The FDA Must Take Action on E-Cigarettes

(Bloomberg View) -- Sleek and featherweight in metallic black or navy blue, Juul-brand electronic cigarettes have become a fashion -- you could say, a contagion -- among high-school students across America. Easily mistaken for an ordinary flash drive, the gadgets let kids "Juul" without notice in hallways or school cafeterias and conveniently recharge on their laptops.

This is a sure sign, if one were needed, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is failing in its responsibility to regulate e-cigarettes. By its inaction, the agency allows a wall of vapor to obscure the fact that tobacco in any form poses a real danger -- and imperils children's lives.

By the latest count, in 2016, 1.7 million high-school students (11.3 percent) used e-cigarettes, plus another half million middle-school students. Beguiled by unregulated advertisements and fruit flavorings, and undeterred by the federal prohibition on sales to minors, children take in as much nicotine from Juuls as come from combustible cigarettes. Once addicted to vaping, research suggests, they may be more easily drawn to old-fashioned smoking.

All vapers suffer nicotine's ill effects on blood pressure and heart rate, and expose themselves to any number of other toxic chemicals that may inflame airways and otherwise poison teenage (and adult) lungs and other organs.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says he hopes e-cigarettes might be useful in helping smokers quit. But there's far too little evidence to support that idea. On the contrary, new research suggests that smokers who switch to e-cigarettes may be less likely to quit than those who don't. Even if e-cigarettes help a few people escape tobacco, they attract so many teenagers that their net effect is decidedly harmful.

The FDA is belatedly considering limiting or banning e-cigarette flavorings -- "peanut butter cup," "bubble pop" and the like, which so obviously appeal to kids. But Gottlieb has postponed any further regulations and requirements that e-cigarette makers disclose their ingredients. The American Academy of Pediatrics and several other health groups (including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which is supported by Bloomberg L.P. founder Michael R. Bloomberg) have filed suit this week to challenge the FDA's delay.

Litigation shouldn't have been necessary. The agency ought to move quickly to restrict e-cigarette advertising and online sales, and to impose testing and labeling rules so consumers know what dangerous ingredients e-cigarettes contain. Further delay will prolong the myth that e-cigarettes are benign, give a malignant habit time to spread, and destroy the health of millions of American children. Just because there's no smoke doesn't mean cigarettes can't kill you.

--Editors: Mary Duenwald, Clive Crook.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg View's editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net.

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