While The US Delayed Regulations, Vaping Took Hold

The Trump administration gave e-cigarette makers room to grow—then reports of vaping’s risks began to emerge.

- Anna Edney

Something was buried in the press release the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put out on July 27, 2017. The agency was making an historic announcement: the initiation of “a multi-year roadmap to better protect kids and significantly reduce tobacco-related disease and death.” It quoted FDA then-Commissioner Scott Gottlieb: “Unless we change course, 5.6 million young people today will die prematurely later in life from tobacco use.” While focusing on combustible cigarettes that deliver nicotine via smoke particles, the FDA recognized that e-cigarettes needed regulation as well. In the seventh paragraph, it announced coming “revised timelines” that would require e-cigarette makers to apply for approval by Aug. 8, 2022—a long extension from the then-existing FDA deadline of August 2018. “The FDA expects that manufacturers would continue to market products while the agency reviews product applications,” it said.

And that’s what the industry did. In the past two years, the market for vaping—which uses flavored vapor, not smoke, to deliver nicotine— has almost doubled, to an estimated $8.8 billion, in 2019. Leader Juul Labs Inc., which last year got a $13 billion investment from Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc., accounted for nearly 1 in 3 e-cigarettes sold in the U.S. as of December 2017. The company’s sales increased 641% over that year, to 16.2 million devices, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Contributing to the surge are two things: the belief that vaping is a safe and effective way for adult smokers to quit their cigarette habits, and the appeal to young people of candylike flavorings and sleek technology available in the electronic devices. Sales grew even as the regulatory schedule meant there would be a huge gap in the public’s knowledge about the safety of e-cigarettes.