europe setting precident for potential regs in US

[iremeath]

E-Cigarettes Are in Vogue and at a Crossroads - Yahoo! Finance

 

[Vocalek]

The headline for this post is inaccurate. The issue of medical regulation of e-cigs in the US has already been settled by the court system. The FDA can only regulate them as medical products if the manufacturers/vendors make health claims. The judge in that case recommended that the FDA consider regulating them as tobacco products, squeezing them into the definition by virtue of the fact that the nicotine in them is "derived from" tobacco. He also stipulated that regulating most e-cigs as tobacco products did not preclude a company from submitting their particular model of e-cigarette for approval as a pharmaceutical product if they wanted to make health claims.

So in the US the same product could be sold in two different ways, under two different regulatory schemes.

But regardless of what Europe does, it is NOT creating a precedent for regulation in the US.