The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it would pursue sweeping regulations to restrict e-cigarette and traditional tobacco products that the agency argues are contributing to a rise in use among minors.
The FDA said that it will ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, and restrict sales of flavored e-cigarettes to convenience stores. . Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that the proposed change is a response to expanding use of the products among minors.
“I believe these menthol-flavored products represent one of the most common and pernicious routes by which kids initiate on combustible cigarettes,” Gottlieb said in a statement. “The menthol serves to mask some of the unattractive features of smoking that might otherwise discourage a child from smoking.”
The FDA will also move to have all flavored products besides mint and menthol flavors limited to sale only in age-restricted, in-person locations. It will still allow sales of such products, which include flavored e-cigarettes, online, but only with heightened age verification processes.
Gottlieb singled out convenience stores as places that won’t be able to sell flavored e-cigarette products.
“For convenience stores, our goal is to make sure that fruity flavors are not available in those retail sites, period,” he said in a call with reporters on Thursday.
Gottlieb said there is some chance that a convenience store could sell a flavored e-cigarette product, but only if the products were limited to a restricted area, such as a separate room.
“It is not simply a matter of putting it behind the counter or sticking a curtain around it,” he said.
The agency’s ban on flavored e-cigarette sales to convenience stores also influenced its decision to ban menthol cigarettes.
Gottlieb said that the agency pursued the ban to ensure that an adult who wants to buy a flavored e-cigarette wouldn’t go for a menthol traditional combustible cigarette.
“I didn’t want to create a marketplace where adult can buy mentholated cigarette and not a mentholated e-cigarette,” he said. “I want a market that is bias in favor of the noncombustible products and hopefully gives us incentive to transition away from the combustible products.”
Gottlieb only said that he is seeking updates to the agency’s compliance policy for tobacco products, and didn’t say when such a ban would take effect or when any regulations would be issued. He told reporters that the agency plans to release a proposed rule to implement the bans in early 2019.
[Read more: Juul to halt flavored e-cigarette sales to more than 90,000 stores as federal crackdown looms]
The FDA had been telegraphing a move on flavored products for months, and the agency unveiled new data on Thursday meant to bolster the administration’s arguments for a crackdown.
The Trump administration also laid out new data from the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey that found that use of e-cigarettes is skyrocketing.
The survey found that more than 3.6 million middle and high school students used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days in 2018. That is an increase of more than 1.5 million students from 2017.
“These new data show that America faces an epidemic of youth e-cigarette use, which threatens to engulf a new generation in nicotine addiction,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “By one measure, the rate of youth e-cigarette use almost doubled in the last year, which confirms the need for FDA’s ongoing policy proposals and enforcement actions.”
But the proposal for a sweeping ban is going to start a major fight with the burgeoning e-cigarette industry as well as with the tobacco industry.
The American Vaping Association, which advocates for e-cigarette users, already slammed the move before it was announced.
“No youth should vape and there is room for more rigorous enforcement to ensure youth are not accessing these products,” said president Greg Conley in a statement. “However, this move by Commissioner Gottlieb will only serve to make it harder for adult smokers to switch to a far less harmful alternative.”
