The FDA has spent the “vast majority” of its resources denigrating e-cigarettes and denying 99% of all applications from hundreds of companies seeking to market the very products, which Center for Tobacco Products Director King admitted have “markedly less risk than a combustible cigarette product.” This begs the question of what FDA has been doing with its remaining resources to address combustible tobacco products which FDA Commissioner Califf has said are the “most dangerous”?
To find out, the Vapor Technology Association conducted an analysis of FDA data and the answer is, frankly, disturbing. Based on a review of all marketing authorizations for cigarettes and vaping products made by the FDA over the last five years, we have learned that FDA has authorized combustible tobacco products at a dangerously high rate.
In the last five years, while the FDA has approved only a handful of e-cigarettes in tobacco flavor only, it has at the same time accelerated the introduction of 1,213 new combustible tobacco products into the U.S. market. Of these 1,213 new combustible tobacco products, the FDA has approved for sale 892 new cigarette products amounting to a whopping 74% of all the new combustible tobacco products FDA has allowed to be marketed.
