In recent news, Ecig Advanced’s Klaus Kneale published an article saying that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is back to work pushing regulation forward on electronic cigarettes.
According to an email electronic cigarette trade organization SFATA sent out to its members, drafts of the FDA’s deeming regulations have been sent over to the Office of Management and Budget at the White House for review.
The article goes on by saying:
If passed, the deeming regulation (as last claimed by the FDA) would classify electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. This would place regulatory control of the products in the hands of the FDA as part of its control of all tobacco products. Most likely this would also mean hefty taxes, testing and quality barriers, advertising and flavor bans, restrictions on who can sell them, packaging requirements, internet sales bans, and other elaborately designed obstructions. This would most likely ruin small (well, smaller than huge that is) electronic cigarette businesses and hand the industry almost entirely to the biggest three tobacco companies (Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Lorillard).
In my personal opinion, I want the regulation of the electronic cigarette industry, rather that be self-regulation or by government – my thought is some regulation needs to be in place because of ingestion and nicotine being in use. However, I’m not for electronic cigarettes being placed in a ‘tobacco product’ category.
Anyhow, you can read the full article here.
