•December 5, 2018•

By Trudy Lieberman,
Rural Health News Service

The Food and Drug Administration just announced it would once again try to regulate tobacco products.
This time the target of the agency’s regulatory hand is the growing menace of flavored e-cigarettes and other tobacco products used by young people who’ve turned to vaping and smoking. The FDA said about 3.6 million teens under age 18 admit they use e-cigarettes.
That’s an alarming number, and it is worrisome because FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has noted that almost all smokers started when they were kids. At their core, the FDA’s proposals are aimed at keeping minors from smoking today so they don’t become smokers tomorrow.
The FDA has taken two actions to curtail young customers’ appetites for the market’s new tobacco products. It did not issue an outright ban on e-cigarettes that had been widely expected and hoped for by some anti-tobacco advocates. Instead, the agency said stores could continue to sell e-cigarettes, but only from closed-off areas that would not be accessible to minors. Whether this will keep teens from getting their hands on e-cigarettes is anyone’s guess.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.