In a bid to help consumers stay away from unregulated vaping products, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to make the list of e-cig brands which applied for the PMTA, available to the public.
As the infamous May 12th PreMarket Tobacco Application Authorization (PMTA) deadline was fast approaching, a number of entities including Altria Group Inc. and tobacco association NATO, had asked the FDA to push the deadline back due to the complications caused by the current pandemic.
To this effect, on March 30th the agency had filed a request for a 120-day extension on the deadline. As a result on April 3rd, Judge Paul Grimm of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, agreed to the request and moved the deadline to September 9th, 2020.
Approximately 2,000 applications have been received
Subsequently, the FDA has recently announced that the normally secretive process will be made public, and the agency will be publishing a list of all the products subject to the deadline which have filed applications. The announcement was made by Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, via a blog post last month.
The FDA has already received applications for approximately 2,000 e-cigarettes and other newly regulated tobacco products. Zeller pointed out that there are over 400 million eligible items that would need to apply in order to stay on the market.
Vapesourcing Opinion:
It is a great thing to publish legal products to the public to prevent smokers from buying illegal and substandard products, which will help maintain the reputation of the electronic cigarette industry.
