Altria uses dubious claims of preventing youth use to justify dangerous two-way bluetooth communication between NJOY ecigs and Altria

Altria submitted a Premarket Tobacco Product Application to FDA requesting permission to market its NJOY 2.0 device, which features bluetooth technology theoretically designed to prevent underage usage by authenticating the user before unlocking the device. (Additional news coverage)

This is the same argument Juul made for its Juul 2 device when it submitted a PTMA to FDA in August 2023. While this may sound good, allowing this two-way communication between the device and the company opens up a range of dangerous capabilities. Similar to what I wrote in the response to the Juul 2 application:

This may sound great, but this communication capability creates serious problems for all users, including adults.

The first is the obvious invasion of privacy. Uploading verifiable photo IDs (such as driver’s licensees or passports) creates instant data security problems and raises the risk of identity theft. So does the use of third-party databases of photographs tied to specific people.

But, the even more pernicious issue is that it opens the possibility of two-way communication between the NJOY device and Altria. Such communication would allow Altria to collect detailed information about the user’s puffing behavior, including how often they use NJOY, how long the puffs are, the interpuff interval, perhaps even how hard they suck on the device, what flavor they use. This so-called smoking topography affects the nicotine delivery.

Cigarette companies have collected massive data on smoking topography and use that information to design analog cigarettes to manipulate topography and nicotine delivery to maximize addictive potential of their products.

With this detailed information in real time or near-real time, Altria could feed back information to the NJOY device manipulate topography in ways that conventional cigarette companies could only dream about. Why? It would allow Altria to maximize addiction, consumption, sales and profits.

Altria is already using its store-based age verification system to gather consumer information. Indeed, last year at an investors’ conference Altria CEO Billy Gifford outlined precisely how Altria integrates age verification technology into its marketing. Altria is careful to say that this marketing only happens with age-verified people, but even that is problematic. It would not be that hard to keep track of who the underage customers are and pounce on them once they reached legal age.

And, of course, kids have a long history of defeating these age-verification systems. Indeed, in the e-cigarette litigation examples came out on how Juul “tuned” its age verification system to make sure it did not work too well.

Altria is also using the bluetooth feature to justify allowing the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. Altria They also resubmitted their PMTAs for Blueberry and Watermelon pods which FDA previously denied. The new pods are are designed to work exclusively with the NJOY ACE 2.0 device. FDA authorized NJOY ACE and tobacco flavored pods in April 2022, but issued Marketing Denial Orders for blueberry and watermelon pods. Altria argues the newly designed device will effectively mitigate the risks to youth and address FDA’s concerns about the original model.

FDA has been doing the right think in denying flavored e-cigarettes. They should maintain that policy, particularly in light of the overall problems with bluetooth enabled e-cigarettes.

More broadly, FDA should follow the World Health Organization’s guidance and reject both the NJOY and JUUL applications:

Prohibiting device features that permit transmission of information to and from third parties (including manufacturers), such as connections to smartphone apps, that could be used to collect personal information, details of use topography, or to remotely control the product.