Officials with the Food and Drug
Administration are working to expand the FDA’s authority and regulate
additional tobacco products like electronic cigarettes along with cigars, pipe
tobacco, nicotine gels, water pipe or hookah tobacco and dissolvables.
A public comment period on that
proposed regulatory expansion for the evolving tobacco marketplace continues
through July 9.
“None of these products are
currently regulated by FDA. The only tobacco products that we regulate
are cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll your own,” Mitch Zeller, director of
the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Policies, told MetroNews.
“We are proposing to regulate those
products and make it illegal to sell any of these currently unregulated
products to kids, make it illegal to sell any of these products in a vending
machine — unless the vending machine is in an adult-only establishment.
We’ve also proposed a series of health warning labels depending upon the
category of product.”
With FDA regulations, the age limit
to buy e-cigarettes and the other tobacco products could be set at 18 at
least. Individual states could choose to implement a different age limit.
Manufacturers would also have to
register their products and ingredients with the FDA and undergo a full FDA
review before marketing new products. Currently, Zeller said there are
many questions about what health risks e-cigarettes and the other products pose
and, in some cases, how much nicotine or other chemicals are being inhaled.
Between 2011 and 2012, a study from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed the use of e-cigarettes
among high school students more than doubled — from 4.7 percent to ten percent.
Zeller said the additional FDA
regulatory authority is overdue.
