The Senate Democrats harassed electronic cigarette companies throughout 2014 and tried very hard to push out new rules and restrictions against the new multibillion-dollar industry. In the article, they talk about the new rules that they want to get held up for these large manufacturing corporations that make these electronic cigarettes. They want to change the rules where manufacturers now have to win a "premarket" approval before their products can be sold to the public or else they'd be pulled out. This test approval applies for all electronic cigarettes released after February 2007, which means that basically all products on the market have to be approved since everything basically came out after then. The FDA predicts that electronic cigarette companies will spend about 5,016 hours per application they want to send with an estimate cost of about $300,000. This would lead to smaller companies going own the drain and leaving the market due to the expenses just to submit an application.
I think the government function that this article is involved in is maintaining competition and correcting externalities because first off, by creating this new law that companies have to submit applications and get approved before releasing the product gets smaller ompanies to back out because of the extra expenses and leave the bigger companies to the job which aloows the limited amount of companies to possibly sell at a more affordable and competitive price for the consumers. Also i think it corrects the externalities because by eliminating smaller competition that provides flavourful e-juices, which catches children's eyes to try it out too, the bigger companies are just left with their more neutral products with the tobacco taste instead. On the other hand, byadding in more restrictions, this causes people go more towards the black market and buy from there which rises up negative externalities to the whole picture.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/03/house-leaders-rush-to-defend-e-cigarettes-from-possible-fda-bans
