The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) now has oversight to regulate e-cigarette products from vaping companies operating under a loophole that was closed by a new law.
The law, which took effect Thursday, gives the FDA authority to regulate e-cigarettes and other products that use synthetic nicotine, a move that targets vaping companies that use manufactured nicotine to circumvent FDA regulation and sell the products to teenagers.
“As I’ve said before, this law closes the ‘loophole’ some tobacco product manufacturers have exploited to bypass FDA’s regulatory authority,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf wrote in a tweet. “We’ll hold e-cigarette companies using synthetic nicotine to the same public health standards we’ve implemented for other tobacco products.”
The news comes after Congress passed a bipartisan provision last month that gave the FDA authority to regulate synthetic nicotine products.
The new law does not ban e-cigarettes and other similar products but brings them under the same level of oversight as e-cigarettes that contains nicotine from tobacco. The law prohibits selling the products to people under the age of 21 and prohibits marketing them as modified risk tobacco products without the FDA’s authorization.
Although the FDA has cracked down on e-cigarettes in recent years through removing from the market disposable vape products, refillable pods and flavored liquids, the now-closed loophole has allowed vaping companies like Puff Bar to continue selling products with synthetic nicotine to young people.
The FDA ordered Puff Bar off the market in 2020, but the company reemerged by pivoting to synthetic nicotine products, many of which contained fruity flavors like Banana Ice and Blue Razz Lemonade that advocates have argued are aimed at kids.