Altria halts sale of some vape items
Tobacco giant addresses “the youth issue.”
Tobacco maker Altria Group pledged Thursday to stop selling certain vaping products until federal regulators sign off on those items or “the youth issue is otherwise addressed.”
The move came after the Food and Drug Administration said recently that it was weighing a ban on certain flavored e-cigarette liquids amid mounting concerns about teenagers vaping.
Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA and maker of Marlboro cigarettes, is halting sales of multiple items:
❚ MarkTen Elite pod-based products.
❚ Apex by MarkTen pod-based products.
❚ All favored variants of MarkTen and Green Smoke “cig-a-like products” except tobacco, menthol and mint varieties.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently met with Altria “to discuss actions that could be taken,” Altria said in a statement. The agency has pressed vaping companies to roll out measures to prevent teenagers from vaping and to stop marketing the products to young people.
The FDA also has been under pressure from health groups that sued the agency for allowing products vaping to hit the market without approval.
More than 2 million middle school, high school and college teens use battery-powered devices to heat liquidbased nicotine into an inhalable vapor. Nearly 12 percent of high school students vaped in the past 30 days, according to the 2017 National Youth Tobacco Survey released in June 2018.
Medical professionals say vaping can lead to nicotine addiction and tobacco usage.