GREGORY CONLEY
VAPING.ORG
The American Vaping Association says FDA fear-mongering on vaping products for minors could end up making the products more enticing.
“While the FDA is right to vigorously enforce existing federal law banning sales of vaping products to minors, some actions being undertaken by the FDA may actually be leading youth to be more interested in trying vaping. We know from the history of the D.A.R.E. program and similar ‘This is your brain on drugs’ anti-drug rhetoric that teens don't necessarily respond well to fear mongering,” Gregory Conley told the FDA Reporter.
“By portraying vaping as a societal evil, rather than truthfully disclosing that vaping is intended for adult smokers looking to quit, FDA and other public health organizations have likely made vaping more appealing to young people,” he said.
Conley, who is president of the AVA, said it is very difficult for the industry to single-handedly bring down youth usage when many parents are actually contributing to the problem by helping their teens purchase products or doing nothing to stop their usage.
“If you speak to vape shop owners, they will tell you that sometimes in a given week, they turn away more parents who voluntarily state they're buying products for their teenage son or daughter than they do actual underage people,” Conley said. “The best indication that the term ‘epidemic’ was nothing more than a public relations catchphrase is the fact it has been eight months since ex-Commissioner Gottlieb brought up the idea of restricting flavors to adult-only retail stores. If the U.S. government truly believed this was an epidemic, it wouldn't have taken the agency five months to formally propose the rule.”
National Association of Convenience Stores president Henry Armour wrote in an oped published by the CNBC website that “the FDA’s proposed policy cuts against what is known about young people getting e-cigarettes. The proposal is counter-productive; it will make youth e-cigarette use and addiction worse, not better.”
Armour wrote that one of the FDA proposals revolved around flavored e-cigarettes and that they should only be sold in adult stores or on the Internet.
“The flawed assumption central to FDA’s proposal is that young people primarily get e-cigarettes from convenience stores — where minors are allowed and most e-cigarettes are sold. That may have some superficial appeal. But research shows that’s just not true,” Armour wrote.
