Federal enforcement actions targeting the independent vaping industry yesterday are the strongest signal yet that President Donald Trump has no intention of keeping his campaign promise to “save vaping.”
In fact, the Trump administration seems dead-set on wiping out the small vape industry and propping up Trump’s Big Tobacco campaign contributors.
Federal authorities carried out raids and seizures Wednesday at vape distributors and retailers in six states, led by the FDA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The U.S. Marshals Service also participated. Businesses in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, and North Carolina were targeted.
Also yesterday, the FDA announced a separate seizure of 4.7 million vaping products in a joint FDA-U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operation in Chicago. According to an FDA press release, it was the agency’s largest vaping import seizure ever.
Meet the new anti-vaping zealots
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and Attorney General Pam Bondi traveled together to Bensenville, IL to stand in front of tables of seized products after the raid on major vape distributor Midwest Goods.
Reminiscent of thousands of Drug War-era seizures, the federal officials proudly posed in front of their haul and promised they would arrest and seize their way to success in ending the scourge of youth vaping.
They regurgitated the same lies and half-truths about vaping we are accustomed to hearing from anti-vaping zealots like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Senator Dick Durbin, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. However, they were speaking on behalf of the Trump administration, which President Trump promised would save vaping.
The FDA commissioner is clearly not interested in saving vaping, which he says is a dangerous epidemic among American youth. Yesterday, Makary claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued untrustworthy National Youth Tobacco Survey results in 2024, when just 5.9 percent of middle and high school students reported vaping in the past 30 days.
According to Makary, the survey methodology used by the “Biden CDC” was flawed, and we’d get more scientifically believable numbers by asking parents and students what they think.
“When I talk to parents and teachers and kids in high schools,” said Makary, “I'm hearing 20 percent…40 percent of the kids in high school…50 percent of the kids in high school. This is an epidemic that we have yet to fully understand.”
It’s hard to imagine a more bizarre take on the NYTS, which is a widely respected survey, previously trusted by most knowledgeable observers, whether they support vaping as a harm reduction tool or not. The FDA commissioner now says to trust anecdotes, not data.
No government officials have ever been more opposed to vaping than those working in the Biden CDC and FDA (until now, that is). If the Biden CDC could have believably delivered a 2024 survey with alarming youth vaping numbers, it would have.
Blame it all on China
The Trump administration is leaning heavily on the fact that all mass-market vaping devices and most prefilled disposable vapes are made in China. The “illegal Chinese vapes” narrative has been driven hard by tobacco industry lobbyists and communications staff. The tobacco companies are concerned about lost cigarette sales, and they have pounded the story of Chinese vapes into Republicans through an endless stream of op-eds and posts by tobacco-funded conservative think tanks, media sites and social media influencers.
Now the administration is employing the anti-China rhetoric directly.
“They [China] bring this into our country,” Attorney General Bondi told reporters yesterday. “They distribute it. They get kids addicted. They add THC and ultimately it could be laced with fentanyl. Thank goodness we haven't seen any fentanyl overdose deaths yet. That's why we're here today. That's why we're on the front end instead of the back end of this problem. To stop it now before fentanyl is laced into these things.”
“The Trump administration,” Bondi said, “will not let the American people suffer the consequences of dangerous chemicals being pushed into our communities by Chinese companies and manufacturers.”
"They [China] are making products there that they believe are so dangerous they can't sell to their own citizens,” said Kennedy. “And they're dumping them here in our country, and the Chinese are getting richer while our children get sicker." (China only allows the sale of tobacco-flavored vapes. Vapes in any flavor have not been proven to be dangerous or to make anyone sick.)
But, despite Bondi’s and Kennedy’s anti-China rants, many of the products targeted in the raids were American-made bottled e-liquids—-used in refillable devices by millions of adults. According to a warrant issued for the raid at Midwest Goods, many of the products sought by enforcement agencies were U.S.-made and sold by companies with premarket tobacco applications (PMTAs) still under review by the FDA.
Until now, it had been FDA practice to not enforce against products still under review or with marketing denial orders (MDO) stayed by a federal court during appeal. That policy seems to have changed, but the FDA hasn’t announced a policy shift.
According to a statement from Midwest Goods, the FDA conducted an inspection at the facility in August, after which the company notified the agency it had removed some products noted by inspectors.
“We also offered to remove other ENDS products from our product catalog if FDA was concerned about our continuing to offer them for sale,” said Midwest. “FDA acknowledged receipt of our correspondence, but did not request that we stop selling any other products.”
Trump is not going to save vaping
A little over a month ago, we asked if President Trump intends to keep his promise to save vaping. The answer seems clear. There can’t be any trust after the attack on vaping that happened yesterday. “Oops, sorry” won’t make it go away.
Midwest Goods and the other targeted distributors are major suppliers of the products vape shops around the country sell to the millions of Americans who have exchanged deadly cigarettes for low-risk vapes.
"When you go after distributors, that means everyone downstream, including all the small mom and pop businesses that they supply, will have to shut down," Tony Abboud, executive director of the Vapor Technology Association (VTA), told ABC7 News.
That doesn’t seem to be a concern for the Trump team.
Earlier this week, the FDA announced it would fast-track PMTAs for some nicotine pouches made by tobacco companies.
