After Sept. 9, 2020, the only vaping products that can be legally sold in the United States will be products approved for marketing by the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, or submitted to the agency and accepted for further review.
The submission process is called a Premarket Tobacco Application, or PMTA. The actual deadline to submit is at 4:00 p.m. on Sept. 9.
How the PMTA deadline will affect the lives of vapers and the businesses that serve them has been the subject of a lot of speculation, starting when the PMTA deadline was first announced in 2016. But as the date has gotten closer—and is now just a day away—the questions, arguments, guesses, misinformation, fear, anger, and despair in the vaping community have multiplied and exploded.
The simple fact is that no one knows what will happen immediately after Sept. 9, or what will happen next week, next month, or next year—or, rather, no one knows everything that will happen. Some things we know, and others we can make educated guesses about. Some things we won’t know until they happen, and some of those things depend on other things we also don’t know.
It is confusing and maddening, but there’s no need for vapers to despair. If you pay attention to what’s happening, you should be able to continue vaping, even though some things will change and there will probably be some inconveniences. Unfortunately, the future may be dark for some small vape businesses, and many will probably become cherished memories.
Jim McDonald – Vaping360 – September 7, 2020.
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