Smoking them out

Feds target e-cig makers to put stop to kid use

The feds are stepping up an industrywide crackdown on e-cigarettes, concerned over what they have called an “epidemic” of young nicotine addicts.

The Food and Drug Administration has sent letters to 21 manufacturers, demanding proof that they legally introduced their vaping devices. The letters, mailed on Friday, target e-cigarettes introduced after Aug. 8, 2016, noting that formulations and flavors marketed after that cutoff date are subject to FDA review.

“Companies are on notice — the FDA will not allow the proliferation of e-cigarettes or other tobacco products potentially being marketed illegally,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

Among the letters’ recipients are Reynolds American, a unit of British American Tobacco, which makes the Vuse Alto device, and Fontem Ventures, a unit of Imperial Brands, which makes myblu e-cigarettes.

The stocks of both parent companies posted sharp declines on Friday.

The FDA said Juul, the category’s leader with a 70 percent share of the e-cigarette market, didn’t get a letter because the agency had already gotten what it needed last month in an “unannounced on-site inspection” of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Juul’s sleekly designed product, which mimics a USB flash drive, has seen sales grow from 2.2 million devices in 2016 to 16.2 million in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And though Juul was introduced before the FDA’s cutoff date, its growth has inspired copycat products that have yet to receive regulatory review.

The FDA said its letters will seek information on more than 40 such products, including some flavored e-cigarettes popular with kids.

The FDA called the mailing an extension of its Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan — an initiative to keep minors away from tobacco products, especially e-cigarettes, and to prohibit their marketers from targeting youth.

On Sept. 12, the agency gave Juul and four other e-cigarette makers 60 days to come up with plans to prevent the use of their products by minors.

The FDA also recently launched an e-cigarette prevention campaign with the theme “The Real Cost,” aimed at nearly 11 million youngsters who have used ecigarettes or are open to trying them.

That “could mean requiring companies to remove some or all of their flavored products, which may be contributing to the rise in youth use, from the market,” the FDA said.