In December of 2019, Mitch Zeller, who at the time ran the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, got an urgent phone call from a fellow staffer at the agency.

A few months earlier, President Donald Trump and his administration had vowed to take e-cigarettes in every flavor except tobacco off the market to quash a youth vaping epidemic that, at the time, saw almost 30 percent of American teens using nicotine.

By the time Zeller received that December call, he says, the White House had different instructions for the FDA: Limit the ban to pod-based vapes, like Juuls, and leave menthol flavors alone.

Zeller says this softer touch “absolutely” came about because Trump, heading into the 2020 election year, got spooked by pushback to his original plans. “The White House,” Zeller says, “went into political retreat.”

Almost seven years later and well into his second term, Trump is vice-signaling even more aggressively to the pro-vape crowd and the industry that supplies it. The payoff is unclear, given that vapers make up a relatively small chunk of the voting public, and a vast illicit market is already there to serve virtually anyone jonesing for a flavored e-cigarette—but that hasn’t stopped Trump’s FDA from making things official.

Earlier this month, reportedly under pressure from Trump, the agency authorized the sale of blueberry- and mango-flavored vape juices made by the company Glas, the first time the agency has given its stamp of approval to e-cigarette flavors other than tobacco and menthol. “Our data show that flavored products can play an important role in helping adult smokers move away from combustible cigarettes, while our technology is designed to help limit youth access and support responsible use,” a Glas spokesperson tells WIRED.

Still, according to The New York Times, that decision was the final straw for recently departed FDA commissioner Marty Makary, who was concerned about the products’ appeal to kids.

Zeller, who retired from the FDA in 2022, says he doesn’t have a front-row seat to Trump’s thinking these days. But, he says, the push for flavored vapes “is consistent with everything that I have seen the president say publicly about how important the vaping constituency is to him politically,” as well as with his apparently cozy relationship with tobacco industry executives.

In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai tells WIRED, “President Trump consistently pledged to expand access to vapes in light of an abundance of recent evidence finding that these products are beneficial for Americans trying to quit smoking. The only guiding factor behind the Trump administration’s health policymaking is Gold Standard Science.” Desai did not respond to questions about Trump’s desire to appeal to vapers; he also referred questions about Zeller’s recollection of events to the FDA, which did not respond.

There are indeed studies that suggest flavored vapes are appealing to adults as well as kids, perhaps helping some make the transition from cigarettes to the probably-less-deadly electronic version. But Trump—a man who, in the lead up to the 2024 election, promised to “save vaping” and whose administration has been similarly friendly to other vice-adjacent industries, including psychedelics and prediction markets—has seemingly been influenced by public opinion on this issue before.

His original flavor ban plans gave rise to the “we vape, we vote” movement, a motley group of adult vapers and vape shop owners from across the country, including key swing states, angry about Trump’s planned crackdown.

Eric Lindblom, another former FDA Center for Tobacco Products official, says Trump “immediately backpedaled” on plans to rein in the vaping industry in the face of such disapproval. “I think he learned his lesson there.”

It’s unclear how much Trump and his orbit could actually gain from pandering to people ripping pods. Per The Wall Street Journal, Trump advisers said loosening flavored vape regulations was key to placating young MAGA voters—and in the wake of that decision, social media users have reported seeing television ads thanking Trump for his stance on flavored vapes. But for all the political and cultural airtime it receives, vaping is still a relatively fringe habit. Smoking cigarettes has plummeted to historic lows, but more adults in the US still smoke (9.9 percent) than vape (7 percent), according to CDC data from 2024. The heaviest-vaping adult age group—21- to 24-year-olds—is part of a demographic famously likely to sit out elections.

The bigger goal may be building bridges with the tobacco industry, which has backed Trump financially. That includes a subsidiary of Reynolds American, whose portfolio includes cigarette brands Camel and Newport as well as the vape brand Vuse, which dumped millions of dollars into the Make America Great Again Inc PAC in 2024. Reynolds and fellow tobacco giant Altria, both of which are parent companies of vaping brands that have tried and failed to get FDA authorization for flavored e-cigarettes, have reportedly also helped bankroll Trump’s ballroom plans.

Tobacco companies have a motivation beyond getting flavored vapes authorized: stopping their market share from getting gobbled up by unregulated e-cigarettes pouring into the country from China. These devices are essentially unstudied and sold illegally, because they don’t have FDA authorization. But in the absence of a strong crackdown from the FDA, they have competed with the big boys anyway. One 2024 estimate found more than 80 percent of the e-cigarettes on the US market were there illegally.

“We have long advocated for increased enforcement and a return to a regulated marketplace that is not overrun with illicit products,” Luis Pinto, vice president of corporate communications at Reynolds American, tells WIRED in a statement. Altria did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In one of Makary’s final days as FDA commissioner, the agency served up a gift to tobacco companies, saying it would focus on clearing the market of illicit vapes made by companies that haven’t made any effort to go through the legally-required FDA review. Most companies that have filed their FDA applications, but not yet gotten the agency’s signoff, will be largely left alone, allowing them to potentially start selling flavored vapes before the agency has fully reviewed the files—a codified way of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

“It’s a nice way of saying, ‘We’re going to open the door to let all sorts of products come on the market without following the law,’” Lindblom says.

That policy, deep in the regulatory weeds as it is, may be more impactful than the headline-grabbing authorization of a few flavors from a single brand. Authorizing fruity flavors might endear Trump to the vaper base—but, Zeller says, it’s small potatoes in the face of a massive and mostly uncontrolled illicit market.