They do, however, share concerns about reports that politics tainted the scientific process. Political appointees have become increasingly involved in making scientific decisions across the agency<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The newly authorized e-cigarette flavors from Los Angeles-based company Glas include \u201cGold\u201d and \u201cSapphire\u201d \u2014 pseudonyms for \u201cmango\u201d and \u201cblueberry\u201d \u2014 along with tobacco and menthol. The FDA\u2019s scientific review found that the company\u2019s age-gated technology, combined with the FDA\u2019s marketing requirements, \u201cis expected to effectively mitigate the ability of youth to use the product,\u201d said Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.\u00a0<\/p>\n FDA Commissioner Marty Makary initially opposed the move<\/a> despite career staff signing off on the authorization, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal<\/a>. His office was concerned about the impact on public health. Then, the Journal reported<\/a> that President Trump admonished Makary last weekend and urged him to wave the products through. The commissioner appears to have followed suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tA new study reports less teen vaping overall, but more daily usage<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe feeling of the scientists at the agency was that age-gating technology is solid and that would limit the vaping to adults,\u201d Makary told STAT on Wednesday. \u201cThat was their view. I was skeptical initially, but that\u2019s their view.\u201d<\/p>\n Makary did not address a question on whether he discussed the matter with the president.\u00a0<\/p>\n He added that the larger concern is \u201cvapes where we have no idea what\u2019s in them,\u201d referring to the illegal market that currently dominates convenience stores, vape shops, and gas stations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s one school security officer in Florida who said almost every month there\u2019s somebody who\u2019s taken to the hospital with some sort of respiratory thing that they believe is related to vapes,\u201d Makary said. \u201cSo whatever\u2019s going on, whatever is penetrating in, we are going to be ramping up our enforcement and prioritizing these illegal Chinese products.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitch Zeller, who led the Center for Tobacco Products during Trump\u2019s first term, said that he is \u201cgreatly concerned that a decision [from FDA scientific reviewers] was overruled by the Commissioner\u2019s Office, and now, the politicization has been compounded by the President personally weighing in. Science-based application review should be held sacrosanct.\u201d<\/p>\n The press announcement<\/a> referring to the authorization stands out among the sea of press releases the agency has released in recent months. Notably, there is no quote from Makary. And the release attributes the authorization to a decision that was made \u201cunder President Trump\u2019s leadership.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Risks and benefits of flavored vapes<\/p>\n Many researchers say that e-cigarettes have potential<\/a> as a tool to help people quit smoking, the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S. While vapes carry their own health risks, including inhaling harmful chemicals in the aerosol they produce, they\u2019re generally considered less harmful than cigarettes if people are able to switch over to them completely.<\/p>\n Flavored e-cigarettes, however, are more controversial, given that the Juul-fueled vaping crisis<\/a> of the late 2010s was driven by sweet flavors that appeal to young people. Youth vaping rates have fallen significantly since their peak of 20% in 2019<\/a>, thanks to factors including increased public awareness and raising the legal age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21. But some public health experts and researchers worry that history could repeat itself.<\/p>\n Fruit, candy, and dessert-like flavors already proliferate among black-market e-cigarettes<\/a>. \u201cWe really want to have a regulated market so that the FDA actually has control over these products,\u201d said Michael Siegel, a professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, noting that around 70% of the e-cigarettes now sold in the U.S. are illegal.<\/p>\n Siegel considers himself firmly in the anti-smoking camp, having testified against tobacco companies about 13 times in his career. \u201cThere\u2019s very strong research to show that the use of flavored vapes is more effective in smoking cessation than switching to just tobacco or menthol vapes,\u201d he said. The thinking is that tobacco and menthol vape flavors may be too reminiscent of smoking, making people more likely to relapse. \u201cGoing to a flavor makes it a completely different experience, and is not a constant reminder of smoking,\u201d Siegel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jonathan Foulds, co-director of the Penn State Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, noted that Glas is the first e-cigarette to be authorized in the U.S. that uses age-gating technology. Before people can use the devices, they have to pair them with a smartphone and upload a selfie along with identification. The e-cigarettes only work while they\u2019re in close proximity to the smartphone they\u2019ve been paired with.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile it will effectively prevent youth use of the device, it may not be very popular with adults due to the hassle,\u201d Foulds said via email.\u00a0<\/p>\n Political pressure over vaping at the FDA\u00a0<\/p>\n The FDA in March released draft guidance<\/a> suggesting it was opening the door to flavors like coffee, mint, and cinnamon, but specifically said that vapes with fruit, candy, and dessert-like flavors \u201cpose a substantial public health risk,\u201d placing a high burden of proof on manufacturers hoping to show that the benefits outweigh the risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tHow the myth that nicotine causes cancer is hurting public health<\/a><\/p>\n The latest FDA decision seems \u201cout of the ordinary\u201d given that draft guidance, said Sven Jordt, a Duke University School of Medicine professor who studies vapes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Zeller said he frequently encountered political interference while working on broader policy issues. For example, the Biden administration suspended a rule<\/a> to permanently ban menthol cigarettes, despite the public health benefits of a ban. The administration worried the move would alienate voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n But \u201cI never felt any pressure when it came to reviewing applications\u201d for specific products, Zeller said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fact that Glas vapes are called \u201cGold\u201d and \u201cSapphire\u201d rather than mango and blueberry \u201cdoes not change that these are fruit flavors,\u201d Tim McAfee, a former head of the Office of Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said via email.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf the administration were serious about pursuing harm reduction associated with cigarette use, it would be doing what it is doing in other arenas where it has identified what it sees as a significant public health risk: removing the ingredients or products that cause the harm,\u201d McAfee said. Makary, for example, has sought to phase out synthetic food dyes<\/a> as well as increase access to natural dyes. Simply authorizing alternative products, he said, won\u2019t solve the health problems of the millions of Americans who continue to smoke cigarettes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among anti-smoking groups, the American Lung Association called the decision \u201creckless,\u201d while the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said it\u2019s \u201crisking a resurgence of youth e-cigarette use.\u201d Truth Initiative, however, struck a more moderate tone, saying the Glas technology for flavored vapes \u201cwill be a key test case\u201d in limiting youth vaping while providing an off-ramp for quitting cigarettes. (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids accepts funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, as does STAT. Bloomberg Philanthropies does not play a role in STAT\u2019s editorial decisions.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Overall, Siegel said, the Glas decision offers hope that the FDA may find a way to make flavored vapes available to adults who smoke while preventing youth access. But those decisions should be made by the FDA alone, he said, without interference from the executive branch. \u201cI think the overall result is a good one,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure that the process by which it occurred is necessarily a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n STAT\u2019s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies<\/a>. Our financial supporters<\/a> are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014\u00a0The Food and Drug Administration authorized fruit-flavored vapes for the first time on Tuesday, after reports of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15658,2113,8,9,3535,15659,7,15660],"class_list":{"0":"post-25564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-childrens-health","9":"tag-fda","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-public-health","13":"tag-smoking","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-vaping"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116531437432121941","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP20036713294785-768x432.jpg\")
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