Watchdog Group Praises FDA for Approving Harm Reduction Products

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kara Zupkus (224)-456-0257

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) praised the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approving harm reduction products that make it easier for combustible cigarette users to quit smoking. On July 17, The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Maloney and Laura Cooper reported, “U.S. regulators have authorized Juul Labs to keep its e-cigarettes on the U.S. market, according to people familiar with the matter. … The Food and Drug Administration gave a green light to Juul’s original vaporizer, along with refill cartridges in tobacco and menthol flavors … [after] regulators determined that the products’ benefit to adult cigarette smokers outweighed any potential public-health risks.”

TPA President David Williams offered the following statement:

“For years, the FDA has taken exactly the wrong approach to harm reduction. It denied virtually all the millions of vaping product applications that came its way and only allowed a handful of reduced-risk technologies to enter the market. This gross overregulation and slow-walking of new products have created a Wild West of illicit products to meet soaring demand, the opposite of what the FDA intended. The agency has finally realized that slowing approvals to a trickle amplifies, rather than reduces, risks to consumers.”

“TPA has long criticized the FDA’s and Congress’s approach to harm reduction. As we noted in our friend of the court brief in the now-decided Triton Supreme Court case, Congress granted the FDA far too much discretion to decide which products are in the best interests of ‘public health.’ Agency bureaucrats took this broad legislative language and ran with it, arbitrarily denying applications with little guidance as to why. Hopefully, this status quo changes. Today is a step in the right direction.”

“These approvals should be the first of many. The FDA must ensure that smokers have all the tools they need to quit their dangerous habit. Millions of lives depend on the agency doing the right thing.”