COLUMBUS – Many of the health claims being made by the makers and sellers of electronic cigarettes probably won’t stand up to scrutiny under recently announced FDA regulation, according to researchers at Ohio State.
The new rules, announced in May, brings all tobacco products, including liquids used in vaporizers and e-cigarettes, under the same government oversight and require products to carry warnings they contain nicotine, which is addictive.
The research team found that most manufacturer and retailer sites made at least one health-related claim, often saying that they were less harmful than traditional cigarettes, didn’t carry the same second-hand-smoke risks and some claimed that e-cigarettes posed no health risks at all.
Those messages shaped consumer perception of electronic cigarettes and similar devices and may have left the American public with false perceptions that will be difficult to reverse, according to the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Tobacco Regulatory Science
“Once these messages are communicated to consumers, you can’t un-ring that bell. We want to be sure that consumers are accurately and correctly informed about their health decisions, including decisions about e-cigarette use,” said Elizabeth Klein, associate professor of health behavior and health promotion at Ohio State.
The experts in public health and law examined online claims before the new regulation was enacted and analyzed the statements to see how they stacked up to current and pending regulation.
Sales of e-cigarette products are rising about 25 percent a year and some experts estimate they will overtake cigarette sales within a decade.
Cigarette makers aren’t allowed to claim that any of their products are better for you than others. Until the recent FDA action, e-cigarette businesses could make all the claims they wanted about reduced risk.
Now that the FDA rule is in place, prohibitions against unauthorized claims will be in effect as of early August, meaning that manufacturers who want to market products as healthier or safer than cigarettes must first apply to the FDA and provide evidence to back the claims.