US Food and Drug Administration rules threatening the survival of the US’ independent electronic-cigarette industry could be overturned if a new lawsuit filed by the non-profit Pacific Legal Foundation proves successful, according to an op-ed piece by Guy Bentley for the Washington Examiner.
Bentley said that the FDA’s ‘deeming rule’, which was issued in 2016, brought e-cigarettes under the agency’s regulatory control, subjecting them to the same kinds of marketing restrictions as those governing tobacco cigarettes.
Even to get approval for sale, vapor products would have to be taken through a prohibitively expensive pre-market approval process, and Bentley predicted that most e-cigarettes would disappear from the market by 2022, when product applications were due.
And the manufacturers of those products that did get through the application process would face an even greater battle to be allowed to make straightforwardly factual statements about their products to consumers.
‘Thanks to this regulatory mess, by 2022 we could face the bizarre situation where cigarettes, which kill half of their lifelong users, remain abundant and new cigarettes can come to market with ease but products that are safer and help people quit smoking will be regulated out of existence,’ said Bentley.
‘But this outcome is not inevitable, with the deeming rule’s facing a fresh legal challenge.
PLF’s lawsuit against the FDA argues the deeming rule is unconstitutional and threatens individual liberty.’
Bentley (@gbentley1) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a consumer freedom research associate at the Reason Foundation and was previously a reporter for the Daily Caller.
His piece, which includes details about the PLF’s key arguments, is at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fda-sued-over-unconstitutional-rule-that-threatens-e-cigarette-businesses/article/2647532.
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