While scientific studies are playing catch-up, it’s prudent that the FDA move forward with plans to regulate the devices and the e-liquids that go into them. For the first time since e-cigarettes hit the market, officials will look into their ingredients and safety and emissions data. While e-cigarettes don’t deliver the smoke and tar that traditional cigarettes do, their vapor contains noxious substances such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, heavy metals – and, of course, nicotine, which impairs brain development and causes addiction, ultimately encouraging new users to switch to the combustible kind.
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Warning labels and a ban on purchases by those under 18 is a significant step toward reducing e-cigarette use among adolescents. “In fact, the only carcinogen in there is nicotine. You’re not burning anything, whereas with cigarettes, you’re actually lighting something on fire and inhaling smoke from the burning fire, which contains about 4,800 carcinogens”.
“No one knows what propylene glycol vapor does in your lungs”, says Strelnick, who says that research hasn’t been done. “It’s a game of avoidance, ultimately”. The only remaining product on the market will be those made by big tobacco companies. Earlier this week the FDA announced the upcoming implementation of a new set of regulations ostensibly meant to cover cigarettes and other tobacco products, but which will now sweep e-cigarettes under the same umbrella.
It may come as a disappointment to Europeans who enjoy watching the Marlboro man ride on the open plain (update: He now appears to be a woman, and uses a helicopter), but it’s terrific news for Europe’s health: Within a few weeks, ads for electronic cigarettes will go dark on European TV, radio and websites, and will disappear from most print publications.
The new FDA regulations are also expected to affect small shops.
Regulation? This is nothing more than a slight-of-hand prohibition. All vapor products that came on the market after this date, which is nearly all of them, will have to go through the Pre-Market Tobacco Application process (PMTA). A survey by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that current e-cigarette use among high school students increased by 900 percent from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 16 percent in 2015.
“We have to do more to help protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, especially our youth”, said Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the release.
“Nicotine is not harmful, but it’s addictive”, Blanchard said.
In addition to answering such questions, the FDA’s challenge will be finding ways to restrict the availability of e-cigarettes to young people – who are at risk of using them as a gateway to cigarette smoking – while not limiting their availability to adults who successfully use e-cigarettes to stop smoking. But in the states that introduced bans on sales of e-cigarettes to minors, the decrease in conventional cigarette use slowed significantly. These drastic actions have the goal of preventing young people under 18 years old from becoming addicted to nicotine.
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“When you start doing things like requiring companies to have a security service, that’s created to hurt small businesses”, he said and estimated a number somewhere in the five-figure range. “I think it’s a good thing”. “At the end of the day it really just comes down to money and control”. He said, ‘Wow, this isn’t a fad anymore.
