Health professionals tend to have a good amount of trust in the FDA and assume that if something is FDA approved, it must have passed a strict regimen of rules and tests to become approved. 

Lately, however, despite the view of health professionals, the general public is less impressed with the FDA’s decision making. Many consumers in the e-cigarette space are making their concerns known to retail associates in vape shops. Consumers are concerned mostly due to the handling of the PMTA process, causing them to be downright terrified that their harm reduction of choice will be taken from them, while cigarettes remain safely on the shelves of any gas station, convenience store, and even some grocery stores.

Quitting smoking is extremely hard. Adult former smokers now using vapor products to stay away from combustibles know how hard it was to even find an option that worked for them. 

Anyone that has done the same knows that not all flavors or devices are created equal. Most worry that if they lose their preferred harm reduction method, they will be tempted to start smoking again.

The Reagan-Udall review of the Center for Tobacco Products made clear that the FDA has some explaining to do on how they determine what is appropriate for the protection of public health (APPH) and how they came to that conclusion in detail, since decision-making thus far seems to conflict with the current science and data on vaping.

Consumers are now skeptical of the information that comes out of the FDA because they genuinely feel that an agency that does not care if they are forced back to smoking cigarettes could not possibly care about their health and wellbeing in general. 

This leaves the FDA in a serious situation, as they are tasked with protecting public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices; and by ensuring the safety of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.

Adult vapers are also concerned that, if they started their vaping journey with 24mg of nicotine, for example, and are now using a 6mg, the CTP has only approved PMTA applications for 25 or 50mg and don’t want to use that much nicotine. Flavors also come into play since most vapors, on average 89% of sales for our company alone, do not want or use a tobacco “flavor”.

It is clear that if the FDA wants to win back the trust of the public, they must start clarifying the information on vaping and change their handling of the PMTA process. 

Otherwise, they will continue to lose the trust of the public and that is certainly a scary place for agency that is supposed to protect the public’s heath to be in.