The Previous Commissioner Resigned Over Flavored Vapes. Here’s What Adult Vapers Should Watch Next.
What Marty Makary’s exit means for the legal flavored vape market, and what’s actually likely to change over the next 12 months.
Marty Makary resigned as FDA commissioner on May 12, ending a 13-month tenure marked by escalating conflict with the Trump White House. The proximate cause, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Politico: a dispute over the agency’s approval of fruit-flavored vapes from Glas Inc. just days earlier.
That approval, issued in early May, was the first time the FDA had cleared a non-tobacco, non-menthol nicotine vape through its premarket tobacco application process. Makary reportedly told confidants that his conscience wouldn’t allow him to sign off, citing youth appeal. Trump had reportedly signed off on a plan to replace him the week prior. Kyle Diamantas, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food, is now running the agency in an acting capacity.
For adult vapers, the more important question is what this signals about the next 12 months.
A door that’s been shut for five years just cracked open
The FDA has reviewed tens of thousands of PMTA applications since the 2020 deadline. Until early May, only 45 products had cleared the process, and every single approved flavored product was either tobacco or menthol. Fruit and dessert flavors, the categories most adult vapers actually buy, were treated as effectively unapprovable. Manufacturers received denial letters citing youth appeal, court fights followed, and the independent vape industry shrank dramatically. Major brands spent years in regulatory limbo, and small shops closed by the thousands.
The Glas approval changes the precedent. It shows the agency can approve a fruit-flavored product when the application meets its evidence bar. That doesn’t mean a flood of approvals is coming, but it does offer a glimmer of hope for the vape industry.
Why this isn’t likely to reverse
Reporting from multiple outlets indicates Trump’s interest in flavored vape approvals is partly political. The administration sees adult vapers as a constituency, particularly younger voters, and allies in the harm reduction space have been pressing for movement for years. With Makary out and a more cooperative acting commissioner in place, more PMTA decisions in the industry’s favor are likely.
It’s not likely that every application will be approved. The FDA still has to evaluate products on their evidence, and youth use data still factors in. But the political winds are blowing in a direction the industry hasn’t seen in a long time.
Do Makary’s concerns hold water?
Makary’s concern wasn’t baseless. The FDA’s own analysis shows that the majority of youths use flavored products. But what Makary and other anti-tobacco groups leave out is that adult vapers prefer the same.
The largest survey of US adult vapers ever conducted (69,233 participants, published in Harm Reduction Journal) found that over 80% used fruit flavors and 68% used dessert flavors. Among former smokers, 83% used fruit flavors at the time of quitting, and they rated those flavors the most helpful for staying off cigarettes. Only 7.7% use tobacco flavors and only 2.1% use it as their primary flavor.
Fruit and dessert aren’t youth flavors. They’re flavors humans like. Treating them as inherently a youth lure ignores that the population of adult ex-smokers who depend on them is far larger than the population of teens using FDA-approved products.
The youth-access framing also ignores that the products fueling youth vaping in 2024 and 2025 weren’t FDA-approved devices sold in licensed retail. They were unauthorized disposables, mostly manufactured in China, distributed sellers operating outside the legal market.
A legal flavored vape market with age-gated retail and PMTA-reviewed products is structurally different from the youth-access problem. Suppressing the legal industry while ignoring the illegal disposable market hasn’t reduced youth use. It’s pushed buyers, adult and underage alike, toward products with no oversight at all.
That’s the case for flavored approvals that adult vapers, retailers, and harm reduction advocates have been making for half a decade. The Glas decision suggests the agency is finally hearing it.
Four things worth watching over the next six months
Diamantas sets the tone. Acting Commissioner Diamantas inherits the PMTA backlog, the disposable enforcement question, and a politically charged docket. His early decisions will signal whether more flavor approvals are coming on a rolling basis or whether Glas was a one-off.
Enforcement against illegal disposables. The political case for approving more legal flavored products gets stronger if the illegal market is visibly shrinking. Expect more high-profile seizure announcements and more pressure on importers, distributors, and retail chains carrying unauthorized product.
The PMTA backlog itself. Tens of thousands of applications are still pending. If the agency starts clearing more of them, particularly from manufacturers with documented adult consumer bases and serious harm reduction evidence, the legal market will look very different by 2027.
State-level fights. Several states have flavor bans on the books that aren’t preempted by federal approval. California, Massachusetts, New York, and others will still restrict flavored sales regardless of what the FDA does. Federal preemption fights are likely, and the industry will need to engage on both fronts.
What this means for adult vapers
The short version: the products you’ve been buying may finally start showing up in compliant, FDA-authorized form. Not all of them, not overnight. Most of the flavors and brands adult vapers actually use are still unauthorized, and that won’t change for a while. But the regulatory ceiling that kept fruit and dessert flavors out of legal retail has been visibly raised for the first time since the PMTA process began.
Combine that with the possibility of meaningful enforcement against illegal disposables, and the legal market in 2027 could look closer to what adult consumers have wanted all along: regulated, age-gated retail with a real range of flavors and clear product accountability.
Makary’s resignation was pivotal. Whether it actually shifts policy depends on what Diamantas does next.
Alex is a former smoker who successfully quit smoking after 14 years by switching to vaping. Now a pro-vaping advocate, Alex has become a seasoned expert with over a decade of experience in the vaping industry. Since starting his vaping journey in 2010, Alex has earned a reputation as a trusted reviewer, extensively testing all types of vape gear, including mech mods, sub-ohm tanks, RDAs, disposables, e-juices, boro devices, squonkers, dry herb vaporizers, and e-rigs. He’s also explored the craft of coil building and DIY e-juice.
Since 2015, Alex has published more than 800 in-depth articles on vaping, produced over 500 videos covering product reviews, industry news, and tips, contributed to several well-known vape publications, and hosted a popular vaping podcast featuring over 100 episodes and nearly 40 hours of content.