Recently, The UK’s Royal College of Physicians had said that there is concrete evidence that e-cigarettes are “much safer” than regular cigarettes and help smokers in quitting the habit of smoking.
Advertisement
Restrictions on e-cigarettes, hookahs, and other tobacco products are about to get a lot tighter. The laws include requiring an official ID to purchase products, and restricting sales to minors under 18 years old. In a move that will cause widespread discontent among teens, it also bans the sale of these products to customers who are under the age of 18.
More than 15 percent of high school students report using e-cigarettes, up more than 900 percent over the last five years, according to federal figures.
Under the new rules, all tobacco products not now regulated that hit stores after February 2007 will need an FDA stamp of approval. 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.
The change is “a foundational step that enables the FDA to regulate products young people were using at alarming rates, like e-cigarettes, cigars, and hookah tobacco, that had gone largely unregulated”, says Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, in a statement.
While the health risks associated with e-cigarettes aren’t fully understood, Stier’s conclusion echoes similar findings from several leading tobacco control experts.
The Food and Drug Administration laid out new rules in almost 500 pages. “I just don’t want to see people go back to smoking because vaping’s become more expensive”, Siegel said. “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. In 5 years, e-cigarette use by teenagers has increased nine-fold. They say costs associated with the regulations will make it hard to stay in business. The rules will take effect in exactly 90 days after the announce.
Advertisement
“We have more to do to help protect Americans from the dangers of tobacco and nicotine, especially our youth”.
