and exempt some premium and large cigars from those same regulations.
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The Food and Drug Administration will now treat electronic cigarettes and related tobacco products such as hookahs and cigars the same as traditional cigarettes.
“We’ve agreed for many years that nicotine does not belong in the hands of children”, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell said on Thursday.
While teenagers seem to be tiring of traditional cigarettes, their smoking habits have given rise to other nicotine products, specifically e-cigs-battery-operated devices that turn nicotine and other chemicals into a vapor that is inhaled by the user.
Tobacco use is a significant public health threat.
The ban on sales to minors goes into effect in 90 days. New tobacco products will be required to have FDA approval before they can go on the market. The age limit to buy e-cigarettes is 19, all products sold in the state include a health warning and as of July 2016 all e-juices sold will have to include a list of ingredients.
Five years ago, the FDA first announced its intent to regulate e-cigarettes, and put its initial proposal forward two years ago.
“Changes are a coming to a popular tobacco alternative; e-cigarettes and vapor products”.
However Travis Apon, who uses e-cigarettes, said, “Cigarettes are pretty bad for any life form that comes in contact with it, so if we can get rid of cigarettes all together, that is definitely the stepping stone to moving on to that”. “For a small shop like myself, I’m going to have to either stop making it myself, or pay a huge sum of money to be able to pay for the testing”, said Robert Wirth, the owner of “A Vape Shop” in Colorado Springs. Proponents say that vaping provides addictive nicotine without the cancer-causing smoke. “$5 million per product”.
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The new e-cigarette law was written specifically to declare that its provisions do not affect any law or regulation regarding medical marijuana, including California’s minimum age of 18 to use medical marijuana.
