Living a vape life might soon involve new restrictions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates tobacco use when it came to more traditional products like cigarettes, and they plan on extending their authority to e-cigarettes.
The FDA announced the new rules Thursday. In addition to pipe tobacco and hookahs, the new regulatory standards will affect e-cigarettes, vapes, and cigars for the first time. The laws include requiring an official ID to purchase products, and restricting sales to minors under 18 years old. All products will also need to display health warnings.
The regulation extension affects all tobacco products on the market since February 15, 2007, which includes the newest electronic tobacco trends, USA Today reports.
Speaking with CBS in January, Jeff Stief, the National Center for Public Policy Research's director of Risk Analysis, said, "E-cigarettes are a free-market solution to the problem of smoking because people are willfully switching from a very harmful product to dramatically less harmful products."
While the health risks associated with e-cigarettes aren't fully understood, Stier's conclusion echoes similar findings from several leading tobacco control experts. David Levy, professor at Georgetown University, and additional researchers published their findings in the journal Addiction. According to their article, e-cigarettes actually cause more good than harm because many who use them are switching over from traditional cigarettes.
If the FDA regulates e-cigarettes the way they currently treat cigarettes, Stier believes it will discourage people from switching. He told Complex, "The publication of the rule only gives more urgency to the Cole/Bishop amendment to change the predicate date. That bill is wending its way through the House appropriations process." If passed, that bill would change the regulation date to sometime in 2016, Vape News Magazine reports.
The new regulations will begin August 8.
