Ok. Putting aside the legal avenues for the moment, why can't the e-cig industry and distributors make a SIMPLE change? Let me explain.
The whole notion of the e-cig is to replace tobacco products with what is, OBVIOUS to anyone with an IQ greater than a politician (i.e. the rest of us), healthier and safer than smoking AND NRT's both. In my opinion, this is the wrong approach for distributors\suppliers\mfrs at this point in the game.
Let us for a moment also put aside the
juice itself. I will come back to this later.
Now, we are left with a simple device that can be easily described as a personal vaporizer. Nothing less, nothing more. I can vaporize water with caffeine, food flavoring or whatever I choose that the FDA has no business in regulating.
What everyone is forgetting is that the "nicotine delivery devices" that the FDA have mainly dealt with were not componentized as the e-cig is. Gum, the Patch and Chantix are all or nothing "devices". However, couldn't you sell Trident gum from one supplier and nicotine extract from another and put together your own concoction? If you think about it, that is what we are doing with e-cigs, aren't we? You are taking 2 components, the vaporizing device and
juice and putting them together yourself. If the device itself is to be considered a NDD, then shouldn't also a spoon and lighter? (4 u crackheads..lol)
Maybe the overall term e-cigarette needs to be nixed in favor of PV and I mean COMPLETELY (sites, sales ads, etc..)! The marketing is easy considering the subculture slang and history already behind it. It wouldn't take much for the public to catch on and realize this is a much safer alternative.
Once you remove the legal association between the device itself and nicotine, then the FDA has no leg to stand on AFAIK. Then, the Juice is the only concern, which from what I understand the FDA has no regulatory authority over nicotine as it is.
This is only a short note on the topic and I'm not so naive as to ignore the mfrs ROI issues (juice being the ongoing concern economically, in addition to parts) or the additional battles as they pertain to the juice itself. And I also recognize that this isn't a fullproof solution, or the final solution for that matter. However, I hope that some begin to realize that the e-cig label approach may not have been the best way to start a truly life saving product as this. If the FDA and the Lawmakers can play word games and fudge the science, then why can't we?
Finally, when the support and the understanding is strong enough, then we fight the big battle of the "e-cig" package later.
I'm not a lawyer or an activist, but rather someone who just gets fed up with the govt railroading issues like this and people simply throwing their hands up and saying "Oh well, what do you expect? That's the govt."
Expect it or not, but NEVER ACCEPT IT!
Of course, I could be wrong.
Ken