The Trump administration’s recent moves to make flavored e-cigarettes and vapes more widely available have caused a splintering among prominent voices in the MAHA movement and even some federal health officials.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s senior spokesperson, Richard Danker, resigned Wednesday over the regulatory changes, which include a pathway for tobacco companies to begin selling flavored electronic cigarettes and the first Food and Drug Administration authorization of fruit-flavored vapes. The new policies also played a role in the ousting of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who opposed them.
In Danker’s resignation letter, viewed by NBC News and first obtained by The New York Times, he wrote that flavored e-cigarettes “would appeal to children and expose them to nicotine addiction, lung damage, and higher risk of cancer.”
Some influencers in the Kennedy-led “Make America Healthy Again” movement expressed frustration over the changes for a different reason: concerns about the tobacco industry’s apparent influence on the FDA.
Alex Clark, a health and wellness podcaster for Turning Point USA, a youth-focused conservative group, said the administration’s support for flavored e-cigarettes “adds more fuel to the fire when it comes to stoking fears that MAHA moms have that special interest groups are running the White House.”
“President Trump consistently pledged to expand access to vapes in light of an abundance of recent evidence finding that these products are beneficial for Americans trying to quit smoking. The only guiding factor behind the Trump administration’s health policymaking is Gold Standard Science,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.
The International Pediatric Association, a consortium of pediatric societies, said last year that e-cigarettes have not proved significantly effective at getting people to stop smoking.
Leaders of big tobacco companies seem to have had the president’s ear in the lead-up to the policy changes. During a lunch meeting in Jupiter, Florida, this month — first reported by The New York Times and confirmed to NBC News by a source familiar with the matter — tobacco industry executives and lobbyists told Trump about their frustrations with barriers to selling flavored vapes.
The source said an upset Trump called top administration health officials, including Kennedy, to voice his displeasure that flavored vape sales were being blocked. Shortly after, the FDA issued a policy effectively allowing companies that had submitted applications for their flavored vapes — but not yet gotten approval — to start selling the products to adults without penalties.
The FDA also authorized mango- and blueberry-flavored vapes from the Los Angeles-based vaping company Glas Inc. last week. They’re the first fruit-flavored vapes to get FDA clearance, adding to the tobacco and menthol flavors already on the market.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said “a key factor” in the FDA’s decision was Glas’ “device access restriction technology.” The vapes must be paired with a smartphone so the user can verify their age with a government-issued ID.
“Adults were generally able to complete the verification process successfully, while youth and young adults were not able to bypass the system effectively,” Hilliard said.
As for the change in guidance for flavored e-cigarettes that have not yet gotten FDA approval, she added, “the FDA’s recent guidance applies only to specific products that are complete and substantive enough to be undergoing scientific review” through an agency process that asks tobacco companies to provide data demonstrating their product protects public health.
The Trump administration’s recent moves on vapes represent an about-face from the president’s stance during his first term. In 2019, the FDA under Trump said it would ban flavored e-cigarettes, with the president promising “strong rules and regulations.” In the end, the administration softened that plan and allowed menthol and tobacco flavors to stay on the market, along with flavored liquid nicotine in tank-based systems at vape shops.
By the time Trump was campaigning for president in 2024, he had changed his tune. He promised to “save vaping,” saying at the time that vaping could help people quit smoking and benefit small businesses.
That’s the justification the administration gave for the recent FDA policy changes: Authorizing flavored e-cigarettes, it said, offers a way for adult smokers to wean off traditional cigarettes.
Public health experts, however, say that flavored e-cigarettes make vaping more attractive to teenagers without a history of smoking, thereby raising the risk of nicotine addictions among a new generation.
“This assumption that e-cigarettes are reducing harm is just wrong,” said Stanton Glantz, a retired University of California, San Francisco, professor who devoted his career to studying the health effects of e-cigarettes and advocating for tobacco control. He described vaping as “10% or 20% less dangerous” than smoking, comparing the difference in risk to jumping out of a building from the 40th floor rather than the 50th.
Despite a small number of studies that suggest e-cigarette use might help people quit smoking in a research setting, Glantz said, a 2016 analysis he published found no such link in the real world.
Rather than burn tobacco, e-cigarettes heat up a liquid consisting of nicotine, flavorings and additives that are inhaled as vapor. The vapor has been linked to lung and heart disease, as well as cancer.
Glantz said the FDA under past administrations has adopted similar stances to the current one.
“The FDA has always been very, very sympathetic to the industry’s claims that these products help people quit smoking,” he said.
Makary, however, saw fruit-flavored e-cigarettes as contributing to the youth vaping epidemic, according to a White House official and two people close to HHS leadership. The sources said Makary opposed the FDA authorization, placing him at odds with other Trump administration officials. Makary was scheduled to appear Wednesday at a congressional budget hearing and did not want to defend a decision he did not agree with, the sources said.
Several prominent figures in the MAHA movement, including Clark, were upset by Makary’s exit.
“We really liked him,” Clark said. “He saw the problems that we had in medicine, wanted to do something different. I think he was very outspoken against pharma and special interests. And I think ultimately that’s really what contributed to his departure.”
Jillian Michaels, a celebrity fitness trainer who has emerged as a prominent MAHA voice, called Makary’s resignation over e-cigarettes a “heroic moment,” though she added that she wished he had been a stronger advocate for peptides and psychedelics.
“We legalized vapes for children. Basically that’s what they are — they’re flavored vapes. They’re for children,” she said. “This is what tobacco always does. They go after kids.”
Sales of both electronic and traditional cigarettes to minors are illegal nationwide.
Vaping goes against several priority issues for the MAHA movement, such as reducing people’s exposure to harmful chemicals (particularly youth), improving children’s health and limiting corporate influence over policy decisions. However, vapes have not been much of a focus for so-called “MAHA moms,” who have put more energy into pushing against pesticides and questioning the safety of childhood vaccines.
“Do I hear MAHA moms concerned about vaping and stuff? No,” Clark said.
Dave Asprey, a biohacking influencer aligned with the MAHA movement, offered a possible explanation for that: Vaping is a choice, he said, and MAHA is more focused on getting rid of exposures that the public can’t avoid.
“Most MAHA people also are saying, ‘If people want to do dumb things, they should be allowed to do dumb things,’” he said.
Asprey and Michaels are not opposed to nicotine on its own. They argue that low doses — taken as patches, gums or pouches — could improve focus and slow cognitive decline. Asprey is an investor in the nicotine pouch company Lucy.
“I don’t think most card-carrying MAHA members are likely to vape. They’re almost certainly going to be using an ALP or ZYN or some other kind of nicotine,” Asprey said, referring to two brands of nicotine pouches.
Public health experts have pushed back on these claims about nicotine, arguing that any potential benefits haven’t been borne out in studies, and nicotine is known to be addictive and increase the risk of heart issues.
About the Author
