The federal agency has authorized just a handful of vaping options under its Premarket Tobacco Product Applications (PMTA) process—often outmoded and unpopular, almost entirely tobacco-flavored and all owned by tobacco companies.

Registry laws have already shut down independent vape shops in Louisiana and Kentucky, slashing access and options for people who want to quit smoking and stay quit. They will soon take effect in North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.

April, however, offered a reminder that battles over safer nicotine products can still be won—at least to a degree, and even if the decision-makers still don’t quite get it. 

“At this point, according to this bill, I’d be better off opening a store and selling cigarettes. Death. You’d leave me alone.”

In Tennessee and North Dakota, lawmakers who once seemed poised to impose strict PMTA registries changed course. The shift, it’s true, was driven largely by concerns about protecting domestic manufacturing and local businesses. Still, its real-world effect was to preserve access to harm reduction for hundreds of thousands of adults in those states who rely on vapes to stay off cigarettes.

In Tennessee, harm reduction advocates and local vape shop owners spent months warning of the consequences of the state’s proposed vape registry. They testified that banning vaping options based on regulatory technicalities—rather than actual health risks—would push people back to smoking, or into genuine illicit markets that present risks of their own.

Bill Livezey, owner of Knoxville Vapor, told legislators hearing the bill, “At this point, according to this bill, I’d be better off opening a store and selling cigarettes. Death. You’d leave me alone and nobody’d bother me.”

Speaking to a local news channel, Denise McIntyre of Chattanooga Vapor Co. described feeling “discouraged, scared, worried,” emphasizing that the products under threat had helped her—and her customers—to stay smoke-free.

Despite these warnings, the registry measure sailed through committee after committee, powered by concerns over a market “flooded with illicit vapes that are overwhelmingly manufactured and exported from China,” as the bill’s sponsor put it.

Coffey County Sheriff Chad Partin escalated the alarmist rhetoric with pure speculation. “It could be the same chemist making this chemical up that’s making fentanyl in the same glassware and getting shipped over here,” he claimed. The image stuck.

It wasn’t a clean win, to say the least. The compromise was driven by politics, not public health.

Momentum shifted only after industry advocates responded by convincing legislators to pursue a narrower proposal: Ban vaping products containing e-liquids or chemical ingredients from federally designated “foreign adversaries” like China, while still allowing US-made e-liquids and domestically filled disposables manufactured in FDA-registered facilities. The revised plan would block Chinese-filled disposables unless they received federal authorization, while sparing domestic options.

It wasn’t a clean win, to say the least. The compromise was driven by politics, not public health. And federal uncertainty still clouds the future of vapes—wherever they’re made. But the bill does preserve a legal path for adults in Tennessee to access a reasonable range of safer nicotine alternatives in various flavors. The bill awaits the signature of Governor Bill Lee (R).

Tennessee’s compromise couldn’t have come at a better time for vapers in North Dakota, where lawmakers were days from a final vote on implementing their own PMTA registry.

Unlike Tennessee, the North Dakota proposal did not move through the normal legislative process. At the request of Attorney General Drew H. Wrigley (R), registry language was quietly inserted into his budget bill. Lawmakers were told the amendment had support from “the industry”—a claim that reflected backing from tobacco giant Altria, which owns the FDA-authorized NJOY products.

At the 11th hour, North Dakota advocates began urging legislators to pursue a similar “Made in America” approach. Their pressure helped bring forward an amendment modeled on Tennessee’s solution—prompting some legislators to finally question the original plan.

On the House floor, Rep. Dan Ruby (R-Minot) said, “When something is discovered that is detrimental, we would be derelict in our duties not to [fix it].” Rep. Mike Motschenbacher (R-Bismarck) asked whether lawmakers were prepared to “create a registry for all the alcohol distributors” and “ban Mike’s Hard Lemonade because kids like lemonade.”

Instead of quietly advancing, the bill was sent back to committee for further discussion. On April 28, the committee voted unanimously to strike the vape language. While members made clear the issue will likely return next session, this year’s effort to restrict access was defeated.

The politicians’ decisions owed more to a desire to lean into US trade wars than to any desire to reduce smoking-related deaths.

A rose-tinted take would be that the outcomes in Tennessee and North Dakota were a rejection of fear-driven policymaking. Regrettably, that was not the case. 

