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The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration insists that he is determined to keep electronic cigarettes away from children. “We won’t let this pool of kids, a pool of future potential smokers, of future disease and death, to continue to build,” Scott Gottlieb said this week, in response to news that the number of high-school and middle-school kids who vape is up 1.5 million since last year. “We’ll take whatever action is necessary to stop these trends from continuing.”Yet the steps the FDA is taking are not enough. (11/16)

The Food and Drug Administration’s sweeping new tobacco rules did not quite satisfy public-health activists seeking more stringent rules, nor industry-sympathetic conservatives who see them as a “heavy-handed regulatory plan.” In fact, the rules represent an extraordinary step in the fight against nicotine addiction, one that, if successful, would become one of the nation’s greatest public-health victories. (11/17)

The problem is that anti-smoking zealots want to go further and remove e-cigarettes from the market altogether while leaving most tobacco products untouched. That would snuff out the most impactful public health development in decades. The FDA’s action is designed to reduce e-cigarette use among high school and middle school students “because there is also evidence that a large percentage of these children will become addicted to nicotine and ultimately take up smoking." Yet plummeting and all-time low smoking rates – especially among young adults – would suggest otherwise. In contrast, the FDA recognizes that use of e-cigarettes can help adults stop smoking. (Peter J. Pitts and Robert Goldberg, 11/16)

The changes don’t go far enough and must still clear regulatory hurdles that could take two years or more. In the meantime, Alachua County should proceed with its own plan to prevent e-cigarette and tobacco use among young people.Last month, county commissioners voted to draft an ordinance that would ban the sale of e-cigarette and tobacco products in the county to anyone under 21 years old. Six states and at least 350 cities and counties across the country have already raised the legal age for such purchases to 21 from 18. (11/16)

One of public health’s greatest successes has been the steady decline in use of combustible tobacco (e.g., cigarettes, cigars), however the rising use of electronic cigarettes (also a tobacco product) among youth could reverse this trend. The 2018 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Youth Drug Survey, with 10,000 youth participating, shows high school youth smoking cigarettes at an all-time low of 5.1 percent, however one in five (19.6 percent) high school youth are currently using e-cigs with white teens using at the highest rates (34 percent). The 2017 North Carolina Youth Tobacco Survey shows that 39.6 percent of our 12th graders statewide are vaping. (Gibbie Harris, 11/19)