(Bloomberg Opinion) -- FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently proposed new limits on sales of many fruit- and candy-flavored e-cigarettes. If the new rules are adopted, convenience stores and gas stations won’t be able to sell them unless they set up separate rooms that bar entry to anyone under 18.
This is meant to stop the indiscriminate sales that have helped enable an alarming 3.6 million high school and middle school students to vape in 2018. And it is a step in the right direction. But it’s hardly the crackdown that the Food and Drug Administration is making it out to be.
One problem is that mint, menthol and tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes will go on being sold much as before — and underage vapers enjoy these flavors, too.
Another is that the FDA’s draft guidance moves too slowly. It calls for makers of sweet-tasting vapes to apply for FDA approval by August of 2021. That’s one year sooner than the deadline for other e-cigarettes — but three years later than it would have been had Gottlieb not extended the legal deadline soon after he became commissioner. The extra time that e-cigarettes were allowed to grow their market free of FDA regulation has contributed to today’s youth vaping epidemic.
At this point, more strenuous action is needed to protect children and adults from known and suspected dangers of e-cigarettes, many of which are only beginning to be understood. The sale of fruit- and candy-flavored products should simply be banned. And all remaining e-cigarettes should be regulated as tightly as combustible cigarettes are. The FDA should constrain their advertising, and require that their ingredients be listed on the package by quantity.
In addition, the nicotine content of e-cigarettes should be limited — as it is in Europe. Nicotine is what hooks people on smoking, and new American vapes often provide a greater hit of the substance than ordinary cigarettes do. Gottlieb himself has championed lowering the nicotine content of combustible cigarettes to non-addictive levels. The nicotine in vapes is at least as big a problem.
Gottlieb is leaving the FDA next month. During his two years in the job, he has spoken out forcefully in favor of restricting access to e-cigarettes — but his actions have been anything but forceful. Ned Sharpless, who will soon be the agency’s acting head, should move faster to protect Americans from this growing public health problem.
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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