BOSTON – Forty attorneys general, including Maine’s, sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday urging the agency to meet its own deadline and regulate electronic cigarettes in the same way it regulates tobacco products.

The letter, co-sponsored by Massachusetts Attorney Martha Coakley and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, says e-cigarettes are being marketed to children through cartoon-like advertising characters and by offering fruit and candy flavors, much like cigarettes were once marketed to hook new smokers.

At the same time, e-cigarettes are becoming more affordable and more widely available as the use of regular cigarettes decline as they become more expensive and less socially acceptable.

“Unlike traditional tobacco products, there are no federal age restrictions that would prevent children from obtaining e-cigarettes, nor are there any advertising restrictions,” DeWine wrote.

Electronic cigarettes are metal or plastic battery-powered devices resembling traditional cigarettes that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. Users get nicotine without the chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes.

E-cigarettes are being advertised during prime-time television hours at a time when many children are watching, according to the letter, which has led a surge in sales and use.

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Citing a National Youth Tobacco Surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the attorneys general said 1.8 million middle and high school students said they had tried e-cigarettes in 201.

The letter urges the FDA to meet an already proposed Oct. 31 deadline to issue proposed regulations on advertising, ingredients and sales to minors.

Maine Attorney General Janet T. Mills said in a press release that she is “very concerned that e-cigarettes are just the latest effort to introduce kids to nicotine, quickly followed by a lifetime of addiction to deadly tobacco products.”

 


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