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E-cigarettes just met their nemesis: will the vaping industry go up in smoke?

Catch Team | Updated on: 10 February 2017, 1:49 IST

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has clamped down on the world of cool. The vaporiser market is expected to be worth over $50 billion by 2025, at an estimated Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.36% from 2015 to 2025.

The pretentious/sophisticated act of vaping (depending on whether you're pro vaping or not) essentially involves inhaling nicotine vapours from electronic cigarettes. It's a trend that's boomed in recent years and is still growing.

But the US FDA has different plans.

The agency has announced that vaping will now be federally controlled and has outlined detailed regulations to that effect. Major regulations include prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes to people under the age of 18 and banning free samples of e-liquids. All manufacturers will now be required to report all ingredients and their immediate facilities will be measured by strict health and safety guidelines. Labelling and distribution of vaping products will also come under the purview of the FDA. Even shops that sell vaporisers or similar equipment will need to check photo IDs of each buyer. All rules are to go into effect in 90 days.

In an official release Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Centre for Tobacco Products, said, "This final rule is a foundational step that enables the FDA to regulate products young people were using at alarming rates, like e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco, that had gone largely unregulated".

The release continued, "The agency considered a number of factors in developing the rule and believes our approach is reasonable and balanced. Ultimately our job is to assess what's happening at the population level before figuring out how to use all of the regulatory tools Congress gave the FDA".

If you're wondering what's got the FDA interested in something a lot of people turn to in order to quit smoking, there's a very good explanation for that. The official release cites a recent survey (supported by FDA and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) that claims that the current e-cigarette usage among high school students has shot up from 1.5 percent in 2011 to 16 percent in 2015. The same year saw 3 million middle and high school students turn e-cigarette users - and it also showed high school boys smoking cigars at about the same rate as cigarettes.

One regulation that has the tobacco camps worked up a lot involves premarket tobacco product application (PMTA), especially for anyone trying to float a new product in the market.

Motherboard quotes Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit advocacy group, saying that, "the FDA now estimates that filing a PMTA will take over 1,700 hours per product, which brings the estimated cost for a single application up to over a million dollars [based on previous FDA cost estimations]..."This gigantic price tag is affordable to Big Tobacco companies, but small and medium-sized businesses will be crushed. This is not regulation, it is prohibition that will cost lives, kill jobs, and further entrench America's largest cigarette companies".

Check out this Motherboard piece that sums up the ways in which the FDA regulations are likely to shake up the vaping industry including price rise and a black market that'll only mean bad news for everyone - mostly end consumers.

It'll also mean bad news for a whole host of celebrities who've caught on the trend. For the time being though, here's looking at five personalities who've made vaping look cooler than the FDA claims it is!

1.Leonardo DiCaprio

2.Johnny Depp

3.Jack Nicholson

4.Kate Perry

5. Charlie Sheen

First published: 12 May 2016, 8:55 IST