Press Announcements > Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on new steps to address epidemic of youth e-cigarette use

Press Announcements > Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on new steps to address epidemic of youth e-cigarette use

Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on new steps to address epidemic of youth e-cigarette use

More than a year ago, the FDA unveiled a broad policy to reduce the death and disease caused by smoking. Smoking remains the number one preventable cause of death in America, killing nearly half a million people a year. If we aren’t successful in more sharply reducing the rate of addiction to tobacco, then we’ll continue to see this needless death and disease. FDA’s new legal authorities to regulate tobacco ‒ as part of the Tobacco Control Act ‒ empowered us to alter this trajectory. We saw an opening to push a generational shift in the deadly course caused by tobacco. And we’ve seized it.