Some in the vaping industry slammed the FDA for shrinking the number of cigarette-alternatives available in the U.S. “This bill ought to be called the Cigarette Protection Act, because the indisputable outcome will be countless more Americans pushed away from nicotine vaping and back into combustible smoking,” Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, told Filter.

“It’s already lunatic that FDA is prohibiting adult American smokers from switching to vaping but this legislation is so absurd that it will extend FDA’s reach to products that have no actual, physical connection to tobacco whatsoever,” said Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers Association.

“This bill ought to be called the Cigarette Protection Act, because the indisputable outcome will be countless more Americans pushed away from nicotine vaping and back into combustible smoking,” said Amanda Wheeler, the president of the American Vapor Manufacturers association.

“Like nearly the whole of our industry, we believe synthetic nicotine is a positive innovation that enhances consumer choice and provides a crucial pathway for cigarette smokers to switch to vaping,” said Amanda Wheeler, president of the American Vapor Manufacturers.

Amanda Wheeler is angry.

Who is she angry with? I think it would be fair to say she is angry with a lot of people and organizations, but mainly she is angry with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, some politicians, large swathes of the U.S. media, “scientists” who put their names to the findings of flawed research into vaping and people who use their wealth and influence to spread misleading stories about vaping, sometimes based on flawed research.

Amanda Wheeler also pointed to National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research, which estimated the tax would result in "approximately a half million extra teenage smokers overall."

“Speaker Pelosi is wrong on the math, wrong on the science, and apparently has not even read the government’s own estimates of the public health disaster this vape tax will cause.”

“Members pushing this tax seem to have no conception of just how intensely irate voters are about it. Millions of vapers cut across every political and social demographic, and this is more than a single-issue passion for them; it’s life or death.”

“We are not surrendering our business or abandoning vapers to cigarettes. As we say in Arizona, this is more than just a fight. It’s going to be a reckoning.”

“We are not surrendering our business or abandoning vapers to cigarettes. As we say in Arizona, this is more than just a fight. It’s going to be a reckoning.”

“Senators should be skeptical and prepared to vote no until we have an FDA commissioner who is willing to use vaping as a tool to promote public health and not continue the FDA’s regulatory arson that leaves former and current smokers without a safe and effective way to quit.”

“The most generous interpretation is that FDA has made a sweeping clerical error in denying these products.”

“Federal regulators routinely downplay or purposefully spin their own research to prop up an alarmist narrative based on a mirage, and deep-pocketed anti-vaping activist groups continue to ignore or conceal the large-scale public health benefits of our products.”

“FDA could have approached this by allowing companies that have always been registered with them and inspected by them to continue serving their customers while approaching the broader issue on a basis of sound science and true public health.”