Pushing the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate quickly on vaping products puts smokers at risk, according to a piece by Sally Satel for the American Enterprise Institute.
Satel, M.D., a practicing psychiatrist and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine, described teens and electronic cigarettes as comprising a combustible issue that’s been heating up the headlines lately.
She said it might (or might not) be a simple coincidence that the panicky coverage coincided with a recent lawsuit demanding that the FDA sped up regulation of vaping products. But, orchestrated or not, rushing the FDA to regulate put smokers at risk.
The lawsuit, filed at the end of March by a coalition of seven anti-tobacco groups, including the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and five individual pediatricians, took aim at a key decision the FDA made last July. The agency pushed back the pre-market application submission deadline for e-cigarettes from August 2018 to 2022.
The plaintiffs want the original deadline re-instated, claiming that the regulatory delay is illegal.
‘I believe that the delay is wise (and note that regulatory agencies routinely change compliance deadlines),’ Satel wrote. ‘The postponement gives the agency and Congress time to replace the burdensome and costly pre-market approval procedure, which would have crippled the vaping industry, with a more efficient regime.
Satel’s piece is at: http://www.aei.org/publication/why-the-panic-over-juul-and-teen-vaping-may-have-deadly-results/
