Former Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr laid out how bureaucratic failure has been an obstacle to fighting an illicit nicotine crisis in the U.S. Wednesday at a Daily Caller Live.
Burr laid out how products flow across national borders in a way they didn’t decades ago in a talk with Daily Caller Editor-in-Chief Amber Duke. He also warned about unelected bureaucrats standing in the way of getting legal alternative nicotine vapes to American shops, calling out the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approach to new products. The former senator called on lawmakers to focus on overhauling the regulatory process and providing proper oversight of bureaucrats’ actions. Burr is chairman of the Regulate Smarter Coalition, co-sponsor of “Daily Caller Live: Cracking Down on Illicit Nicotine.” (RELATED: Daily Caller Panel Discusses Illicit Nicotine’s Connection To Cartels, China)
“If you’re not going to have policies in place, and you’re not going to, at the start, enforce this, this is going to be really difficult,” Burr said. “But the reality is that consumers, if educated, will make the right choices.”
Daily Caller Live: Cracking Down on Illicit Nicotine | Presented by Regulate Smarter https://t.co/0Jyu8vIxfM
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 22, 2026
Recalling playing a key role in the push to shift tobacco farmers from a quota system to the market, he referenced experience with federal bureaucrats not understanding the law or American consumers’ reactions to government decisions. He argued that the FDA has failed to offer safe and legal alternatives to illicit nicotine vape products. The agency has approved 41 e-cigarettes, or vapes, as of publication.
When Duke asked about the Washington, D.C., government banning flavored nicotine products and referenced other jurisdictions, Burr noted that a future election could change the situation before addressing bureaucrats.
“There’s a huge difference between [elected lawmakers] and regulators who determine that they’re the ones who are going to distort the marketplace, and when they do that, they ignore what goes on without it,” he said, alleging that experts say it will eventually have deadly consequences and bolster drug cartels or other “entities.”
“And if it’s not this product, they will be large enough to move to the next product, and the next product, and the next product,” Burr said. “It’s already happened with vape products. We’re there. You’ve heard the numbers. But we’re not there with [nicotine] pouches, yet pouches is the fastest growing area of nicotine use.”
“And if the FDA will just live up to the 180-day review,” he said, adding that the “review should be the same” regardless of who makes the product and saying the agency is not living up to its 180-day commitment. “But right now, two brands, limited flavors, limited nicotine content.”
As of early 2026, the FDA has approved nicotine pouch products from the brands Zyn and on! Plus.
“You can’t expect somebody to just move from a combustible [cigarette] to a product that has no nicotine in it,” Burr said, arguing that policymakers did not appear to be “rewarding consumers for the choices they are making.”
When Duke pressed Burr on the “libertarian-esque” argument for legalizing everything, the former senator shut that down while citing his experience reviewing threats to the U.S. on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Asked about raising public awareness, he argued that illicit nicotine represents a unique threat that would be called “an epidemic” if the products were illegal drugs.
“It was Congress’s belief over 15 years ago when we passed the Tobacco Control Act, that if industry would invest in new technologies, that we would set up a mechanism for those products to be approved. That’s what’s failed. And it hadn’t failed because of the lack of scientific data that’s been presented. It’s failed because a choice was made not to approve or reject product based upon scientific review. And I think we have seen glimpses of that, where when called on the mat, the FDA went back into re-review on a declined project and then turned around and approved it, but took a very similar product right behind it and took no action on it,” he said, calling it arbitrary and saying it has restricted products reaching the market. (RELATED: Panel Makes Case For Turbocharging American Innovation At Daily Caller Live Event)
Burr praised the Trump administration’s move against fentanyl and said he thinks the White House is committed to nudging Americans into choosing less harmful products. The former lawmaker said he hoped a different framework for bureaucracy will be adopted in the future and called on current lawmakers to provide constant oversight. He also said he was “pleasantly surprised” by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Illicit vapes remain an ongoing issue in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that over 6,000 products could be bought in the country as of June 2024, according to a March 2026 U.S. Government Accountability Office report. In September 2025, the FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the capture of approximately 4.7 million units of unauthorized vape products worth around $86.5 million.