On October 6, the day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data showing a modest uptick in youth vaping amid a longer-term decline, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made an announcement of its own.
The agency said it had issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) for 32 disposable vaping products through its premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) process—all of them manufactured by Magellan Technology, Inc. and sold under the popular Hyde brand.
Many tobacco harm reduction proponents interpreted this as a fairly transparent move by the FDA to appear to be doing something, assuming the new data would be sure to set off the prohibitionist camp. A messy dispute over the FDA’s communication has now seen the agency accused of abandoning clarity in a rush to score public relations points.
These days, middle school and high school students who vape overwhelmingly prefer disposables to other vapes, like the once-favored pod devices. The CDC reported that of youth who were “current” users—meaning they said they’d vaped at least once in the past 30 days—and listed a brand, Hyde was the sixth most commonly reported, at 7.3 percent.
Puff Bar, Vuse, Juul, Smok and NJOY all outranked Hyde by varying margins. But as Jim McDonald noted in Vaping360, “not listed” (32.2 percent) and “not sure/don’t know” (28.3 percent) were the only responses that ranked closed to Puff Bar’s 29.7 percent.
Alex Norcia – Filter – 2022-10-18.