In 2020, the FDA announced that were banning the sale of Puff Bar E-Cigarettes and required that all products be removed from the U.S. market. This decision by the FDA was made as part of a broader crackdown on underage vaping.
Puff Bar vaporizers come in more than a dozen flavors and cost between $9 and $15 on the brand’s website. They are sold in Watermelon, Blueberry Ice and other flavors that health officials say appeal to underage users. The devices deliver between 200 and 800 puffs each, depending on the size.
Similar to the market-leading e-cigarette Juul, Puff Bar has a sleek, USB-drive shape. But while Juul’s device uses refill pods, Puff Bar is designed for one-time use. Because Puff Bar devices couldn’t be refilled, the FDA’s flavor restrictions didn’t apply to them. Cool Clouds Distribution Inc., which makes Puff Bar, voluntarily stopped its U.S. sales in July of 2020 amid calls by anti-tobacco groups and lawmakers all pushing for its products to be banned.
At the top of 2021, Puff Bar found a way out of the FDA’s recent ban on their product by creating a new device that doesn’t include tobacco. The brand officially resumed sales on its website in February. The brand is hoping that this change in their product will keep them free from the FDA removing their product from the stores again. Puff Bar says it is using nicotine which isn’t derived from tobacco.
Puff Bar was previously own by Cool Clouds Distribution Inc in 2020. However, after the FDA’s criticism of their products purposely being made to attract young people, they sold it in 2020 to its Chinese manufacturer DS Technology Licensing LLC. According to GEOtrending News, a lawyer representing DS Technology said it no longer owned the brand, and that they had stopped exporting Puff Bar products to the U.S. and had no knowledge of the new products.
“What should be done, if anything, to curb underage use of disposable e-cigarettes?” This is the ongoing question.
After the FDA’s restrictions took sweet and fruity e-cigarette refill pods like Juul’s off the market, underage vaping dropped. But, disposable e-cigarette use among children and teens jumped, according to a federal survey conducted from January to March 2020. Some 26.5% of high-school e-cigarette users said they used disposable e-cigarettes, up from 2.4% in 2019. The most popular e-cigarette flavor type among those students was fruit.
In a letter to Puff Bar on July 20, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products said Puff Bar products hadn’t been authorized for sale by the agency and that the company had made unauthorized claims on its website that its vaporizers were less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
Puff Bar stopped selling vaporizers on its website, but retail-store sales of Puff Bar continued. The brand’s sales have plummeted this year as a result of improved compliance with the FDA’s order, said Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog.
On July 20, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products sent a letter to Puff Barr stating that they hadn’t been authorized for sale by the agency and that the company had made unauthorized claims on its website that its vaporizers were less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
The fight against these type of products continues. Educating ourselves and others is one of the best methods against it continued rise. If the complaints from others in high profile industries were able to put enough pressure on the Puff Bar owners to have them voluntarily remove their products from the shelves, our combined voices can continued to make a change.
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