Washington Times Op-Ed: How FDA’s Mitch Zeller blew it on nicotine policy

By Amanda Wheeler

This month the principal architect of America’s nicotine policy regulation, Mitch Zeller, will retire as head of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. His career highlight might be the arbitrary outlawing of nearly all nicotine vaping products, which are the single most effective smoking cessation method ever devised. 

But that’s just Mr. Zeller’s latest ignominy. Back the frame out and behold the carnival of policy ineptitude that has marked his tenure as tobacco czar. 

According to the Federal Trade Commission, for the first time in 20 years, cigarette sales are rising. That reverses a downward trend that had seen its steepest decline during the emergence of nicotine vaping.

The Wall Street analysts who focus on tobacco companies make consensus recommendations to buy those stocks. And what’s the reason? Because they are citing all the regulations, bans and taxes that Mr. Zeller and his government colleagues are inflicting on nicotine vaping, and they know that means less competition for cigarettes. Let me repeat — these are not journalists or activists or politicians. They are ice-cold rational financial analysts working for highly sophisticated institutional investment houses. 

There’s evidence galore that they are correct. In every jurisdiction where taxes or bans go into effect, cigarette smoking rates begin to spike almost immediately. Careful analysis of the recent congressional vape tax proposal alone predicted it would drive more than 2 million Americans back into smoking cigarettes.  

I can tell you firsthand that scores of vaping businesses of every size are going bankrupt daily — many thousands in just the last year. That means investments obliterated, employees laid off, inventory junked, dreams destroyed — and worst of all, the customers who relied on those businesses so they could quit smoking are now returning in droves to cigarettes.

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