FDA Should Follow Science, Allow Vaping

The Surgeon General released his first report indicating that smoking was bad for human health in 1964. Since then, further studies have identified greater health risks. Today, science indicates that smoking cigarettes damages a person’s entire body. That means federal policy should focus on getting people to quit as quickly as possible.

One way to do that is to encourage smokers to switch to vaping. It may not be perfectly healthy either, but vaping has far fewer health risks than burning tobacco does. It delivers the nicotine hit that smokers crave without the tar, organ damage and premature aging that comes with cigarettes.

The Trump administration’s recent shift towards a science-based authorization process stands to benefit millions of adult smokers who are looking for a safer alternative. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized four flavored e-cigarettes from Glas Inc for sale and issued guidance that will allow similar products to stay in stores while the FDA reviews them, ensuring products adults use to quit combustible cigarettes remain accessible. That approach fits squarely within the administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and a primary driver of the chronic disease burden MAHA was built to confront — heart disease, COPD, and cancer chief among them. Keeping proven alternatives on shelves, rather than pushing former smokers back to cigarettes or into an unregulated illicit market, is one of the fastest ways to move those numbers.

In spite of the obvious advantages, the federal FDA has fought for years against the science that supported authorizing e-cigarettes as a harm reduction tool for adult smokers. The usual excuse was a supposed risk to American young people.

“Youth use has always been the FDA’s reason for denying authorization for flavored vapes—which are important for harm reduction because many adults find them the best way of switching from cigarettes,” Kim Murray wrote for Filter magazine this year. “But the agency determined that Glas’s device-access restriction technology—pairing a vape with an age-verified smartphone via Bluetooth—would, combined with marketing restrictions, effectively deter youth use.”

Indeed, science has now provided ways to protect against young people vaping. Vapes that only operate when the users can prove they are old enough to use them.

This opens an important doorway to better health.

“A 2020 JAMA Network Open study found that adults who took up non-tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes were more than twice as likely to quit smoking as those using tobacco flavors, with no matching jump in youth use,” Jeffrey Smith of the R Street Institute wrote this year. “Population-level work in England similarly tied rising e-cigarette use to greater quit success.”

This brings us back to national politics. While pundits are discussing which party will control Congress after the midterm elections and which GOP candidate will run for president in 2028, President Donald Trump’s legacy has never been dependent on who succeeds him. It is based on whether he keeps his promises to voters.

When it comes to vaping, Trump vowed in 2024 to “save” the industry. He now has the chance to order the FDA to approve widespread vaping, which would improve the lives of everyday Americans. During this term, policy changes at the FDA have the power to be a cornerstone of his legacy.

Some changes are underway. Under the FDA’s new National Priority Voucher program, review times for medicines tied to urgent health needs have been reduced to one or two months, compared to ten months. That’s getting therapies to patients who can’t afford to wait years for Washington to catch up to the evidence. That’s progress, but progress must continue if President Trump wants to maintain his legacy and Republicans want to maintain control during this year’s midterms.

Half-measures have failed for a decade. What the moment demands is a permanent overhaul of the premarket tobacco product application process — a framework that is predictable, transparent, and driven by evidence rather than by whichever advocacy group has the loudest press release. That is what American families deserve: real protection for their children, real freedom for adults who have earned the right to make their own decisions, and a fair shot for the American small businesses that have spent years buried under an application process designed to bury them. The status quo protects no one. It only prolongs the harm.

The removal of bureaucratic red tape during this administration has led to structural changes that will outlast President Trump and ensure that regardless of who comes next, his legacy will continue.

It’s time for Republicans to finish the job, remove what’s left of the red tape shrouding the vapor industry, and create a free and fair marketplace that drives home President Trump’s legacy.

Leif Larson is a messaging consultant and media strategist for multiple political candidates and issue campaigns across the country.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.