A key part of President Donald Trump’s electoral coalition is the MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, movement. As Americans have known since the 1960s, an important way to improve health and expand your lifespan is to quit smoking.
The American Lung Association reports good news on that front: “smoking rates have fallen 73% among adults, from 42.6% in 1965 to 11.6% in 2022.” But that 11% is still far too high. Smoking cigarettes is dangerous. The damage starts even before a smoker inhales.
“The heat from burning the cigarette releases nicotine and creates tar (tobacco residue). As you bring the cigarette to your lips, the tar stains your nails. The smoke dries out and inflames your skin, deepening wrinkles. Inhaling smoke through your nose damages nerve endings,” the Cleveland Clinic writes. It notes that smoking can lead to cancer, lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, ED, premature aging, and many more health problems.
One way to help people quit is to give them a safer alternative to cigarettes: vapes. When he was campaigning for president in 2024, Donald Trump recognized this. He made a campaign promise to save flavored vaping. “I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019, and it greatly helped people get off smoking,” he wrote on social media. “I raised the age to 21, keeping it away from the “kids.” Kamala and Joe want everything banned, killing small businesses all over the Country. I’ll save Vaping again!”
That promise, of course, cheered e-cigarette companies, small business owners, and millions of adult smokers who were trying to wean themselves off of deadly cigarettes. They gave him campaign support and, presumably, votes as a result. In a close election, Trump’s vaping vow may have made the difference in 2024.
However, many are now wondering whether Trump was serious about his promise, which seems to be, mostly, unfulfilled. Last year, Marty Makary, then the head of Trump’s FDA, testified to congress that “there are high schools in America now where kids are saying half of the kids in high school are addicted to these vaping products.” Makary has since returned to the academic world, and with good reason.
Reason Magazine called Makary out for some of his testimony as FDA chief. “According to the [2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey], the prevalence of past-month e-cigarette use among high school students last year was less than half the rate recorded in 2015,” Jacob Sullum wrote. “Whatever the merits of seizing those particular products, it is notable that adolescent vaping dropped sharply during the same period when Makary says the FDA was falling down on the job.”
The fact is that the FDA has approved flavors from only one company. Meanwhile, the agency has spent years rejecting more than a million applications for products that adult smokers would actually prefer. All at a time that youth vaping is a declining problem.
Every day that the FDA delays a path to authorization is another day American adults turn back to deadly cigarettes, or worse, an unregulated gray market with none of the safety oversight provided by the legal industry. The impacts of this delay are growing more acute across the nation, especially in states such as South Carolina that showed up for President Trump during the 2024 election.
President Trump and the Republican party he leads have the power to end the decimation of the American vape industry. Lawmakers should demand, and the president should support, a Premarket Tobacco Product Application standard that’s grounded in science and allows for a free and fair marketplace. That would be good for the health of Americans, and for the state of Trump’s campaign vows.