On April 1, 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to clear the market of e-cigarettes because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. It was responding to FDA’s request to give e-cigarette manufacturers four additional months to submit applications to stay on the market before enforcing a ban.
“Allowing e-cigarettes to remain on the market during this period would harm children and adults throughout the country and exacerbate the coronavirus crisis in critical ways,” subcommittee chair Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) said.
Krishnamoorthi, a speaker at ONS’s March 2020 congressional briefing on vaping and youth smoking rates, is championing antivaping work in Congress as a cofounder of the Congressional Caucus to End the Youth Vaping Epidemic.
Launched in September 2019, the bipartisan group of 52 congressional representatives was created to “serve as a forum in Congress to discuss needed solutions to better protect American youth from the dangers of vaping and nicotine addiction.”