The Meals and Drug Administration has been notably immune to approving the sale of vaping merchandise that aren’t flavored like cigarettes. The overwhelming majority of the vaping merchandise authorized to this point have been tobacco flavored. A small handful, authorized extra just lately, have been menthol flavored. The hundreds of selling functions for merchandise with different flavors have been denied. Thus, there are not any FDA-permitted vaping merchandise in the marketplace that present shoppers with a taste completely different from that supplied by cigarettes.
There’s a rising physique of proof that restrictions on non-tobacco-flavored vaping merchandise can improve smoking charges, together with amongst youth. There’s additionally rising proof that non-tobacco-flavored vaping merchandise could assist people who smoke reduce on cigarette consumption or give up. But the FDA has proven little curiosity on this analysis, sustaining what seems to be a de facto ban on various vaping flavors.
A new peer-reviewed study in Addictive Behaviors gives extra proof of that the provision of other flavors will help people who smoke scale back or stop their cigarette consumption. On this research, people who smoke got vaping merchandise with a alternative of flavors with the purpose of figuring out “the affect of e-cigarette flavoring alternative on e-cigarette uptake and adjustments in cigarette smoking.” And what did it discover?
In comparison with individuals who solely obtained the tobacco taste, individuals who obtained some other taste mixture had higher e-cigarette uptake on the finish of product provision (74 % vs. 55 %), have been extra more likely to scale back cigarette smoking by not less than 50 % on the finish of product provision (34 % vs. 14 %) and on the last 6-month comply with up (29 % vs. 5 %), and numerically, however not statistically, extra more likely to be abstinent from cigarettes on the finish of product provision (11 % vs. 5 %) and the ultimate 6-month follow-up (14 % vs. 5 %).
From the paper:
Though solely a small share of individuals solely chosen tobacco flavored e-cigarettes, the convergence of findings throughout a number of outcomes on this research counsel that non-tobacco flavors could also be extra interesting than tobacco flavors, and should higher promote uptake and scale back cigarette smoking amongst adults who smoke. The FDA is at present issuing PMTA [premarket tobacco product application] selections for particular person e-cigarette merchandise, and to this point, these selections have included many MDOs [marketing denial orders] for non-tobacco flavors based mostly on an absence of proof that these flavors present a profit to grownup people who smoke above and past the profit supplied by tobacco flavors. The information offered on this secondary evaluation counsel that non-tobacco flavors could certainly present a profit to adults past the profit supplied by tobacco flavors, insofar as non-tobacco flavors higher promote switching away from flamable cigarettes.
Whereas this research is proscribed, it gives but extra proof that the FDA’s myopic strategy to vaping product flavors could also be undermining efforts to additional scale back smoking and its related public well being penalties. It’s also additional proof that the FDA’s present strategy to evaluating vaping product functions, and requiring these in search of approval of non-tobacco-flavored merchandise to display that such merchandise present added advantages to public well being as in comparison with tobacco-flavored merchandise, is kind of arbitrary. (And that this strategy has been adopted with none kind of notice-and-comment course of through which the FDA must defend this coverage alternative is simply icing on the cake.)
