VTA Statement: Response to the FDA’s Ultimate Authorization of Menthol E-Cigarettes

Published on June 24, 2024

WASHINGTON – June 24, 2024 – The following statement is attributable to Tony Abboud, executive
director of the Vapor Technology Association (VTA):

“VTA applauds the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to finally follow the massive body of science proving that flavored e-cigarettes help Americans quit smoking. However, we remain deeply concerned that their actions are too little, too late for the more than 2 million Americans who died from smoking while the FDA stood idly by.

“The reality is that this news, while a tiny step in the right direction, again reveals a more troubling pattern – the FDA acting only in self-interest to quell political pressure rather than acting in the interest of the American people. The only vapes authorized today are all owned by the biggest cigarette companies. Today’s authorizations once again demonstrate Brian King and the FDA’s hypocriticalallegiance to those cigarette companies whose deadly cigarettes and other combustible products that the FDA continues to flood the market with at a record pace.

“E-cigarettes are the most effective smoking cessation tool on the market and are at least 95% safer than combustible cigarettes. It is far past time for this FDA to approve a wide variety of flavored e- cigarettes to make up for all the cigarettes it has recently rushed to market and to give Americans desperately trying to quit smoking a fighting chance.

“VTA is once again calling for the FDA to stop selectively ignoring science on flavored e-cigarettes and create streamlined regulations and requirements that will allow independent companies of all sizes – not just Big Tobacco conglomerates – to get less harmful nicotine alternatives on the market as it is required to do under the law.”

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