House Oversight Committee Urges FDA to “Clear the Market” of E-Cigarettes Following Coronavirus Concerns

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently been urged by the House Oversight Committee to “clear the market” of e-cigarettes as these make smokers more prone to contracting the coronavirus.

Lawmakers are concerned that smoking might accelerate the spread of the virus and “have a chain effect on the already strained health care system by introducing more patients to overflowing hospitals and ultimately endangering the public as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen,” reported Fox News.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) warned Americans that “because it attacks the lungs, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could be an especially serious threat to those who smoke tobacco … or who vape,” and smokers and vapers “could find themselves at increased risk of COVID-19 and its more serious complications.”

The chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, highlighted the lack of protective equipment for healthcare workers as an added reason to ban e-cigarettes and vapes. “Reducing the number of smokers and vapers that fall ill with coronavirus will not only help them but the entire health system,” Krishnamoorthi wrote.

According to current data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, there are 226,374 confirmed cases in the U.S. with 5,316 total deaths and 8,826 recoveries.