The FDA calls teen vaping an “epidemic,” and threatens to pull the products off the market.
U.S. health officials say teenage use of e-cigarettes has reached “epidemic” levels and are calling on the industry to address the problem or risk having their flavored products pulled off the market.
The warning from the Food and Drug Administration marks a stark shift in the agency’s tone on e-cigarettes, which have become the most used tobacco product among teenagers.
Since 2017, FDA officials have discussed e-cigarettes as a potential tool to ween adult smokers off cigarettes.
But FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb says the agency did not predict an “epidemic of addiction” among youth, mainly driven by flavored products.
Gottlieb said in a statement, “E-cigs have become an almost ubiquitous and dangerous trend among teens. The disturbing and accelerating trajectory of use we’re seeing in youth, and the resulting path to addiction, must end. The FDA won’t tolerate a whole generation of young people becoming addicted to nicotine as a tradeoff for enabling adults to have unfettered access to these same products.”
As part of its plan of action to address the epidemic, the agency sent more than 1,100 warning letters to stores for the illegal sale of e-cigarettes to minors and issued another 131 civil money penalties to stores that continued to violate the restrictions on sales to minors. And the five largest e-cigarette manufacturers will have 60 days to produce plans to immediately reverse underage use of their products.