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.
A Bloomberg News editorial says that’s not enough. “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.”
