Sen. Dick Durbin, leading anti-tobacco crusader, welcomes Trump administration move to curb e-cigarettes

WASHINGTON – Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a crusader against tobacco use who launched an aggressive drive against e-cigarettes once they came on the market, welcomed steps the Trump Administration took Wednesday to ban flavored e-cigarettes marketed to youths.

“Vaping targets kids, and these flavors — mint, menthol, gummy bear, Unicorn Milk, lung candy — have been essential to the industry luring children into this new addiction. I will closely review FDA’s guidance. Finally, the FDA is doing its job,” Durbin said in a statement.

Durbin, whose first major anti-tobacco victory was banning smoking on airplanes, has been meeting, calling and sending letters to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and acting Food and Drug Administrator Norman Sharpless.

Trump, in a surprise move, announced his anti-vaping push from the White House on Wednesday.

He said his administration is taking action because “We have a problem in our country. It’s a new problem. It’s a problem nobody really thought about too much a few years ago, and it’s called ‘vaping’ — especially vaping as it pertains to innocent children. And they’re coming home and they’re saying, ‘Mom, I want to vape.’ And the parents don’t know too much about it. And nobody knows too much about it, but they do know it’s causing a lot of problems. And we’re going to have to do something about it.”

Azar, with Trump said: “Currently, about 8 million adults use e-cigarettes, but 5 million children are using e-cigarettes. This is exceptionally harmful to our children. An entire generation of children risk becoming addicted to nicotine because of the attractiveness, appeal-ability, and availability of these vaping products. So, with the President’s support, the Food and Drug Administration intends to finalize a guidance document that would commence enforcement to require that all flavors, other than tobacco flavor, would be removed from the market.

“This would include mint and menthol flavoring, as well as candy flavors, bubblegum flavor, fruit flavor, alcohol flavor. You get the drift. So, once the FDA would finalize this guidance, we would begin enforcement actions to remove all such products from the marketplace. We would allow tobacco flavoring to remain, subject to their filing — the manufacturers of the tobacco-flavored e-cigarette products — filing for pre-market tobacco approval with the Food and Drug Administration to assure that the availability of their product is consistent with the public health under the standards set by the Tobacco Control Act.”

Durbin’s latest call with Azar was Wednesday afternoon.

For now, e-cigarettes sold to help people quit smoking tobacco will remain legal, as Azar warned, “If we find that children are being attracted to tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes, if we find that manufacturers are marketing the tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes to children, or placing them in settings where they get them, we will take enforcement action there also.”

When it comes to vaping, first lady Melania Trump has been pushing for curbs, and Trump from the White House on Wednesday said “she’s got a son … she feels very strongly about it.”

The Food and Drug Administration on Sept. 9 issued a warning letter to JUUL Labs Inc. over their advertising and marketing that the FDA said was targeting youths.

The FDA action, and Trump’s comments from the White House, came shortly after Durbin on the Senate floor Wednesday called for the FDA to ban the selling of “kid-friendly flavors” while hitting JUUL for its marketing tactics.

Earlier this year, Durbin and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., reintroduced the Stopping Appealing Flavors in E-Cigarettes for Kids (SAFE Kids) Act, which would place “strong restrictions on e-cigarette flavorings and ban cigar flavorings altogether.”

Durbin is also part of a group of lawmakers trying to raise the federal age to buy cigarette products to 21.