The Synthetic Nicotine Loophole Fueling a Return to Teenage Vaping (original) (raw)

Health|The Loophole That’s Fueling a Return to Teenage Vaping

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/health/vaping-fda-nicotine.html

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Sales are rising of flavored e-cigarettes using synthetic nicotine that evades regulatory oversight, a gap that lawmakers are now trying to close.

Scientists are just beginning to look at the unknown health impacts of new, tobacco-free nicotine products, even as research is expanding into the harmful effects of vaping and its flavor ingredients.Credit...Ian C. Bates for The New York Times

March 8, 2022

The Food and Drug Administration’s crackdown on flavored e-cigarettes in 2020 was meant to be a comprehensive, aggressive strategy to curtail the epidemic of teenage vaping.

But two years later, sales of disposable, flavored e-cigarettes have soared. Some companies have moved just beyond the reach of the F.D.A. by swapping out one key ingredient. They have circumvented federal oversight of tobacco plant-derived nicotine by using an unregulated synthetic version.

The agency had nearly wiped out the use of flavors in devices like Juul, once the teenage favorite, that could be refilled with pods in flavors like crème brûlée and mango. Jumping into the breach, though, companies like the teen favorite Puff Bar are selling disposable devices filled with candy flavors and tobacco-free or synthetic nicotine.

Scientists are just beginning to study the unknown health effects of synthetic nicotine, even as research is expanding into the harm caused by vaping and flavor ingredients alongside continuing cases of devastating vaping-related lung injury. To many public health advocates, new trends in the vaping industry are thwarting the F.D.A.’s efforts to protect a new generation from nicotine addiction.

“These companies like Puff Bar and others are deliberately driving their trucks of poison through this huge loophole,” said Meredith Berkman, a founder of Parents Against Vaping E-Cigs. She recently hosted a webinar about synthetic nicotine attended by 700 people. “We think we need to regulate these products.”

Lawmakers on Tuesday proposed language that they want inserted in the Congressional omnibus budget bill that would give the F.D.A. authority to regulate synthetic nicotine, although it is unclear if the issue will be included in the final bill.

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