The Trump administration announced on Thursday a temporary ban on many candy- and fruit-flavored vaping products in an effort to curb an epidemic of e-cigarette use among teens.
The decision means that manufacturers of certain vaping products in youth-friendly flavors must stop selling the products within 30 days of the ban. If they want to resume sales, they will need to convince the Food and Drug Administration that the pod flavors are safe and appropriate for the public.
But the new ban does not extend to menthol flavoring, and that represents a retreat from an earlier White House plan to bar all flavors other than tobacco.
The new policy will also leave Juul, the leading e-cigarette among teens, largely untouched. The company suspended nationwide sale of sweet flavors like mango and cucumber in October, then added mint to the list in November. It still sells menthol pods.
Our action today seeks to strike the right public health balance by maintaining e-cigarettes as a potential off-ramp for adults using combustible tobacco while ensuring these products dont provide an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for our youth, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement on Thursday.
But public health experts have warned that if menthol vaping products remain permitted, teens using other flavors will simply switch to menthol, and manufacturers will modify or re-brand other flavors to fit the mold.
About two-thirds of high school students who vape currently use menthol or mint flavors, making them nearly as popular as fruity flavors, according to this years National Youth Tobacco Survey.
Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, announced the administrations intent to limit vaping flavors in September. At the time, he said the flavor ban would include mint and menthol.
The decision creates a giant loophole that benefits Juul the company that created the youth epidemic and irresponsible vape shops and leaves Americas kids at risk, said Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The e-cigarette policy announced today by the Trump Administration breaks the Administrations promise to kids and families to eliminate the flavored e-cigarettes that are driving an epidemic of youth nicotine addiction, he added.
Pediatricians, public health experts and even the first lady have been pushing for strong action on teen vaping, which has erased years of progress on reducing youth tobacco use. The latest Monitoring the Future report found that 14% of high school seniors had vaped in the past month, and 8% of them said they were hooked on vaping. Both of those figures were up sharply from the previous year.
Conservative groups, meanwhile, have urged the president to soften the planned crackdown, with some explicitly warning that a flavor ban could ruin his chances of reelection.
The retreat is reminiscent of Trumps vow to strengthen gun regulations in August after a string of mass shootings, only to back down in the face of industry opposition.
The flavor ban comes amid skyrocketing rates of e-cigarette use among teenagers across the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 5.4 million middle and high school students were vaping in 2019.
Hundreds of thousands of those young people will develop a nicotine addiction and ultimately switch to smoking regular cigarettes, according to researchers. Cigarette smoking greatly increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, respiratory diseases and a variety of other chronic conditions.
The flavor ban comes amid an outbreak of more than 2,500 cases of a lung disease linked to vaping. Last month, health officials said vitamin E acetate was responsible for the vast majority of cases, most of which involved cartridges containing the marijuana chemical THC. At least 54 people have died in the outbreak.
