The Food and Drug Administration has cited 40 retailers for selling e-cigarettes to minors as part of a major blitz to prevent sales to kids.
The agency announced on Tuesday it sent warnings to the 40 retailers that sold JUUL brand e-cigarettes to minors. The warning letters call for the retailer to stop sales or face major fines or even pulling a retailer’s license to sell any tobacco products.
The FDA also announced a “large-scale, undercover nationwide blitz” to crack down on sales to minors at both brick and mortar stores and online retailers.
The crackdown is focusing specifically on the JUUL brand, which is a small pod about three inches long. The agency is concerned that the products are hard for parents or teachers to recognize or detect.
Many of the products “closely resemble a USB flash drive, have high levels of nicotine and emissions that are hard to see,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb in a statement. “These characteristics may facilitate youth use by making the products more attractive to children and teens.”
Gottlieb said the agency is looking into other brands such as myblu and KandyPens.
E-cigarette use among minors has exploded in recent years. A 2015 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that e-cigarette use among middle and high school students tripled from 4.5 percent of students surveyed in 2013 to 13.4 percent in 2014. The amount rose from approximately 660,000 students to 2 million.
A 2009 law gave the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products and e-cigarettes. The agency finalized a regulation last year that prohibits sales to people 18 years or younger.
The agency asked JUUL Labs to submit documents to “better understand the reportedly high rates of youth use and the particular youth appeal of these products.” Documents the FDA wants include information on marketing, health research, and youth initiation and use.
“We plan to issue additional letters to other manufacturers of products that raise similar concerns about youth use,” Gottlieb said. “If these companies, including JUUL, don’t comply with our requests, they will be in violation of the law and subject to enforcement.”
The agency also contacted eBay to raise concerns over listings of JUUL products on the auction website. EBay removed the listings and voluntarily installed new measures to prevent new listings from being posted on the site, the FDA said.
Gottlieb said a crackdown was coming after being asked during a recent House hearing about what the agency is doing to combat e-cigarette sales to minors.
JUUL Labs told the Washington Examiner that it agrees sales to minors are “unacceptable.”
“We already have in place programs to prevent and, if necessary, identify and act upon these violations at retail and online marketplaces, and we will announce additional measures in the coming days.”
