In 2018, Juul Labs Inc. had announced its plans to stop selling most of its flavoured nicotine liquids at bricks-and-mortar stores. The e-cig manufacturer had said that it would keep on selling menthol and tobacco-flavored products in stores, and that all the other flavours would remain available for sale on its website, which has age-verification controls.
“We continue to review our policies and practices in advance of FDA’s flavor guidance and have not made any final decisions,” Juul
However, likely in response to last month’s announcement by the Trump administration that all flavoured vaping products may be banned, Juul has just announced that it will now also stop selling its flavoured pods on its website, effective immediately. Meanwhile its mint and menthol nicotine pods will remain available for sale.
“We continue to review our policies and practices in advance of FDA’s flavor guidance and have not made any final decisions,” Juul spokesman Austin Finan said in a statement. “We are refraining from lobbying the administration on its draft flavor guidance and will fully support and comply with the final policy when effective.”
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke in response to this move. He said that Juul’s decision to stop selling its flavoured products will not affect the Trump administration’s plans to ban flavours. “We want anything that’s attractive to kids to not be available for kids,” he said, “It doesn’t stop what the president and I are working on.”
The administration is currently “hard at work” on the ban
When Azar and FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless, had announced the plan to ban flavours, they had said that details would be released in a couple of weeks. However, now more than a month later, the administration has yet to share any details.
Director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, said that the administration is “hard at work” on the flavour ban. “It’s one of the reasons why I need to get back to the office after this talk,” he said at the Food and Drug Law Institute’s Tobacco and Nicotine Products Regulation and Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. “And I cannot talk publicly about any of those internal deliberations other than to say more details to follow as soon as that guidance document is released.”
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