It's always hard to figure out what they mean to do vs. what they actually do. I do think that when it started the bureaucratic intention was not so much harm reduction, but establishing a federal precedent to enhance the reach of the Tobacco Act to anything related to a tobacco product, even if they had to pretend a juice with no nicotine was still a tobacco product. It's only in the last few months that discussions of harm reduction came to be an acceptable path to evaluate and regulate these products.
Look at what happened even with the included loophole of a modified risk tobacco product. Snus spent how much looking for approval? The amount of money being spent to get IQOS on the American market? No single company currently involved with vaping could ever afford that process. There was a figure recently in an article the BT spends $8 Billion dollars a year on marketing. That's over twice the size of the current market of vaping stuff.
Clearly Gottlieb at the FDA, and the other reasonably intelligent research done by researchers and then published in peer reviewed journals that actually does like, get read (lot's of stuff out there, including a ton of non-vaping related medically that gets buried in the pile of papers only to be read by a small audience looking at a single, specialized area) that the direction of regulation has started accepting harm reduction as a valid option for decreasing combustible tobacco.
It might very well turn out that a don't look, don't tell is the best option. Vaping stuff can be marketed but cannot claim harm reduction in their marketing. Is that the best way? Probably not, especially if your goal is really encouraging harm reduction. But maybe that's the best vaping can get and keep stuff continue to be available. If it continues to remain a decent option as recommended by healthcare providers supported by research, and stop these inane vaping is with than smoking billboards, it might be all vaping can get.
