VTA Ad Campaign Reminds Trump of Promise to "Save Vaping"

The Vapor Technology Association (VTA) announced today it has launched its third media campaign of 2025 aimed at President Donald Trump. The focus of the ads is to urge Trump to keep his campaign promise to “save vaping,” which was made after a meeting with VTA executive director Tony Abboud.

The VTA will run ads on cable and broadcast TV, and on digital platforms, according to a press release. The trade group, which represents companies from the independent vaping industry, will spend over $1 million to place ads on networks that include Fox News, Newsmax, Bloomberg, NBC and ESPN.

According to the VTA, the ads are “strategically designed to target key decision-makers” within the administration with the message that “the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are acting against President Trump’s wishes to save the flavored vaping industry.”

The industry group has announced two previous ad campaigns this year, both also aimed at Trump—one in January immediately after the President’s inauguration, and another in March, reminding Trump of his promise.

The FDA is not “saving vaping,” as Trump promised

Since Trump’s appointment of Martin Makary as FDA commissioner, the agency has continued the anti-vaping policies of the Biden administration, and has actually intensified enforcement actions against imported vaping products. The FDA has also not authorized any new vaping products during Trump’s nearly six-month tenure, and has continued to issue marketing denial orders (MDOs) to small American vape manufacturers.

According to vaping industry insiders, border enforcement is no longer primarily focused on unauthorized disposable vapes—as it was during Biden’s tenure—but has expanded to stopping almost all Chinese vape shipments, including even open-system (refillable) products and accessories like replacement coils and atomizers. Those products are the lifeblood of local vape shops and online sellers.

Even shipments that aren’t seized or returned are often unpredictably delayed, leaving the retailers at the end of the supply chain with empty shelves and unhappy customers. Meanwhile, the FDA’s continued refusal to authorize flavored e-liquids has reduced the product variety vape shops and consumers have relied on for over 15 years.

The increased enforcement has been encouraged by lobbying and influence campaigns led by major tobacco companies, which have relentlessly worked to stop competition against their cigarette and vape sales. Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds (a division of British American Tobacco) was a major corporate contributor to Trump's biggest campaign group. 

VTA calls for streamlined regulations

According to today’s VTA press release, the trade group “recognizes that rogue bureaucrats and an overreaching FDA is deputizing CBP to interdict virtually all vape products at the border, an effort which is disrupting the entire independent U.S. vape distribution chain and is in direct opposition to President Trump’s promise to save this industry.”

The trade group’s campaign also “reiterates our call for streamlined regulations that allow the tens of thousands of small businesses that make up this industry to thrive and encourages President Trump and his team to stand up for consumer choice.”

Trump’s first Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, promised over five years ago to create a streamlined FDA authorization system that would make the agency’s convoluted premarket tobacco application (PMTA) process workable for small businesses. That never happened, and since then, the handful of vaping products granted market authorization by the FDA have all been manufactured by subsidiaries of three major tobacco companies. 

The VTA press release says “the FDA’s actions are out of step with President Trump’s stated priorities, and it’s time for the agency to correct course and follow President Trump’s agenda—not former President Biden’s.”