FDA blocking progress

The first electronic cigarette to receive UL 8139 certification, a safety standard that evaluates the electrical and battery systems of vaping devices, will go on sale in Canada next week, according to a story by Herb Weisbaum at nbcnews.com.

But it won’t be available in the US.

Weisbaum said the vaping industry blamed the US Food and Drug Administration, which regulates tobacco products, including ‘deemed’ tobacco products such as e-cigarettes, for preventing US citizens from buying safety-enhanced devices.

“They have locked us into antiquated technologies,” Tony Abboud, executive director of the Vapor Technology Association, was quoted as saying. “The US Government is suppressing innovation in a way that can only harm consumers going forward.”

As reported here on October 16, UL, the global safety company that tests and certifies tens of thousands of consumer products each year, now has a safety standard for electronic cigarettes: ANSI/CAN/UL 8139, Electrical Systems of Electronic Cigarettes and Vaping Devices. This standard has been recognized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), covering the electrical, heating, battery and charging systems of these products.

But when Joyetech’s eGo A10 vapor pen, the first UL-certified vaping device, hits the market this month it will be sold in Canada but not the US.

Joshua Church, Joyetech’s chief regulatory and compliance officer, was quoted by Weisbaum as saying safety was important to his company. “We did this [UL certification] to protect American consumers, but we can’t sell directly to them,” Church said in an exclusive interview from Shenzhen, China.

The problem is, as Weisbaum goes to some length to explain, that the FDA prohibits the sale of any new or modified e-cigarettes that were not sold in the US prior to August 8, 2016, without pre-market approval; for which it is only now developing guidelines.