The encouraging/troubling paragraph in the FDA's public announcement is this:
The Agency intends to propose a regulation that would extend the Agency’s “tobacco product” authorities in Chapter IX of the FD&C Act, which currently only apply to certain specifically enumerated “tobacco products,” to other categories of tobacco products that meet the statutory definition of “tobacco product” in Section 201(rr) of the Act. The additional tobacco product categories would be subject to general controls, such as registration, product listing, ingredient listing, good manufacturing practice requirements, user fees for certain products, and the adulteration and misbranding provisions, as well as to the premarket review requirements for “new tobacco products” and “modified risk tobacco products.”
I don't have a problem with ingredient listing—or, for that matter, good manufacturing practices (although the phrase good manufacturing practice requirements gives me pause; just what sort of flaming hoops would juice makers be required to leap through?)
Shortening the leash on adulteration and misbranding doesn't bother me either; we can all survive just fine without certain sleazeballs in our midst that spike their juices with erectile dysfunction drugs, or sell bottles of 100% nicotine.
Where the language is vague and the meaning potentially catastrophic is in terms such as general controls, registration, user fees and premarket review.
At best, that probably adds up to sudden death to small, mom & pop juice makers—the sort for whom a good vape is a labor of love first, a business second (think pre-CBS Fender guitars).
At worst, all those general terms could prove to be sticks used to beat the vaping community into submission; they might not kill us, just make us wish we were dead.
