Unfortunately, the Tobacco Control Act may become a detriment to public health if it is implemented to effectively ban e-cigarettes from the market. The Office of Management and Budget is currently deciding whether to designate e-cigarettes as a tobacco product to be regulated under the TCA, as a drug or medical device, requiring regulation from a different department of the FDA, or as neither such product. If e-cigarettes are designated as tobacco products requiring proof of modified risk, it is likely that the ramifications for millions of American vapers, and many more potential future ex-smokers, will be disastrous. E-cigarettes (at least those containing the nicotine smokers crave) would be exiled from the market while expensive, lengthy testing took place. Ironically, the industry’s small businesses would suffer while Big Tobacco would profit, since it has also gotten into the e-cigarette market, and since larger companies would be the only ones who could afford to cut through the regulatory thicket. Meanwhile, some ex-smokers who have become vapers will find a way to secure their e-cigarette nicotine, via online or black market sources. Many, however, will revert to the deadly, toxic cigarettes from which they thought they had, at last, escaped.
