E-Cigarette Company Sues FDA To Save Industry From Prohibition

By Guy Bentley

One of the nation’s leading e-liquid manufacturers is taking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to court over regulations that could wipe out 99 percent of the industry.

Nicopure Labs LLC filed a lawsuit in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. Tuesday against the FDA’s “deeming” regulations.

The part of the regulations that most concerns the e-cigarette industry is the so-called “predicate date” of Feb. 17, 2007. All vapor products that came on the market after this date, which is almost all of them, will have to go through the Pre-Market Tobacco Application process (PMTA).

PMTA’s can cost millions of dollars per product and around 1,700 hours of paperwork. Industry experts and the FDA’s own analysis from 2014 estimates 99 percent of products on the market won’t even be put through this process and will be taken off the market within two years.

Nicopure Labs claim the FDA violated the Administrative Procedure Act when making the rules and even violated the First Amendment.

“Today Nicopure Labs is again at the forefront of the industry as revolutionaries, as Nicopure Labs leads the way in defense of our constitutional rights and for the future of the entire vaping industry and the American right to choose,” said Jeff Stamler, CEO and co-founder of Nicopure Labs.

“Through one voice, Nicopure Labs has taken a stand to ensure the voices of all vapers are heard and that vapers are treated fairly and not with a single stroke of a broad brush by the FDA,” he added.

Nicopure Labs supports age restrictions and rules to protect consumers but argues regulations must ensure that businesses are able to survive and innovate as to provide smokers with an alternative to tobacco. (RELATED: Experts Savage FDA’s Most Recent Claim That Killing 99% Of An Industry Spurs ‘Innovation’)

“FDA’s rule does not protect the consumer from low-quality products; instead, it places a disproportionate and unjustified regulatory burden on compliant companies such as ourselves, who are determined to drive the industry to the highest standards of quality and innovation,” said Jason del Giudice, Nicopure’s CTO and co-founder.

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