The current situation for the US vape industry is ‘dire’ after the FDA rejected millions of applications to allow the sale of e-cigarettes.
American Vaping Association president Gregory Conley sounded pessimistic as he addressed the recent World Vape Show in Dubai.
The Food and Drug Administration had yet to approve a single vape product and there was a huge amount of anger at the millions of applications it had already rejected.
Since then, it has only approved three Vuse vape devices, all from RJ Reynolds which is part of British American Tobacco.
Conley said: “Good people in the vape industry have invested in the best cleanrooms and marketed their products responsibly, but this means nothing to the Food and Drug Administration.
“The FDA is just denying applications for flavoured products so right now we are not in a good situation to say the least.
“Even really large companies with big checkbooks and with scientists on retainer are getting turned down.
“Turning Point Brands, a publicly-traded company with a $400M-a-year revenue, had their application denied despite spending millions of dollars in product testing.”
He said the FDA is likely to face ‘a barrage of lawsuits’ from companies who felt the process was stacked against them.
“We are already starting to see companies close and the fate of many others are up in the air.”
Gregory Conley
The vape advocate said many businesses were now switching to synthetic tobacco-free nicotine to circumvent the regulations.
However, he said that loophole could soon close adding: “We are likely to see states trying to ban all synthetic nicotine products.
“At the same time the federal government is threatening to upend and destroy virtually the entire industry if they manage to kill vaping products and then go after synthetic nicotine.”
He said new vape taxes were also pending which would disproportionately affect poorer members of society.
Conley said: “Not surprisingly this is a non-starter with us.
“Fortunately, some democrats oppose implementing a devastating tax on nicotine so we hope there will be enough opposition to strip this out.
“Even if we win this, there is still the problem of this industry facing near destruction.
“We are already starting to see companies close and the fate of many others are up in the air.
“If companies are only selling synthetic tobacco-free nicotine products, then they have no security as the law could change next week, next month or next year.”
