The Shifting Regulatory Landscape for Vaping Products: Premarket Removals, Flavour Restrictions, and Wholesale Bans

The changing regulatory landscape for electronic cigarettes and vaping products suggests a general shift away from official acceptance of such products and towards recognition of their risks to youths and ‘never smokers’.
This shift is evidenced by the disproportionately large number of Marketing Denial Orders issued to date by the US FDA against vaping products, and the expansion of the FDA’s scope of authority to regulate e-cigarettes that use synthetic nicotine. These changes may significantly narrow the vaping market in the US.
An increasing number of governments have banned flavoured vaping products, with new laws coming into effect in the Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, and China in 2022, and regulations being proposed in Sweden and Canada. Within Europe, governments that accept such products as part of a tobacco-harm-reduction strategy are increasingly becoming the exception rather than the norm.
A shift in regulatory positions regarding the treatment of e-cigarettes can also be observed in East and South Asia, including policies to institute novel lifetime bans and blanket prohibitions of such products.