Trump Signs Historic Executive Order on Psychedelics — And It Changes Everything

I have been writing about vaping since 2011. I watched this industry get built from the ground up, watched it get battered by regulation after regulation, watched millions of Chinese-manufactured disposables flood the American market while U.S. companies struggled to get a single product through the FDA’s premarket tobacco product application process. I watched vapers get blamed for a youth epidemic that was driven almost entirely by unauthorized, illegally imported products. I watched good American brands suffocate under a regulatory burden that their Chinese competitors simply ignored.

So forgive me if I take a moment to appreciate what just happened, because it matters — and it matters in ways the mainstream press is not quite capturing.

In the past several weeks, two things occurred that, taken together, represent the most significant shift in the American vaping landscape in years. First, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went on record in a Senate hearing, looked a senator in the eye, and said plainly that the Biden FDA had slow-walked U.S. manufactured vapes — creating the vacuum that Chinese companies filled with illegal, unregulated products targeting American kids. Then, on May 5th of this year, the FDA authorized fruit-flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems for the first time in its history. Both of those things are connected. Both of them point in the same direction. And American vapers, American vape businesses, and American vape media should be paying very close attention.

What RFK Jr. Said and Why It Matters

Let’s be clear about what Kennedy actually said, because the framing matters. He did not simply say that illegal Chinese vapes are bad — that is the easy, safe political position that nobody argues with. He went further. He placed the blame for the illegal Chinese vape problem squarely on a regulatory failure: specifically, the previous administration’s failure to move U.S.-manufactured products through the authorization process at any reasonable speed.

That is a meaningful distinction. It is an acknowledgment, from the sitting head of the Department of Health and Human Services, that the regulatory framework itself created the problem it was supposedly designed to prevent. When you make it nearly impossible for legitimate American companies to get products authorized, and you simultaneously fail to enforce the borders against illegal imports, you do not protect anyone. You simply hand the market to the people who are willing to break the rules.

Kennedy’s pledge to “wipe out” illegal Chinese vapes was accompanied by action. He and Attorney General Pam Bondi made a joint appearance in Bensenville, Illinois, where a federal operation had seized more than 600,000 illegal vape products. The operation involved both the ATF and the FDA. That kind of interagency coordination on vaping enforcement is not something we have seen before, and it signals that this administration intends to treat illegal vape importation as a serious federal matter rather than a regulatory nuisance.

For the American vaping industry, that is genuinely good news — not because enforcement alone solves anything, but because the enforcement posture creates the conditions for something else. When you clear the illegal products off the shelves, you create space for legal ones. And for the first time in a long time, those legal products may include flavors that adult vapers actually want.

The FDA Authorization That Nobody Saw Coming

On May 5th, 2026, the FDA authorized four electronic nicotine delivery products from Los Angeles-based Glas Inc. — Classic Menthol, Fresh Menthol, Gold, and Sapphire. Gold is mango. Sapphire is blueberry. And this is the first time in the history of the FDA that nontobacco, non-menthol flavored vaping products have received authorization for sale in the United States.

Read that sentence again. The first time. Ever.

The Biden FDA rejected more than 26 million applications for flavored vape products. The Supreme Court unanimously backed the agency’s authority to do exactly that. And then, six days ago, under pressure from a president who had publicly vowed to “save” vaping, the FDA flipped. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary had reportedly been resisting the authorization. Trump rebuked him directly. The authorization came through the same day the Wall Street Journal reported on that confrontation.

I am not going to pretend the circumstances are not messy. Political pressure on a regulatory agency is not, on its face, a clean or comfortable thing. But I have also watched this industry for sixteen years, and I know what the alternative looked like. The alternative was millions of adults who vape switching to unregulated, untested, illegally imported products because the legal market offered them tobacco flavor or nothing. That was not a public health win. It was a public health failure dressed up as one.

The Glas authorization comes with a significant condition: the devices require age verification via government ID, Bluetooth pairing to a smartphone, and random biometric check-ins before they will operate. Some observers have already noted that this level of friction may make the products impractical for many adult users. That is a fair criticism. But the authorization itself is the precedent that matters. The door is now open in a way it has never been before, and the industry will push through it.

The American-Made Angle Nobody Is Writing About

Here is what I think is being missed in most of the coverage I have read this week. The mainstream press is framing this as a story about flavors — mango vapes are legal now, what does that mean for teenagers? That framing is not wrong, but it is incomplete. The deeper story is about domestic manufacturing.

Glas Inc. is based in Los Angeles. The products the FDA just authorized are American-made. RFK Jr.’s critique of the previous regulatory environment was explicitly framed around the harm done to U.S. manufacturers. The crackdown on Chinese illegal vapes creates market space for domestic products. The authorization of an American company’s flavored products fills some of that space with something legal and regulated.

That pattern is not accidental. It reflects a coherent, if not yet fully articulated, policy direction: push out the illegal Chinese imports, make room for American-made alternatives, and authorize flavored products from domestic manufacturers who are willing to meet the FDA’s requirements. Whether that direction holds, whether it expands, and whether the PMTA process becomes meaningfully more navigable for American companies — those are the questions worth watching.

For brands in this space that manufacture domestically, or that are willing to make that transition, the next twelve to eighteen months could represent an opportunity that has not existed since the early days of the industry. The regulatory winds are shifting. The enforcement posture is shifting. And for the first time in years, there is a political constituency at the highest levels of the executive branch that is actively making the case for a functioning, legal, American vaping market.

What This Means for Adult Vapers

If you are an adult who vapes — and the overwhelming majority of people who read Spinfuel are exactly that — this week’s news is the most encouraging regulatory development in years. It does not fix everything. The PMTA process remains expensive and time-consuming. Most flavored products are still unauthorized. The enforcement against illegal imports, however aggressive, will not eliminate them overnight.

But the direction has changed. The administration in power has explicitly stated that the previous regulatory approach created the problem it was supposed to solve. A domestic manufacturer just got flavored products authorized for the first time in history. The HHS Secretary is on record saying that American-made vapes deserve a fair shot at the market. These are not small things.

For years, adult vapers in this country have been treated as an afterthought in a policy conversation that was actually about teenagers. The products you wanted were unauthorized. The products you could buy legally were limited to tobacco and menthol. The products flooding the market were cheap Chinese imports with no quality control, no age verification, and no accountability. You deserved better than that, and for a long time you did not get it.

That may be changing. Slowly, messily, with the fingerprints of political pressure all over it — but changing.

A Note of Caution

Sixteen years of watching this industry has also taught me not to pop the champagne too early. Regulatory momentum can reverse. Administrations change. A single youth vaping study with alarming numbers can shift the political conversation overnight. The Glas authorization applies to four specific products from one company, with conditions attached that may prove commercially limiting. The gap between “the door is open” and “the industry is thriving” is wide and full of obstacles.

What I am confident about is that the conversation has shifted in a way that creates genuine possibilities that did not exist six months ago. Whether the industry rises to meet those possibilities — whether American manufacturers invest, whether brands push the PMTA process, whether retailers and consumers support domestic products — is a separate question that the industry itself will have to answer.

Spinfuel will be watching. And for the first time in a long time, watching feels like something other than waiting for the next piece of bad news.