The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will begin regulating e-cigarettes and other products that use synthetic nicotine after closing a regulation loophole, reports Medical Xpress.

Some vaping companies such as Puff Bar had tried to get around the FDA’s regulations by changing their formulars to include lab-made nicotine. Now, a change to the FDA regulations will allow the agency to "hold e-cigarette companies using synthetic nicotine to the same public health standards we've implemented for other tobacco products," Robert Califf, Commissioner of the FDA tweeted, reports Medical Xpress. The change does not ban the products it simply means they must follow the same regulatory scheme as products that include nicotine derived from tobacco.
"The synthetic nicotine products do not necessarily just disappear on their own," said Robin Koval, chief executive of the Truth Initiative. "The FDA will have to decide how they want to enforce the law and hopefully they will."
According to Medical Xpress, anti-tobacco initiatives such as the Truth Initiative are worried that the FDA is not keeping up with new products popular among youths.
"The lesson we can all take away from this is that when the FDA's actions are incomplete and happen after the fact—which has often been the case with e-cigarettes—you will always be playing whack-a-mole and catch-up," said Koval.