Parroting Vaping Opponents, FDA is Putting Alarmism Over Science

In December, an independent review by the Reagan Udall Foundation found the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) is in dire need of reforms. The main concern was that the Center was lacking in transparency and has an underlying conflict between policies over science.

In late February 2023 (in response to the review), FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf released “steps” that the agency is to undergo to better enhance its mission. Some steps include more engagement with stakeholder groups to better address the agency’s lack of transparency, as well as working with more agencies to enforce the agency’s marketing orders (or lack of orders) for newly deemed tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes.

In the press announcement, Califf is scant on the details as to how the FDA will address the outstanding applications for hundreds of thousands of newly deemed products and how the agency will enforce its authorization orders and/or denials. But deeply concerning is that in the middle of the February press announcement, the head of the FDA parrots language from anti-tobacco and vaping groups, remarking that “the tobacco industry has fought the agency on many of the scienced-based actions we’ve taken – putting profits over public health.”

The FDA has never officially commented on tobacco and profits until this February 2023 announcement. But, anti-tobacco and vaping groups – many of them funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg – have long used this language to demonize the efforts tobacco companies have made to reduce the risk of their products.

In November 2022, the Truth Initiative wrote an article insinuating that the “tobacco industry is trying to infiltrate public health.” The organization wrote that the tobacco industry funds “research designed to undercut objective scientific findings to protect profits.” In the article, a senior vice president at the organization remarked that the tobacco industry “is responsible to its shareholders to increase its profits and they can only do that by addicting new consumers.” Another expert stated that harm reduction “is an approach, not a product” and by making it a product “it then just becomes about profits.”

In another November 2022 announcement lauding the recent voter-approved flavored tobacco and vapor product ban in California, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids commented on the money spent by tobacco companies fighting the ban, stating that the “tobacco giants … once again [put] profits over lives … by delaying implementation of the law for two years.” 

In December 2021, when the FDA permitted the marketing of low-nicotine cigarettes, the American Cancer Society Action Network purported that the agency was continuing to “prioritize industry profits over public health.”

And in September 2019, commenting on a tobacco company executive taking a job at JUUL, the American Heart Association claimed that the e-cigarette manufacturer was “embracing its identity as a tobacco company that prioritizes profits over public health.”

A federal regulator who is supposed to be unbiased essentially repeating the same language that long-standing opponents have been using brings into question the scientific objectivity that is expected of the FDA. Moreover, the agency is now actively ignoring the data on adult use of e-cigarettes and mimicking organizations that deny adult access to these products.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6.7 percent of American adults were current e-cigarette users in 2021, or more than 17.3 million adults. This was a 45 percent increase from 2017 when 4.6 percent of adults were vaping. In fact, there were nearly 5.8 million more American adults vaping in 2021 compared to 2017. And despite this increase in adult vaping, the FDA, to date, has issued marketing orders for only 23 e-cigarette products, manufactured by only three companies, and all are only available in tobacco flavor. 

Given the rhetoric that is now coming from the agency, it is likely that they are to continue denying adult access to less harmful alternatives to smoking. More damningly, the latest testament has made it abundantly clear that the regulator in charge of determining the fate of hundreds of thousands of alternatives to cigarettes is putting alarmism over public health.

Lindsey Stroud is Director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center.