Today, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) expressed approval of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to approve harm reduction products aimed at helping combustible cigarette users quit smoking. The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Maloney and Laura Cooper reported that “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 FDA approved Juul’s original vaporizer and refill cartridges in tobacco and menthol flavors after determining that these products’ benefits for adult smokers outweigh potential public health risks.
David Williams, President of TPA, stated: “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.”
Williams also noted TPA’s longstanding criticism of both the FDA’s and Congress’s approaches to harm reduction. He mentioned their friend of the court brief in a Supreme Court case where they argued Congress gave too much discretion to decide which products serve ‘public health.’ According to Williams: “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.”
He concluded by emphasizing that these approvals should be just the beginning: “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.”
