It's about to get a lot harder for minors to vape

New federal regulations for electronic cigarettes go into effect Monday, requiring greater scrutiny of the products and making it more difficult for minors to vape.

The Food and Drug Administration will have to approve all e-cigarette products that have been available since February 2007. That means nearly every e-cigarette product on the market must go through an application process to deem whether it can continue to be sold.

Manufacturers will be able to keep selling their products for up to two years while they submit a new production application, plus an additional year while the FDA reviews it.

Vape shops cannot give free samples to customers or sell to people younger than 18, under the new regulations. Merchants will be required to ask for identification from customers who appear to be under the age of 27. And vending machine sales of e-cigarettes are prohibited unless the machines are in adult-only facilities.

Also covered are premium, hand-rolled cigars, as well as hookah and pipe tobacco. Before the new regulations, there was no federal law prohibiting retailers from selling e-cigarettes, hookah tobacco or cigars to minors, though almost all states already prohibit such sales.

E-cigarette groups have already launched a legal battle to stop the FDA and warned that the vapor industry would go up in smoke if the regulations are fully implemented.

“The bad news is that August 8th … marks the beginning of a two-year countdown to FDA prohibition of 99.9%+ of vapor products on the market,” Greg Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, wrote Friday on the group’s website. “If we do not succeed in changing the FDA’s (new regulations), the vapor industry will shrink to almost nothing beginning August 8, 2018."

The rule — finalized in May by the FDA — comes into effect as anti-tobacco health groups have raised concerns that e-cigarettes are increasingly becoming a gateway to tobacco products.

E-cigarette use has been rising steadily, especially among youth, as cigarette smoking is on the decline. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, e-cigarette use among high school students rose from 1.5% in 2011 to 16% in 2015. Federal health officials estimate about 3 million middle and high school students use e-cigarettes.

“It will help prevent young people from starting to use tobacco, and help consumers better understand the risks of using these products,” the American Lung Association said in a statement. “It will also prevent new tobacco products from being marketed unless a manufacturer demonstrates that the products meet certain public health standards.”

Feds announce much tougher e-cigarette, cigar rule

The e-cigarette industry is pushing back against tougher regulations of their products, which don’t contain tobacco but do contain nicotine. In the past, the industry has marketed its products as a healthier alternative to cigarettes.

Nicopure Labs, one of the leading U.S. e-liquid manufacturers, filed a federal lawsuit in May to try to stop the regulations. The company argues that the rules placed a “disproportionate and unjustified regulator burden” on the industry.

Technology group TechFreedom and the National Center for Public Policy Research filed a brief in support of Nicopure’s challenge last week.

“This is an absurd way to regulate new technology,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a spokesman for TechFreedom. “The FDA’s obsession with perfect safety will deny Americans what is obviously a safer technology for consuming nicotine.”

Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad