The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it will abandon efforts to classify electronic cigarettes as a drug and instead will treat them as a tobacco product.

The regulatory agency said it will not challenge a recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Sottera Inc. v. Food and Drug Administration that rejects the FDA’s contention that e-cigarettes are unapproved drug/device combination products. The court last year ruled that e-cigarettes should be regulated under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act as tobacco product because they heat nicotine extracted from tobacco.
The FDA could have appealed until Monday, 25 April, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The government has decided not to seek further review of this decision, and FDA will comply with the jurisdictional guidelines established by Sottera,” the agency said in a 25 April letter signed by Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. (pi)