FDA to relax vaping regulations under new plan

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a comprehensive new roadmap for regulation of tobacco products, shifting focus to nicotine addiction. Under the new plan, a number of stringent regulations of last year on vaping will be relaxed.

The FDA's regulations for e-cigarette products were announced last May, which were so stringent that some people were worried it could deal a blow to the burgeoning industry, even as evidence pointed to vaping helping smokers to quit.

However, the agency was now changing tack, and projecting nicotine as the core issue and admitting that when it came to ways of delivering this addictive substance, there was a spectrum of methods and some, like traditional cigarettes, were far more unhealthy than others.

"It's the other chemical compounds in tobacco, and in the smoke created by setting tobacco on fire, that directly and primarily cause the illness and death, not the nicotine," said FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, sciencealert.com reported.

"Even with unanswered questions about benefits and risks, there are now different technologies to deliver nicotine for those who need it, that doesn't bring with it the deadly consequences of burning tobacco and inhaling the resulting smoke."

Meanwhile, the latest research published last week, confirmed what was already known: people who took to vaping were likely also to give up smoking.

The FDA and people opposed to vaping had claimed that the inhalation of vapour from electronic devices designed for the purpose was bad because it ''might'' lead children to smoke. The fear was raised without any supporting evidence.

People take to vaping in order to quit smoking and research had shown that vaping was a more effective method of smoking cessation than any of the other stop-smoking regimes.

According to the latest findings published in the British Journal of Medicine, which involved 161,054 American smokers, ''E-cigarette users were more likely than non-users to attempt to quit smoking . . . and more likely to succeed in quitting.''