• March 29, 2024

Rules deemed unfit for purpose

 Rules deemed unfit for purpose

Christopher Russel

Rules governing vapor products introduced in the US earlier this month could have adverse health effects as some users would look to illegal means to obtain their products or would revert back to consuming traditional tobacco cigarettes if their vapor device were taken off the market.

These were some of the findings of a study by the UK-based Center for Substance Use Research (CSUR), which was made public yesterday through PR Newswire, relayed by the TMA.

It is generally accepted that the so-called Deeming Rules devised by the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products will, within two years, cause most vaping products currently sold in the US to be withdrawn.

The study asked 9,040 current users of vapor products in the US what they would do if the device they used were taken off the market due to the deeming rules.

About 75 percent of the respondents said that they would stock up on their preferred brand, nearly 70 percent said that they would obtain their brand via the black market, 66 percent said that they would import their brand from overseas, and 65 percent said that they would make and mix their own e-liquids on their own premises.

An additional 15 percent said that they would return to smoking cigarettes.

The CSUR’s Dr. Christopher Russell, who led the research, said the study had shown that there was an enormous gulf between the expressed intentions of the FDA and what many electronic-cigarette users saw as being the likely impact of the regulations. “The regulators’ aims of improving the quality standards in e-cigarette production, improving the accuracy of labeling, ensuring the safety of e-cigarettes, and to reducing young people’s access to e-cigarettes are all laudable aims in themselves,” he said.

“One way of avoiding these adverse unintended consequences would be for the FDA to allow current e-cigarettes and e-liquids to continue to be the subject of a lighter form of regulatory assessment whilst imposing much stricter regulatory controls on any future products being developed by the industry.”