And that's a bad thing?
What the DEA (a totally different governmental organization with different motivations and biases) thinks about marijuana is reprehensible, however.
If your product causes harm in any way—regardless of the benefits—you're going to have a difficult time getting regulatory approval. It will also greatly affect access to the product, as not everyone has access to good doctors, and most items that are FDA-regulated requires prescriptions.
For a product which is a superior, healthier option to cigarettes, it's a massive regulatory burden that could kill the business. I can't imagine anyone would defend that as preferable to the status quo.
Question stands, is that a bad thing?
Besides not everything FDA approved becomes a prescription medication. On topic; nicotine gums and patches as smoke cessation products are widely available as OTC.
Long story short, I can imagine a lot of valid arguments pointing in every which way here.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'll just point out the observation that there are a lot of perverse incentives to keep the tobacco money flowing, public health be damned. Hell, remember back 2019 public health officials were running made-up 'e-cigarettes are causing lung injury' scare which turned out to be entirely caused by contaminated black market THC cartriges? SF still hasn't walked back their e-cigarette ban that led to a doubling of tobacco use by high schoolers[1].
To give an idea of where priorities are, the state of California does 10x the number of checks to make sure stores are paying their cigarette taxes as they do to make sure stores aren't selling to minors.
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
There are countless products from weight loss to joint pain to "improve your memory" that sidestep the issue with those 9 simple words. I don't see why it would be any different for Juul.
Nicotine will count as an active ingredient, you can't just slap these 9 words to any random drug and just sell it over the counter.
I don’t think this is true. I can buy Nicolette all over the place without a doctors note. In the US at least.
Oh and it tastes like shit, to save the children.
