The Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda has renewed faith in U.S. businesses, manufacturing, and the industrial sector, and President Trump’s efforts to undo the damage of the Biden Administration have reminded Americans of what true leadership looks like.
However, despite President Trump’s early success in his new administration, the America First philosophy is under attack in one particular industry: the American vaping industry.
President Trump has long sought to save flavored vaping. He believes in the benefits of these products for adult consumers that are trying to quit cigarettes, and he believes in the economic value this industry has in America.
He also believes in America First and is therefore fighting to get illicit vapes off the streets which are targeting our youth.
Unfortunately, President Trump’s efforts to ban illicit vapes targeting children have been taken to the extreme and are at risk of eliminating the industry entirely and the adults who rely on these products.
That’s because lost among this message to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the key word: illicit.
In the FDA’s eyes, all vapes from China are illicit. If taken at face value, that would make all vapes illicit, as they are all made in China. Because of this short-sighted view, the small businesses going through the FDA’s lengthy process to bring their products to American consumers legally are currently being targeted. Instead of prioritizing the removal of products that have not gone through or submitted Premarket Tobacco Product Applications (PMTA), Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agents are actively seizing all vapes at the border.
This imprecise and frankly tactless strategy is putting the American economy and health of Americans throughout the country at risk.
This isn't the first time the FDA used technical interpretations to execute their bureaucratic agenda. As of April 2025, the FDA approved only 34 unique electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products – the category vapes fall under – while denying tens of thousands more. How can the FDA expect companies to play by the rules, if the FDA won’t even give these companies a chance?
In order to save this industry, the American consumers who rely on it, and the millions of dollars in revenue it brings in, the question at the border must shift from “Are these products from China” to “Which of these products have gone through or are actively going through the FDA’s approval process properly?”
In theory, the FDA’s PMTA process allows this question to be answered. A company has either filed PMTAs for a product or they have not.
However, once a company applies, it is at the mercy of the FDA. The PMTA process, when it’s right, takes about a year to get a product approved. But, with the millions of products submitted, the FDA simply can’t keep up with the demand. The backlog the FDA’s negligence is creating makes it impossible for these products to get approved.
A good amount of vapes being seized are ones that are going through this process, but haven’t yet been approved. The companies with illicit vapes aren’t even applying.
This is the technicality the FDA has chosen to neglect and operate on. Not all Chinese vapes are illicit and the FDA knows that. But instead of differentiating between the illicit and non-illicit companies and products, they’re deeming all vapes coming from China as illicit, despite having records of which companies have and have not applied for approval.
The fact that these records are not public is the loophole making the FDA’s malfeasance possible.
While small business owners debate the future of their livelihoods as their supply hangs in the balance, the FDA is silently withholding the very documents that prove their legitimacy.
If the FDA acted in good faith and made the list public, small American businesses that support American consumers and our economy would be able to thrive.
The vapes coming into this country illegally are the ones which need to be punished. Not the small business owners doing everything in their power to operate according to law. The few bad actors trying to game the system are putting catastrophic consequences on the entire industry.
If vapes continue to be seized at the border, small businesses will run out of supply and go under. Once these businesses go under, millions of Americans lose their alternative to smoking cigarettes.
The FDA can stop this from happening. It has the power to reward the small businesses doing the right thing and help the economy flourish. The FDA can save flavored vaping, and in turn, save millions of Americans.
