More FDA Warning Letters for Online Elf Bar Sellers

The FDA sent warning letters yesterday to seven online retailers of popular disposable vapes, ordering the products removed from the market. Six of the companies were cited for Elf Bar (or EBDESIGN) sales, two for Cali Bar, and one each for selling Bang and Lava products.

“FDA’s robust surveillance of the e-cigarette landscape helps us to identify youth-appealing products and to act quickly to protect public health,” said FDA Center for Tobacco Products Director Brian King in a press release. “The goal is to identify, prevent, and reduce these risks to our nation’s youth before they escalate further.”

The agency may have been late on Elf Bar, which was the favorite brand listed by vaping middle and high school students on this year’s National Youth Tobacco Survey.

Elf Bar has been the undisputed star on the FDA’s disposable vape “most wanted list.” Last week, the agency announced it would seek maximum civil money penalties (CMPs) from 20 small retail stores as punishment for selling Elf Bar products.

Multiple importers, distributors, and online and brick-and-mortar retailers have been sanctioned by the FDA for selling Elf Bar products, and earlier this year, the FDA ordered its import inspectors to detain Chinese Elf Bar shipments.

Other sellers of the brands cited yesterday have also been named in other recent FDA enforcement actions.

The FDA has rejected millions of premarket tobacco applications (PMTAs), forcing many companies to take the agency to court to challenge marketing denial orders (MDOs). Since it granted itself regulatory authority over vaping products in 2016, the FDA has authorized just six e-liquid-based vaping devices that are currently on the market.

All six FDA-authorized vaping devices are manufactured by three Big Tobacco-owned companies: Logic (owned by Japan Tobacco International), NJOY (Altria Group), and Vuse (R.J. Reynolds).