Hey Mammal, that sounds like a pretty good approach.
But it assumes the FDA gives a crap about something other than money.
And just maybe they might, so I'd like to see what others have to say.
I know some people involved in research (or worse, regulating the researchers - lab safety and all that!) - Doing Science Right is, unfortunately, expensive, everyone's budgets aren't looking too hot right now, and the US system generally relies on private companies (be they e-cig vendors or Pfizer) footing the bill privately to back up an application demonstrating their stuff is safe/effective enough to sell. (This for 'drugs', and to a much more relaxed extent 'medical devices', hence the classification being such a big deal in the federal case.)
In the US, the FDA's mandate is really harm prevention - private enterprise is welcome to sell whatever it wants, but after all the patent-medicine nightmares in past centuries the 'D' part of the FDA's authority was invoked to erect a basic hurdle of "prove it won't kill people, or at least will do something provably worthwhile for the risk." Research falls mostly to the private sector or other institutions getting grant funding (national labs, grants, etc). In the single-payer countries the regulators are much more involved in promoting direct research (the UK NHS critter I know is always freaking out about how few clinical trials are in progress in the US vs. the 'beleagered' UK), at the cost of having one authority directing which treatments get explored and covered. [The messy "Obamacare" compromise of keeping the insurers in the loop but mandating they actually pay for care means that, hopefully, the insurers will eventually take more interest in actually optimizing treatments and improving outcomes, but there won't be one central 'Death Panel' authority deciding what is and isn't covered.]
Anyhow, on-topic, the good news is that I seem to remember taking a survey from the Swiss or somewhere, so someone is taking the first steps to collecting hard data, and eventually that will provide some sort of basis for the FDA to act rationally with, instead of the basic "This is probably not as safe to inhale as air" argument that applies equally to actual tobacco and household cleanser.
[Probably the most helpful thing in the short term would be a survey confirming our suspicions - or disproving, if we're deluding ourselves - that ecigs are pretty much entirely being picked up by former long-term smokers, not The Impressionable Children (Won't Somebody Think Of Them?). This might ease some of the panic for the decade or so it'll take for any real conclusions to be drawn, and put the focus on comparing our beloved e-gloop to tobacco toxin-for-toxin, rather than to A Lifestyle of Purity and Virtue.]
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