SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mitt Romney pushed for a ban on flavored vaping products in a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday.
The Utah Republican joined tobacco industry advocates, public health officials and doctors at the White House in a meeting Trump called after pulling back from plans announced in September to remove nontobacco flavored e-cigarettes from the market.
“Everyone agrees that this is a serious problem, but it’s clear there are differing views about the best way to develop responsible guidelines to protect our kids,” Romney said.
Trump listened and sought opinions but did not indicate what he would do regarding a flavor ban, he said.
“This was an opportunity to get input from various people,” Romney said. “It was not a decision-making group.”
Friday marked two days in a row that Romney has sat down with Trump.
The president, who has been courting the support of GOP senators since the impeachment inquiry began, invited Romney and other Republican senators to lunch on Thursday. After Trump made some initial comments about the impeachment process, the discussion turned to other issues, including e-cigarettes. Trump invited the senators to Friday’s meeting on vaping, and Romney took him up on it.
Those attending the meeting expressed various viewpoints, including removing flavored nicotine products that appeal to youth, ensuring adults maintain access to the nicotine flavors they want, increasing age restrictions, protecting small businesses, federalism, the need for stricter enforcement, and advertising limitations and education, according to the White House.
The health professionals in the room want to remove flavors, while most vaping industry representatives want to keep them, Romney said. The exception, he said, was Juul Labs, which suspended sales of most of its flavored e-cigarettes last month.
“Their CEO said they did that because they saw how many kids were getting addicted to their products, addicted to nicotine. They did what they thought was the responsible thing to do, which you have to give them credit for,” the senator said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 97% of young people who vape use flavored products.
“So you get rid of the flavors, then it’s hopefully going to reduce the number of kids using these things,” Romney said.
Romney introduced a bill in September to ban flavored e-cigarettes and tax vaping products like regular cigarettes to fund a public awareness campaign about the dangers of vaping. He also called on the Food and Drug Administration to immediately pull flavors from the market and raise the age for legal vaping to 21.
“I hope the FDA will do the right thing and takes these products off the market. If the FDA does not, if they bow to the industry or any other outside force, then we’ll have to look at legislation at the state level and at the federal level,” he said.
A Utah judged recently blocked a state health department emergency rule to halt the sale of flavored vaping products. The Utah Legislature will take up a series of vaping-related bills in January.
On Wednesday, Romney quizzed the Trump administration’s nominee for FDA commissioner in a Senate hearing on whether he would impose a ban. Dr. Stephen Hahn, the chief medical executive of MD Anderson Cancer Center, was noncommittal.
Romney wouldn’t say Friday whether he intends to support Hahn’s nomination.
The senator said it’s a “darn good question” on whether the FDA commissioner could impose a flavor ban without direction from the White House.
“I don’t know that he even knows the answer to that question. But I would hope he would do what’s in the best interest of the public and let the chips fall where they lie.