Fancy a mango, watermelon or lemon-ice flavored vape? You are in luck. They are being sold online by Puff Bar, a brand that last year was ordered to take its e-cigarettes off the U.S. market.
The Food and Drug Administration told the e-cigarette maker to stop selling its fruity, disposable vaporizers, as part of a broader crackdown on underage vaping. The brand resumed sales on its website last month and introduced a change that may allow it to sidestep the FDA: Puff Bar says it is using nicotine that isn’t derived from tobacco.
The FDA, which regulates tobacco products and smoking-cessation devices like nicotine gum, said it was aware of Puff Bar’s move. An agency spokeswoman declined to say whether the agency’s Puff Bar ban was still applicable, noting that she couldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation.
It’s unclear who owns the brand; the operators of the Puff Bar website didn’t respond to requests for comment. The brand was previously owned by Cool Clouds Distribution Inc., a California company. Its chief executive said he sold it last year to its Chinese manufacturer, DS Technology Licensing LLC, because of FDA scrutiny and criticism that the vaporizers were attracting young people. A lawyer representing DS Technology said it no longer owned the brand, had stopped exporting Puff Bar products to the U.S. and had no knowledge of the new products.
Puff Bar has a sleek, USB-drive shape similar to the market-leading e-cigarette, Juul. But while Juul’s device uses refill pods, Puff Bar is designed for one-time use. Puff Bar vaporizers come in more than a dozen flavors and cost between $9 and $15 on the brand’s website. The devices deliver between 200 and 800 puffs each, depending on the size.
