The U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 28 voted to pass the Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act, which, if further approved by the Senate, would ban the manufacturing and sale of flavored e-cigarettes and tobacco in the country.
The vote was 213-195, the Washington Post reported, and divided House Democrats and Republicans on an issue that’s gripped the U.S. for two years now. The Surgeon General first declared youth vaping a national epidemic in December 2018, and since then e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury—or EVALI—has claimed the lives of dozens of users and hospitalized thousands of others.
Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, said in a Feb. 28 statement that the current tobacco bill is necessary “in part because the Trump administration’s recent policy...falls well short of what is necessary to address this growing epidemic.” The Trump administration balked last November after announcing an earlier plan to ban non-tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes, and in January it announced a policy that allows menthol pod-based e-cigarettes, flavored e-liquids used in open tank systems and flavored disposable e-cigarettes to remain on the market.
The Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act would pull all flavored tobacco products—including menthol products—from the commercial market within a year. It would also require e-cigarette companies to pull all flavored products without pre-market authorization from the FDA within 30 days and prohibit tobacco companies from advertising their products to anyone under age 21.
“We cannot emphasize enough the importance of including menthol cigarettes in this bill,” Brown said. “Big Tobacco has successfully targeted minority populations with menthol products for decades, resulting in more than 70% of adolescent African-Americn smokers and more than half of adolescent Latino smokers using menthol. The cooling properties of menthol cigarettes also make them more appealing to youth; more than half of youth smokers age 12-17 use menthol cigarettes, compared to less than one-third of older adult smokers.”
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, agreed with Brown’s sentiment, calling the House’s Friday decision a “historic victory for kids over the tobacco industry.”
“This legislation is exactly what’s needed to reverse the youth e-cigarette epidemic and end the tobacco industry’s long and lethal history of targeting kids and other vulnerable groups with flavored products,” he said in a statement. “The U.S. Senate should quickly take up and approve this legislation. There is no time to waste in stopping the tobacco industry from addicting another generation of kids with flavored e-cigarettes and other flavored products.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.