Most people associate the Food and Drug Administration with regulating prescription drugs and other medical goods. The agency’s actual regulatory power extends to about 20 percent of all US consumer goods. Some of its authority extends over large portions of the economy—affecting the entire healthcare market and the quality of life for millions of Americans.
One of the FDA’s most expansions of power came in 2016 when it began regulating e-cigarettes. By 2018, it launched the ongoing “war on vaping” and started a heavy-handed crackdown on e-cigarette producers and retailers. As then FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb vowed, the agency was:
going to permanently step
