A few days ago, the FDA officially raised the minimum age of sale for tobacco products from 18 to 21, and according to a Wall Street Journal report, it’s close to announcing a new set of restrictions specifically for e-cigarettes. In a move that is supposed to address teen vaping by targeting products they’re interested in, the new rules will reportedly apply only to pod-based vaporizers, like Juul or NJOY, and remove any flavors from sale other than nicotine or menthol.
In anticipation of the ban, Juul stopped selling sweet fruit-flavored pods — that represented a significant part of its business — in October, and pulled mint flavors in November. The WSJ report suggests that meeting at this point represents a compromise between the Trump administration and the tobacco industry, avoiding a wider ban on all flavored vapes — that had been suggested — ahead of the 2020 election. It would also avoid banning flavors in “open-tank” systems that allow people to mix their own flavors.