Thanks to Efforts of Anti-Vaping Groups Like PAVE, ALA, ACS, and AHA, the Products that Kids are Vaping Could Pose True Serious Health Effects

Through the lobbying efforts and misinformation of multiple anti-vaping groups, of which Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes, the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, and the American Cancer Society are just a few, many states and the federal government have implemented a near total ban on flavored e-cigarettes. Because of the hare-brained Pre-Market Tobacco Application scheme, the FDA has to date approved only 34 e-cigarettes for sale in the United States. All of these brands are either tobacco or menthol flavored. As Bill Godshall, Alan Blum, I, and several others predicted about ten years ago, every single one of the approved products is produced by tobacco companies. Most anti-vaping and anti-tobacco groups view this as a huge victory - one that will protect the health of the nation's youth by ensuring that only "FDA-approved" vaping products remain available on the market.

The Rest of the Story

Recent retail sales data reveal that more than 86% of the e-cigarette market is comprised of products that are technically illegal. These are products that have not been reviewed and approved by the FDA; thus, they are essentially not regulated by any safety standards. 

This is the expected result of a prohibitionist approach to electronic cigarettes. The development of a "black market" for e-cigarettes was predicted by many us many years ago. There is simply too much demand for vaping products for a prohibition approach to be effective.

What are the repercussions of having the majority of the e-cigarette market be essentially unregulated?

Well ... just yesterday, the BBC reported that a batch of illegal vapes in England were found to have alarmingly high levels of heavy metals, including cadmium, copper, nickel, and lead. At the same time, a number of illegal vapes in the U.S. have been found to be laced with fentanyl. 

The upshot of the prohibitionist approach taken by the anti-vaping groups, the FDA, and many state governments, is that rather than actually having a regulated market, we essentially have an unregulated market. Now, youth may truly be at risk of serious health consequences or even death if the wrong vapes get into their hands. Had the FDA taken my suggestion of simply promulgating safety standards for these products, all of this could have been prevented.

The rest of the story is that ironically, the very groups claiming to be trying to protect youth from the harms of e-cigarettes have actually exposed youths to the risk of serious harms far worse than what they were trying to protect our youth from in the first place.