Another contested area is the use of flavorings. Banned in traditional cigarettes they are used widely in e-cigarettes to produce tastes ranging from pear and passion fruit to butterscotch and banana cream.

Public health advocates say flavorings attract children and threaten to create a new generation of nicotine addicts even the government is trying to create a generation that is tobacco free.

Adult smoking rates have fallen to 18 percent from 43 percent in 1965. Even so, more than 3,200 young people a day under the age of 18 try their first cigarette, a recent government report found. The use of e-cigarettes by young people doubled between 2011 to 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

ADVERTISING RESTRICTIONS

Once the proposed rule is announced there will be a period for public comment, after which the FDA will develop final regulation. The process could take a year or more. In the meantime, critics say e-cigarette companies are using the same promotional techniques that were used for decades by cigarette manufacturers to attract teenagers to their products.

On February 12, two Democratic U.S. representatives, Henry Waxman and Peter Welch, and one senator, Tom Harkin, wrote to the attorneys general in their states to bring electronic cigarettes under the terms of a settlement reached in 1998 with top tobacco companies that prohibited any advertising targeting youth.

“Youth use of these products is particularly troubling since the full extent of e-cigarette harms is not yet understood,” they wrote.

Some e-cigarette companies are already positioning themselves for a more restrictive environment. LOGIC Technology, for one, expects advertising, flavors and online sales to be banned or severely restricted.

“I think what is important is retail locations,” Miguel Martin, LOGIC’s president, said in an interview. “In retail locations, there is age verification. I believe that is where the industry is going and where regulation is going. If you are relying on the internet and TV, I think those vehicles are going to be taken away from you.”

LOGIC’s products taste either of tobacco or menthol only, the flavors allowed with traditional cigarettes.

But Martin, like other e-cigarette companies, wants his industry to be exempt from the requirement that new or modified products be reviewed by the FDA before hitting the market.

In the meantime, OMB officials have mostly kept their thoughts to themselves.

“I’ve been in some of these meetings,” said Eric Criss, president of ECIG. “It’s mostly a one-way conversation.”

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