May 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday allowed the marketing of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes in a first authorization of non-tobacco-flavored vaping products, amid mounting political pressure on the agency.
The authorized pods from Los Angeles-based Glas Inc, a small vape maker that uses technology to age-gate its devices, include flavors such as Classic Menthol, Fresh Menthol, Gold and Sapphire, the FDA said.
“The FDA’s rigorous, scientific review of these products found that the applicant sufficiently demonstrated that Glas’s device access restriction technology, combined with FDA-required marketing restrictions, is expected to effectively mitigate the ability of youth to use the product,” the regulator said.
Earlier in the day, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump over the weekend rebuked FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for not moving quickly enough to approve flavored vapes and nicotine products.
U.S. regulators have avoided granting licenses to flavored vapes, and the FDA has said it would continue to require a heavy burden of evidence of benefits to smokers for vape flavors that also have strong appeal to youth, such as fruit or candy flavors.
However, earlier this year, the agency tweaked its strict approach to flavored vapes, a shift that follows intensifying tobacco industry lobbying and political pressure to allow more products to market.
With the latest decision, the FDA has now authorized 45 e-cigarette products for sale in the U.S.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
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