The Food and Drug Administration approved the first menthol-flavored electronic cigarettes for adult users on Friday. This shows that vaping flavors can lessen the harmful effects of regular tobacco smoking.
The FDA said it approved four menthol e-cigarettes from Njoy, a vaping brand that was recently bought by Altria, a big tobacco company that also sells Marlboro smokes.
Companies that sell vaping goods have long said that their products can help people quit smoking, which is linked to 480,000 deaths a year in the U.S. from cancer, lung disease, and heart disease. This decision gives those claims more weight.
Parental groups and people who fought tobacco right away criticized the decision. This comes after years of asking regulators to keep menthol and other flavors that kids might like off the market.
People who helped start Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes said, “This decision could mean we’ll never be able to close the Pandora’s box of the youth vaping epidemic.” “The FDA has once again let down American families by letting a predatory industry find its next generation of loyal customers: our children.”
Vaping among teens has gone down since its all-time high a few years ago. Last year, about 10% of high school seniors said they used an e-cigarette. 90% of people who vaped used tastes, such as menthol.
The FDA has only approved tobacco e-cigarettes in the past, which isn’t something that many young people who vape use.
The FDA has given the go-ahead to only three businesses to make vaping products. Like those, the menthol ones come in cartridges that can be used over and over again. These cartridges plug into a device that heats liquid nicotine, making it a mist that can be inhaled.
Nielsen data from stores shows that Njoy’s goods made up less than 3% of all e-cigarette sales in the U.S. last year. About 60% of the market is made up of Vuse (owned by Reynolds American) and Juul. The other 40% is made up of hundreds of throwaway brands.
Most kids who vape use single-use e-cigarettes, like Elf Bars, which come in flavors like blueberry ice and watermelon.
The FDA said that Altria’s data showed that Njoy e-cigarettes helped users cut down on the harmful chemicals that are in regular cigarettes. The agency made it clear that the goods are not safe or “FDA approved,” and they said that people who don’t smoke shouldn’t use them.
The move on Friday is part of a large FDA review that aims to bring scientific scrutiny to the huge vaping market after years of regulatory delays. There are thousands of fruit and candy-flavored vapes on the U.S. market right now. These vapes are technically illegal, but you can easily find them in gas stations, grocery stores, and vape shops.
The FDA set a court deadline for itself at the end of this month to finish its years-long review of big vaping brands like Juul and Vuse.
In the U.S., those names have been on sale for years while the FDA decides what to do about their scientific uses. To stay in business, companies that make e-cigarettes need to show that they are good for users’ health and don’t appeal to kids very much.
“Based on our thorough scientific review, the strength of the evidence of benefits to adult smokers from switching to a less harmful product was sufficient to outweigh the risks to youth in this case,” said Matthew Farrelly of the Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA.