Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed that Chicago had about two million illegal e-cigarettes seized with a retail value of $33.8 million. Working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the seizures in February of this year were part of a combined government operation looking at inbound goods and stopping illegal e-cigarettes from getting into the nation.
During this investigation, the crew found shipments of several illicit e-cigarette items, almost all of which came from China and were meant for distribution to different U.S. states. Many of these illegal e-cigarettes shipments included unclear product descriptions with inaccurate values, according to FDA and CBP officials, apparently in an attempt to avoid responsibilities and the examination of products for import safety issues. Looking through shipments, the team discovered various brands of illegal e-cigarettes like Snoopy Smoke, Raz, and others.
“Working with our federal partners, the FDA can and will do more to stop the illegal importation and distribution of e-cigarettes products in the United States,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. said. “Seizes of illegal e-cigarettes keep products that haven’t been approved by the FDA out of United States and out of the hands of our nation’s youth.”
Another instance of coordinated compliance and enforcement activities among federal agencies to reduce the sale and distribution of unlawful e-cigarettes are these seizures. The combined FDA and CBP team found possibly harmful arriving cargo in the run-up to this operation and finished additional investigations. Based on past activities, the team also effectively applied numerous new internal efficiency and process building ideas.
“We keep seeing more shipments of vaping related products packaged and mislabeled to evade discovery,” said Brittany Koplow, Ph.D., Acting Director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco items. Though attempts to hide the actual identify of these illegal e-cigarettes items, we have been successful in stopping these shipments from getting into the American supply chain.
While some products were also confiscated for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violations for illegal use of protected trademarks, most shipments broke the FDA’s Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). Since all of the e-cigarettes confiscated in this operation lacked FDA required premarket authorization orders, they cannot be legally sold or disseminated in the United States.
Product forfeits to the government follow standard procedure wherein the goods are disposed of legally. Regarding illegal new tobacco products—including e-cigarettes—that usually means they will be thrown away.
For the first time, FDA also mailed import informative letters to 24 tobacco importers and entrance filers accountable for importing these illicit e-cigarettes. The letters warn the recipients that making false statements or entries to the U.S. government is a federal crime; the FDA is looking for information on the actions they have taken to guarantee compliance with relevant federal tobacco laws and regulations. The letters specifically tell the companies to make sure their import entries going ahead have precise and comprehensive information. Ignoring this could potentially be seen as a deliberate attempt to evade FDA inspection of the cargo. Companies are asked to reply to the letters within 30 days including the required data.
Members of a federal task team concentrating on e-cigarettes enforcement are FDA and CBP. Previous FDA-CBP joint actions included operations in Chicago announced in June and October of 2024 resulting in the seizure of illegal e-cigarettes valued at more than $77 million, seizure of $7 million of illegal e-cigarettes at a warehouse in Miami, and seizure of $18 million of illegal e-cigarettes at a cargo examination site in Los Angeles International Airport in 2023.
Apart from product seizures, the FDA has sent around 750 warning letters to companies making, marketing, or distributing illegal new tobacco products. It has also sent more than 800 warning letters to stores for carrying these goods and registered civil money penalty claims against 87 manufacturers and over 175 stores for their sales or distribution.
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