Expert Available to Comment on New E-Cigarette Regulations

stier_smWashington, D.C. / New York, NY – The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products will soon publish the so-called “deeming regulations,” which will be the framework for regulating e-cigarettes at the federal level.

The National Center for Public Policy Research’s director of Risk Analysis, Jeff Stier, will be available to speak with reporters who cover regulations.

Mr. Stier met with White House and FDA officials twice as the Administration was considering these deeming regulations. He has also given talks at leading conferences around the world on the role of tobacco harm reduction. Stier has also offered his expertise on the matter at the United Nations, as well as in city, state and federal regulatory and legislative hearings around the country.

As Stier told WCBS TV in January, “E-cigarettes are a free-market solution to the problem of smoking because people are willfully switching from a very harmful product to dramatically less harmful products.”

Stier is concerned that “If, in the name of public health, federal regulations inhibit much-needed innovation in the e-cigarette market, public health would actually suffer, as fewer adult smokers would be likely to switch from smoking.”

In an op-ed for USA Today, Stier argued, “E-cigarettes aren’t threatening the progress of continued smoking reduction. They are helping even hard-core cigarette smokers quit.”

In an interview with Al Jazeera America’s Ali Velshi, Stier called e-cigarettes “a boon to public health” and a threat to the old way tobacco companies did business.

According to Stier, “It is appropriate for the federal government to regulate e-cigarettes, but as even the FDA’s own chief tobacco regulator has repeatedly acknowledged, the law requires the agency to use science to weigh the potential benefits of e-cigarettes, against any potential health risk, for both the individual user, as well as the population as a whole.”

When the FDA initially proposed the deeming regulation in 2014, Stier warned that, “If the regulations are too heavy-handed, they’ll have the deadly effect of preventing smokers from quitting by switching to these dramatically less harmful alternatives.”

Stier predicts, “If the deeming regulations apply overly-burdensome rules, the industry, consumer groups, and health advocates will come together to challenge the rules in court, as well as in the legislature.”

To speak with Jeff Stier, contact Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or cell (703) 477-7476 or [email protected].

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations, and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors. Sign up for free issue alerts here or follow us on Twitter at @NationalCenter.

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The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.