Yesterday, the FDA issued warning letters to seven online shops selling popular disposable vapes, asking them to remove the devices from the market. Six firms were cited for Elf Bar (or EBDESIGN) sales, two for Cali Bar, and one for selling Bang and Lava items.
"FDA's robust surveillance of the e-cigarette landscape helps us to identify youth-appealing products and act quickly to protect public health," stated FDA Center for Tobacco Items Director Brian King in a news statement. "The goal is to identify, prevent, and reduce these risks to our nation's youth before they escalate further."
The EPA may have been late on Elf Bar, which was voted the preferred brand among vaping middle and high school students in this year's National Youth Tobacco Survey.
Elf Bar has been the undeniable star of the FDA's disposable vape "most wanted list." Last Monday, the agency said that it would pursue the maximum civil money penalty (CMP) from 20 small retail establishments for selling Elf Bar goods.
The FDA has sanctioned many importers, wholesalers, and online and brick-and-mortar stores for selling Elf Bar goods, and early this year, the FDA directed its import inspectors to delay Chinese Elf Bar shipments.
Other vendors of the brands mentioned yesterday have been named in recent FDA enforcement proceedings.
The FDA has denied millions of premarket tobacco applications (PMTAs), prompting numerous corporations to sue the agency over marketing denial orders (MDOs). Since granting itself regulatory control over vaping goods in 2016, the FDA has only approved six e-liquid-based vaping devices, which are now on the market.
All six FDA-approved vaping devices are made by three Big Tobacco companies: Logic (Japan Tobacco International), NJOY (Altria Group), and Vuse (R.J. Reynolds).
