Bad Call on Vaping

Where did all this “pressure” come from? You guessed it: The White House, in response, it appears, to the desperate appeals from industry lobbyists

Continuing the theme of choices we might come to regret, we have this, courtesy of The Washington Post:

In a first, FDA authorizes fruit-flavored vapes for adults

The keyword in that sentence being adults. The FDA has bet on the ability of the makers and sellers of vaping devices to enforce strict limits on use by anyone who doesn’t qualify as a grown-up.

Good luck with that, I say. You’ll need it.

The obstacle: Fruit-flavored vapes are precisely the sort to attract the most interest from the young. That’s why they were prohibited in the first place: to keep them out of the hands of underage users.

Now mango and blueberry- flavored vapes will appear on convenience store counters, along with two other previously prohibited products flavored with menthol.

I’d be surprised if there aren’t more to come — perhaps introducing a new flavor every few months, to attract the curious, the way some cookie companies do.

Menthol-flavored vapes were prohibited because teens prefer the cool sensation menthol provides. That’s the same reason menthol cigarettes are the most popular among young smokers.

It was precisely to discourage underage tobacco use that The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act was passed in 2009. Without that law, I imagine we’d have already been flooded with ads for strawberry-banana cigarettes and lemon-lime chewing tobacco.

How exactly did this radical right turn in regulation come about? According to The Wall Street Journal, it was the result of pressure on the FDA commissioner to reverse field.

Where did all this “pressure” come from? You guessed it: The White House, in response, it appears, to desperate appeals from industry lobbyists.