It can’t be said any clearer than this: Virginia is on the brink of disaster when it comes to helping people quit smoking cigarettes if Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs Senate Bill 550 and House Bill 1609 into law.
This legislation effectively bans most forms of vaping products while giving a major carve-out to the same products produced by big tobacco companies. This legislation will drive large numbers of consumers back to cigarettes in stark contrast to the decades spent encouraging people to give up the unhealthy practice.
The proposed law would ban cigarette alternative (vaping) products without first having a pre-market authorization order fully granted by the Food and Drug Administration. As the CEO of Accorto Regulatory Solutions, which is a Virginia-based regulatory and scientific advisory company, I am intimately familiar with the pre-market approval process for nicotine products and its implementation under the current leadership of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
People are also reading…
Existing federal law and FDA regulations, if implemented objectively and efficiently, would be effective in achieving a balance to ensuring only safe products are allowed on the market and that they aren’t inappropriately youth oriented, while encouraging innovation in the area of next generation nicotine harm-reduction products.
Although the FDA has been slow in approving products that have a legitimate and important role in reducing smoking of traditional combustible cigarettes, if Virginia reacts by banning products at the state level, even while the FDA is considering their application approval, it will not only harm consumers who are seeking safer alternatives to cigarettes, but also many legitimate Virginia-based businesses. This includes retailers, manufactures and even the scientific/regulatory firms such as Accorto that are providing robust scientific data to the FDA for the approval of alternative products. Furthermore, it will be yet another factor stifling innovation of safer products.
One needs to look no further than the list of companies that will benefit from the proposed legislative action in Virginia to understand what is really going on here. To state the obvious, it has little to do with consumer health but is the next chapter of big tobacco effectively lobbying, both directly and through a web of well-funded proxies, to legislate competitive products out of the market.
We urge the governor to reconsider this legislation and find a more balanced approach that protects public health without unfairly burdening businesses and consumers. Products that have legitimate pre-market approval applications submitted to the FDA should be allowed to continue to be marketed while the FDA considers their respective applications. Likewise, products that do not have legitimate pre-market applications should not be marketed.
It is concerning to see big tobacco’s manipulation of government to squash competition by advocating for bills at the state level that aim to push alternative products from the market, despite their own products not receiving FDA pre-market approval.
These bills threaten to eliminate a large portion of cigarette alternative products from the market, thereby benefiting cigarette sales. This is clearly a step backward in the protection of public health. The potential impact on small businesses and public health in Virginia is alarming, highlighting the need for advocacy and pushback against such harmful regulations.
The potential passing of Senate Bill 550 in Virginia to effectively ban most vaping products except for those approved by the FDA will have devastating effects. The bill’s implications on public health, the economy and individual choices should be thoroughly considered before any decision is made.
Gov. Youngkin, on behalf of former smokers across the commonwealth, please do not allow big tobacco to creep back into the lives of Virginians. This legislation stands to only benefit big tobacco companies and prop up their lagging cigarette sales. Virginia should continue allowing adults to make adult decisions when it comes to the best way to give up cigarettes.