US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday announced it would soon ban flavored e-cigarette products to stem a rising tide of youth users, following a spike deaths linked to vaping.
The move could later be extended to an outright prohibition of vaping if adolescents migrate to tobacco flavors, seen as more legitimate products that help smokers quit their habit.
Addressing reporters at the White House, the president said that he and US first lady Melania Trump were worried as parents of a teenage son about an outbreak of severe lung disease that has killed six people and sickened hundreds.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We are both reading it,” he said.
“A lot of people are reading, people are dying of vaping,” he added, vowing to act.
Trump was accompanied by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Acting Administrator Ned Sharpless and US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, who responded to a question about the proposed timeline by saying his agency would issue rules in the coming weeks.
Following the release of new guidance, “there will likely be about a 30-day delayed effective date,” Azar said. “At that point, all flavored e-cigarettes other than tobacco flavor would have to be removed from the market.”
The agency said in a press release that non-tobacco flavors were being targeted for their youth appeal, with preliminary data for this year showing that more than one-quarter of high-school students had used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.
The overwhelming majority reported using fruit, menthol or mint flavors.
While tobacco flavors would initially be exempt, manufacturers would still need to apply for FDA approval by May next year to continue to sell their products.
“If data show kids migrating to tobacco-flavored products, we will do what’s necessary to tackle continued youth use of these products,” Azar tweeted.
The news was a major blow to the burgeoning vaping industry, worth US$10.2 billion globally last year, according to Grand View Research.
It comes amid growing concern over how more than 450 people who reported recent use of e-cigarettes have fallen ill, with initial symptoms including breathing difficulty and chest pain before some were hospitalized and placed on ventilators.
Several teens across the country have been placed in medically-induced comas, including one whose doctors said he might require a lung transplant if he recovers.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged people to cease vaping while a nationwide investigation is under way.
Federal authorities have yet to identify a single substance common to all cases, but the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is focusing its probe on counterfeit cannabis cartridges containing vitamin E oil, which is harmful when inhaled.
North Carolina medics have reported that patients developed acute lipoid pneumonia, a non-infectious form of the respiratory illness that occurs when oils or fat-containing substances enter the lungs.
E-cigarettes have been available in the US since 2006 and were widely considered a safer alternative to traditional smoking, even though experts had said even before the current wave of illnesses that it might take decades to learn about vaping’s long-term effects.
While e-cigarettes do not contain the estimated 7,000 chemical constituents present in traditional cigarettes, a number of substances have been identified as potentially harmful and the vapor could contain traces of metal, according to a study last year prepared for the US Congress.
It is also not clear why the US is so far alone in reporting such cases.
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