FDA Cracks Down on Youth Vaping

photo from google images

photo from google images

Jocelyn Reeder, Reporter

The five major e-cigarette companies that influence the U.S. market have been told by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they must lower the number of minors vaping or the FDA will ban them from selling flavored products. They have given manufacturers 60 days to present plans to reduce the use of their products because more than 2 million middle-school and high-school students have been using e-cigarettes within the last year.

The FDA sent letters to 1,300 retailers selling e-cigarettes made by Juul, Vuse, Blu, MarkTen XL, and Logic Labs. This together makes up 97% of the market. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottleib stated in a interview, “E-cigs have become an almost ubiquitous and dangerous trend among teens. The FDA won’t tolerate a whole generation of young people becoming addicted to nicotine.”

E-cigarettes create a vapor rather than produce a tobacco smoke, and they generally deliver less nicotine to users than cigarettes do. So how exactly does vaping affect your body? Regardless of how nicotine is delivered, it still affects the body. The drug can potentially worsen heart disease in people who already have severe heart conditions. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research reported, “There is some evidence that e-cigarettes can have a substantial effect on blood vessels, and may increase people’s heart attack risks in that way.”

Another question that was brought up was whether the different flavors in the devices can risk your health. Nearly 500 brands and 7,700 flavors of e-cigarettes are on sale. The wide variety of flavors helped make vaping appealing to young people. It is not yet known if the flavors have any respiratory effects when they are vaporized and inhaled. More research needs to be done to determine whether the flavors in e-cigs are risking people’s health but one thing for sure is the FDA wants to limit the amount of minors who are constantly using e-cigarettes.