NEWS
FDA E-CIGARETTE CONSULTATION
SUFFERS POTENTIAL SABOTAGE
Hundreds of thousands of spam messages have clogged up the
administration’s inbox and vaping advocates suspect foul play
By Leo Forfar
The US Food and Drug Administration’s ongoing
consultation over flavoured e-liquid regulations has
been flooded with anti-vaping spam messages in what
appears to be an attempted sabotage.
A suspiciously high volume of new messages was
submitted from Friday June 8 before being stopped on
June 11.
Over a quarter of a million comments were submitted
in total over the two-day period, nearly bringing down
the server, according to the Division of Docketts
Management (DDM) which manages the submissions
network. Almost all of the comments were anti-vaping
and anti-flavour. This has potentially thrown the
consultation into crisis.
Regulator Watch’s Brent Stafford said: “Sometime
around close of business on Friday, June 8, an unknown
actor or actors launched a computer script or ‘bot’
designed to individually enter en masse thousands
of comments into the official record via a web form
available to the public on Regulations.gov.
“The bot reached full throttle, entering 255,000
comments, before technical staff could isolate the four
offending IP addresses and cut off the flow – which
they did the following Monday, June 11.”
The messages were traceable to just four IP addresses
with tens of thousands of them duplicates of the exact
same text, submitted under anonymous handles.
18 | VM18
“It’s a disruption campaign of the
highest order, one that could bring
down the consultation process and
take vaping with it.”
Stafford said: “It’s a disruption campaign of the highest
order, one that could bring down the consultation
process and take vaping with it.”
Stafford also described the sabotage as a “massive
assault on the credibility of the public consultation
process.”
US-based vape businesses and their allies still fear a
federal flavour ban. Numerous states and other local
authorities have already intensified anti-vaping and
anti-flavour legislation on a smaller scale.
In June, 68 percent of San Francisco voters backed
Proposition E – which prohibited the sale of flavoured
e-liquid under the banner of wider tobacco legislation.
This latest disruption is sure to stifle progress, and many
companies and vapers in the US fear their contribution
to the consultation will be undone. Sources from
within DDM confirmed to Regulator Watch that at
least 60 percent of the comments they had received
were anti-vaping spam submissions. The FBI has been
notified and is carrying out an investigation.