I don’t vape, but I treasure the idea that I live in a country where I can. One of the big obstructions to freedom in our great nation is the federal government bureaucracy that, many times, acts as a nanny state trying to tell us what we can and cannot do. The classic example was the government overreach during the Covid-19 outbreak where the federally funded health experts promised vaccines would prevent infection while forcing kids to wear masks well after they served a purpose.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products has had a change of leadership. The change was overdue.
Even though he probably had some good intentions, Dr. Brian King, head of the Center, was ushered out of office, because he used government power to discriminate against the newest and most popular vaping technologies on the market. The FDA has had a history of approving the products produced by ‘Big Tobacco’ companies while using the pretext that competing products were all being made in China. The irony is that most of the approved vaping products were also made in China, yet the large companies pushed them through the process. In short, King allowed crony capitalism to rule at an agency with immense power over vape consumers.
The FDA’s discrimination against the vaping industry is well documented. Reuters reported on January 3, 2024, “a federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its decision barring two makers of flavored liquid for e-cigarettes from marketing their products, saying the agency had been arbitrary and capricious in refusing to consider the companies' marketing plans.” The agency since 2021 “rejected more than a million applications” while approving “only 23 e-cigarette products, all tobacco flavored.” That is evidence of bias. This case was just a tip of the iceberg on FDA discrimination against vaping products while looking favorably on other products under the purview of the Center.
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King was not a popular man in the industry. Vaping360 characterized him as “unpopular among vaping and harm reduction advocates, who saw him as a roadblock to replacing smoking with low-risk non-combustible nicotine products.” A holdover from the Biden administration, King had a long history of being a “staunch opponent of vaping since his previous job at the CDC Office on Smoking and Health, and was probably chosen for his CTP leadership role in 2022 by former FDA commissioner Robert Califf precisely because of his vaping antipathy.” Califf was controversial, anti-vape, appointed by President Joe Biden to be Commissioner of the FDA and held the same position during the Obama administration.
Califf was also a biased head of the FDA. He wrote an opinion piece in 2019 AAMC News arguing, “as an epidemic of acute lung injury and death associated with the use of vaping products continues to sweep the nation, public health advocates have called on the federal government to restrict the sale of these products until the cause of the outbreak is discovered.” This biased individual was handed the keys to a federal agency empowered to implement the ideas in his article.
Thankfully, the Trump administration removed King as part of his promise to save the vaping industry from government harassment and to reform the regulatory system. Removing an appointee who acted in the interests of Big Tobacco and promoted a progressive, big government agenda, is an accomplishment of this administration to forward a deregulatory agenda.
Free markets and free will should govern markets. The American people recognize the dangers of smoking, and many have chosen to walk away from the traditional cigarette for safter alternatives like vaping products and Nicotine pouches. The FDA’s Center for Tobacco products engaged in a war on nicotine alternatives preventing willing consumers from having a broad choice in the selection of the products they want.
The idea behind the motto ‘Make America Health Again’ is forwarded when consumers have products that help them get off the traditional tobacco cigarette. This new administration can get politics out of the way of science-based decision making at the FDA. Now is the time to replace King with a nominee who can fight for the products adult consumer’s desire.
Another aspect of this debate is that many small independent businesses were hurt by the war on vaping. This impacted hundreds of thousands of jobs and reform will help expand an economy in need of insourcing more jobs.
The days of big government policies under Biden, where Uncle Sam acted as if adults were not smart enough to make informed decisions, are over.
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