EXCLUSIVE: 29 Attorneys General request backup from Trump administration on tackling deadly illegal e-cigarettes from China

Apr 10, 2025

Republican Attorneys General from across America want the Trump administration’s “help in combating the flood of illegal Chinese products— including illegal Chinese e-cigarettes marketed to minors—coming into the United States,” according to a letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.

The law enforcement officials, led by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, wrote to top Trump officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, FBI Director Kash Patel, and several others. Their request comes amidst a broader escalation in tensions between the United States and China — and sends a message that elected officials in Trump’s orbit have a high threshold for willingness to combat Chinese communists.

“Chinese manufacturers and their distributors do not even attempt to comply with the law by submitting applications for FDA review before starting to sell their products in the United States,” they wrote.

While the attorneys general noted that they are “doing our best to fight the problem in the States, its nature and scope are international.” They need help, they wrote. “Only a coordinated national effort—involving the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and others—will succeed in stopping the flow of dangerous illegal products from China.”

Due to the national, and international, nature of the problems posed by flavored Chinese e-cigarettes, the officials need agencies like the FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to help undo the damage of the Biden administration.

The first Trump administration ably tackled this issue, they noted, due to the FDA’s policy of “enforcement discretion” for “certain products that were on the market by August of 2016 and had submitted Premarket Tobacco Product Applications by September 2020.”

However, the Biden administration, they noted, “opened the market to a flood of unregulated Chinese products. Chinese manufacturers and their domestic agents saw President Biden’s lax enforcement efforts, including warning letters, civil monetary penalties, import alerts, and injunctions, as a low cost of doing business. Meanwhile, Americans and their children were being harmed.”

In order to fix the problems caused by the Biden administration’s policies, the officials want the Trump administration to “giv[e] CBP independent seizure authority, in coordination with FDA, over illicit tobacco products”; “designat[e] an individual to spearhead the federal effort to combat illicit Chinese e-cigarettes”; “enhanc[e] enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security to block, seize, and destroy illegal e-cigarette products at the border, working with the Department of Justice to seek injunctions against major players and the FDA to aggressively pursue violators with increased penalties,” and more.