Registry proposals built on alarmism and misinformation still moved easily through committees. Comparisons between nicotine products and fentanyl shaped debate. Harm reduction options were still treated as liabilities, while cigarettes went untouched. And the politicians’ decisions owed more to a desire to lean into US trade wars than to any desire to reduce smoking-related deaths.

In that climate, vapers and small businesses that help people quit smoking were forced to adapt their messaging as a deeply unsatisfying survival strategy. They refuse to be written out, but they know their partial victory did not come because reason prevailed.

For now, over 650,000 adult vapers in Tennessee and North Dakota will continue to have choices beyond cigarettes. The forces that pushed these bans forward have not gone away.

Photograph (cropped) by Tiia Monto via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, has received unrestricted grants from Altria. The author was formerly the president of the American Vaping Association, which also made donations to The Influence Foundation. Filter’s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

The post Vape Bans Averted in TN and ND—Just Not for Public Health Reasons appeared first on Filter.

Having personally sat down with the president at the White House this past month for a spirited discussion with those representing all sides of the vaping debate, we at the American Vaping Association* hope that the administration implements a policy that both limits youth access to nicotine vapor products while also acknowledging just how important so many of these products are for millions of adults who use them to reduce or eliminate their use of known-deadly cigarettes.

When news began to break in August about “vaping” illnesses and deaths, national coverage was dominated by sensationalism. Organizations that have long taken a prohibition approach to public policy promptly pounced on the controversy and began to conflate two completely separate issues—teen experimentation with electronic cigarettes and the illnesses caused by illicit products.

Though it took nearly three months, we now know that the specific product that has caused thousands of illnesses and over 50 deaths is not one that’s available in convenience stores, gas stations or vape shops. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began testing lung tissues taken from patients and has found a substance known as Vitamin E acetate in all samples. This product is used by illicit-market manufacturers to mimic the appearance of THC and marijuana oils, similar to the way that cocaine is sometimes “cut” with cheap laundry detergent. Vitamin E acetate is not present in legal nicotine vapor products.

What has been confusing for months is the use of the general term “vaping”—a verb that is not specific to the actual substance being inhaled. Both members of the Trump administration and reporters have often failed to differentiate between THC and nicotine. In fact, it took the CDC nearly three months to finally amend their recommendations to the public that they not vape to that they not vape illicitly-marketed THC.

The agency’s botched public warnings and delay in providing accurate information to consumers is a public health controversy in itself and its decision-making process warrants significant scrutiny and possible Congressional inquiries.

Adult vapers and the businesses that manufacture nicotine vapor products do not want to see teenagers using the products. That’s precisely why we have endorsed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) bill to raise the age to use all tobacco and nicotine products from 18 to 21 nationally. Beyond that, we have pushed for federal limits on marketing and advertising as well as limits on bulk purchases of all vapor products. Our opponents have offered no such compromise, pushing prohibition alone, with no exception for any of the flavored products that are overwhelmingly used by adults seeking to reduce or eliminate their use of cigarettes.

It is critical that President Trump reject calls for prohibition. The global community is watching.

The Royal College of Physicians and Public Health England have concluded and maintained that e-cigarettes are at least 95 percent less harmful than traditional combustible cigarettes. The National Academies of Science has characterized these products as “much less harmful than smoking.” Activists funded by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, who has invested over $160 million specifically to ban e-cigarette flavors, may disagree, but their agenda is disconnected from positive public health outcomes for the 34 million Americans who still smoke cigarettes today.

President Trump seems to have put a great deal of thought into balancing a reduction in teen use of these products with the importance of these products for so many adults. He has publicly expressed concerns about shutting down an industry that employs at least 150,000 Americans and raised the issue of how overseas suppliers might flood the US market with dangerous, unregulated products if a national flavored product ban were implemented.

For the sake of millions of adults who rely on nicotine vapes to stay smoke-free and thousands of small business owners and their employees who sell them, it is critical that President Trump reject calls for prohibition. The global community is watching the United States. With so many countries following the US lead on this issue, implementing the proven-failed experiment of prohibition would not only be dangerous for American smokers, but would have long-lasting and far-reaching consequences around the world.

*The nonprofit American Vaping Association has provided grants to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter.

Photo of a 2019 protest in Washington, DC courtesy of the American Vaping Association.

The post Trump Administration Must Balance Protecting Teens With Saving Adult Smokers appeared first on Filter.