Welcome to the Wild West!
From a bunch of articles I won't link to:
"I think it's safe to say that the FDA has bent over backward to try and help as many of those companies who are willing to make an effort and recognize that they cannot operate in the wild, wild west any longer," said Erika Seward, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association.
(No Erika, we're being bent over backwards.)
Ellen Hahn, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing and co-chair of the UK Tobacco-free Task Force, said the new rule is a good first step toward controlling e-cigarettes. “From a health perspective, to reduce the social acceptance of them is good because frankly, it’s the wild, wild West out there,” she says. “Vape stores are everywhere.”
Until now, e-cigarettes — battery-operated inhalers that contain nicotine, the powerfully addictive substance in cigarettes — have been marketed, as an FDA official noted Thursday, in a "wild, wild West" environment where anything goes.
Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, said the new rule will address the "the wild, wild west" that is the current e-cigarette market, and the agency billed today's announcement as "a milestone in consumer protection."
STANTON GLANTZ: The marketing that you're seeing in these cigarettes, it's the Wild West. It's like cigarette marketing in the '50s.
It is literally the Wild West when it comes to e-cigarettes,” Sward said. “Anything goes and there’s no sheriff in town.”
"It’s the Wild West out there when it comes to e-cigarette advertising," said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the data. "It's no coincidence that as the advertising has skyrocketed, the use of e-cigarettes has skyrocketed."
MITCH ZELLER: It’s the Wild, Wild West. It’s buyer beware.
For now, the nation’s estimated 20 million e-cigarette users may not see big changes. Companies have two years to submit their information to the FDA and another year while the agency reviews it. Government officials said this process is critical to taming the “wild west” marketplace for the products.
“There’s this whole ‘Wild West’ of social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—and the FDA has no way to track what’s happening in those platforms,” says Jidong Huang, the study’s head researcher, of how vape companies are taking advantage of the lack of regulations.
The 'wild west' of e-cigarettes, where nothing was regulated and the scientific opinion was inconclusive at best, has come to an abrupt end...
"Right now, it's sort of like the Wild West, as has been often said about e-cigarette regulation in the U.S.," he added. "There really isn't any right now.
Overall, though, this new era is welcome. The vaping industry has for too long been “the wild, wild West,” as the director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products succinctly put it Thursday. It’s high time the sheriff arrived.
Isn't the Wild West (a.k.a Old West, a.k.a. American Frontier) an important part of our national identity? I know the Marlboro Man is dead, but Western history and heritage aren't. As a Westerner, I resent the implication that my culture is something to be reined in. What is their goal? To replace it with the "Tame East?"