The US Food and Drug Administration has been warned that a proposed local ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products, including flavored e-liquids, could undermine the agency’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight tobacco smoking.
Today, voters in San Francisco will vote on whether to approve a Board of Supervisors’ ordinance, Proposition E, that includes a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.
According to a press note from the Consumer Choice Center, proponents of the ban claim the measure is necessary to protect ‘kids’.
“Yet,” according to the Center’s senior fellow Jeff Stier (pictured), “California law already prohibits the sale of all e-cigarettes to anyone under 21. As such, the ordinance would change the legal status of the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults exclusively.”
Stier is calling on the FDA to “speak out about how a local ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes to adults could undermine the FDA’s comprehensive regulatory plan to fight smoking, given the role flavors in e-cigarettes play in helping adult smokers quit”.
The press note said that the FDA, which was studying whether to regulate e-cigarette flavors, had already noted the potential life-saving nature of e-cigarette flavors, saying that, ‘certain flavors may help currently addicted adult smokers switch to potentially less harmful forms of nicotine-containing tobacco products’.
Stier said that “because the San Francisco Ordinance would do nothing to prevent sales to kids, and everything to ban sales to adults who use flavored e-cigarettes to quit smoking, the FDA should alert the public to how the ordinance would undermine federal anti-smoking efforts”.