US - federal: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) has hired its first senior advisor for health equality. Charlene Le Fauve has 25 years’ experience of federal work related to health equality, dedicating her career to “advancing health equity and the health of under-served and under-represented populations through research and research workforce development”.

US - Texas: House Bill 4722, which would tax non-tobacco nicotine products, has been passed by the House and now heads to the Senate. It would tax closed-system e-cigarettes, including disposables, at $0.07 per ml of nicotine e-liquid; open-system e-cigarettes at 3% of the wholesale price; and “alternative nicotine products” $1.22 per oz.

US - general: Senator Dick Durbin and 20 of his colleagues have written to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Robert Califf, urging the agency to promptly finalise its proposed rule to end the sale of menthol cigarettes, announced in April 2022. “We urge the FDA to act with urgency to solidify and enforce the ban on these harmful products,” reads the letter, in which the senators also request responses on the FDA’s timeline for finalising and enforcing the regulation.

US - Texas: House Bill 4481 is scheduled for a public hearing on Monday, 17th April. The bill would establish a directory of e-cigarettes and alternative nicotine products sold in Texas, and require manufacturers of all such products to certify annually that they agree to comply with the bill’s provisions.

US - Maine: Bill LD 1558 has been introduced in the state Legislature, aiming to ban the sale of tobacco products in pharmacies and stores containing pharmacies. The definition of “tobacco products” in the section that would be amended by this bill includes e-cigarettes.

US – Arkansas: House Bill 1725 has passed the House and been sent to the Senate. Among its provisions, it would establish safety inspections for child-resistant packaging of tobacco, vapour and alternative nicotine products, and e-liquids; ban advertising of vaping and alternative nicotine products; and establish a manufacturers directory.

US – federal: The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability has announced that it is investigating the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). Republican committee chairman James Comer has written to FDA commissioner Robert Califf, accusing the CTP of failing to effectively define and administer its tobacco and nicotine regulatory programmes, “[fostering] uncertainty in the marketplace and [allowing] unsafe and unregulated products to proliferate”.  “A recent evaluation of CTP by the Reagan-Udall Foundation (RUF) found that CTP has not clearly set out the most basic elements of its tobacco and nicotine regulatory programs,” Comer said. He is requesting documents, communications, and a staff-level briefing related to the CTP’s activities.

US - federal: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a new webpage listing all the tobacco products-related citizen petitions received by the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). A citizen petition is a way for individuals, regulated industry representatives, or consumer groups to petition the FDA to issue, amend, or revoke a regulation, or to take other administrative action.