nytimes.com: E-Cigarettes Went Unchecked in 10 Years of Federal Inaction
10/15/2019
Theo Stroomer for The New York Times
By Katie Thomas and Sheila Kaplan
Oct. 14, 2019
In 2009, not long after Dr. Margaret Hamburg became commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a package arrived at her home. Inside was a clunky device called an e-cigarette.
“It was my first exposure to this emerging, new technology,” Dr. Hamburg recalled.
The package was sent by an antismoking activist as a warning about a product that was taking off in the United States. But over the next decade, the federal government — across the span of two presidential administrations — allowed the rise of a largely unregulated industry that may be addicting a new generation to nicotine.