Vaping is a multi-billion dollar per year industry. Once the USG reigns-in the industry, who will acquire the rights to it? Will there be more than one? Big tobacco? My money is on Amazon.
I vape tobacco exclusively. Unfortunately good ones are few and far between.
It just dawned on me that with the new potential disaster looming over flavors, the vape industry's mixologists must be frantically scurrying around inventing new tobacco mixes.
Hopefully soon the market will be flooded with better ones
Actually I think there might be a whole array of new liquids released masked as "tobacco". Liquids containing the usual flavors with a hint of tobacco that can't be tasted.
This could open up a whole new trend in the vaping industry.
Copied from another group.
With permission
I am the owner of Sapphyre Nicotine. I have been in the e-cig and vape business since 2009. This post is a little long but hopefully it is informative for some.
In 2009 the FDA started seizing shipments of electronic cigarettes under the claim that they were drug delivery devices and therefore need to pass FDA approval prior to being marketed and sold in the USA. The industry was just starting out and this was a big blow. Shipments of product were not allowed to enter the USA. Credit card companies were not allowing ecig companies to work with them. It was not looking good for ecigs. A company called Smoking Everywhere sued the FDA and made the argument that ecigs should be regulated as a tobacco product since they contained nicotine which is derived from Tobacco. Njoy joined the litigation and eventually took over when Smoking Everywhere went out of business. In 2010 Njoy won the litigation and ecigs ended up being regulated as tobacco products. This was the best outcome of two evils. The FDA appealed the decision and lost that as well. That’s when the ecig industry really started taking off. Bigger players got into the market and eventually RJR, Altria/Philip Morris, BAT and other big tobacco companies came out with ecig products. They quickly became the dominant sellers in c-stores. The tobacco companies were happy selling tobacco and menthol flavors only. That’s what they knew and that’s what they were good at.
A few years later eliquids and open systems started getting popular. These products were not very popular in c-stores. That is when vape stores started opening up. They were mainly concentrating on open system (eliquids, mods and great tasting flavors). For a short time c-stores tried to sell eliquids, but they didn’t have the know how or the time to educate customers. C-stores were good at selling closed systems and vape stores were good at open systems.
To the uninformed public we are all lumped in as one industry --- electronic cigarettes.
In reality there are 2 different industries that are somewhat related.
A) The ecig/closed system industry: In the USA as of Sep 2019 is a $6.4 billion industry. It is controlled mostly by big tobacco companies. Juul (Altria/PM), Blu (Imperial Tobacco), Vuse (British Tobacco, formerly RJR), Njoy (only independent supplier), Logic (Japan International). 75% of ecigs are sold in C-Stores, drug stores and food stores. As a comparison, regular cigarette sales in the USA are around $80 billion dollars and about 75% comes from c-stores.
While ecigs sales increased at a 40% year over year rate, regular cigarette sales dropped by 7% year over year. That is a large number that is troubling to big tobacco.
The closed system industry sells primarily tobacco and menthol/mint flavors. If flavors were banned it would not impact the industry very much. The companies selling closed systems are not going to join our fight to save flavors. They have no monetary incentive to do so. In addition all of these companies are going to apply for PMTA. They are not going to sue the FDA and risk getting PMTA approval unless it greatly impacts their business.
The vapor/open system industry: In the USA as of sep 2019 is a $2.6 billion industry. It is NOT controlled by a few large companies. There are a lot of hardware and ejuice suppliers. It is mostly sold at adult only vape stores. $1.7 Billion sold at vape stores, $350 million in c-stores and $550 million online. Lots of suppliers, distributors, small businesses are part of this industry. They mostly sell flavored eliquid as opposed to tobacco and menthol flavors.
Having been involved with both the ecig business and the vape business, I can say that they are completely different. The vape industry is getting punished for crimes committed by the ecig industry. Unfortunately we are being lumped in as one. We are the easier one to target. We need to do a much better job getting this message out.
I would also like to make a point regarding zero nicotine flavors being regulated by the FDA. The reason our industry is regulated by the FDA as a tobacco product is because the eliquid contains nicotine. This is the only reason the FDA has authority over these products. Because zero nicotine ejuice does not contain nicotine, it is no longer a tobacco product. While the FDA is going to try and enforce regulation of zero nicotine ejuice as a tobacco product by using the “intent to use” rationale, that argument is simply not valid. The FDA will also not be able to regulate zero nicotine ejuice as a drug/drug device combination either. Ejuice with no nicotine does not cause a change in the body and therefore will not be classified as a drug. This is only my educated opinion. I am not an attorney and am not making any legal claims.
I hope this was somewhat informative to people that have not been involved with ecigs and vapes as long as I have. Feel free to add, correct if you have information that I missed.
Feel free to share
tomorrow in Massachusetts I was told by Gary at MVS during the 4 month ban of vape gear while investigating why people in the US have gotten very sick or died from vaping NON VAPING related marijuana oil products.
So find your friends out of state or get online tonight to order your coils and juices.
Maybe the investigation should be why people in other countries haven’t been getting sick and why this is JUST happening now after a couple of decades of people vaping e juice. Could be something to do with the government and politicians trading in a multi billion dollar industry and let’s not forget the lobbyists errr donors.
And yes I emailed and called my knee jerk reacting guv Baker to express my embarrassment that one of the states with the highest quality Universities aren’t asking for FACTS.
Big Tobacco (and Pharm) and the governments reason of losing $7 billion dollars to people switching from known carcinogenic cigarettes to less harmful vaping products.
As more bans get put into place and more people get sick or die from contaminated black market ejuice and THC products.
Just as planned so they can point their fingers and scream - we told you it was dangerous!!
From some article from the Indian Express, whatever publication this may be...
Vaping is marketed towards teenagers and the tobacco industry uses celebrities to promote it as being healthier than smoking,” senior author and professor Maja-Lisa Lochen of UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromso, was quoted as saying.
I'm not sure I ever recall the tobacco industry using celebrities to promote vaping. I must have missed that commercial.
I've just received a notice that Paypal is changing its terms and conditions, and buried deep inside the changes I found this.
PayPal said:
The Acceptable Use Policy currently prohibits use of PayPal for activities that violate applicable law or industry regulations regarding the sale of tobacco products or prescription drugs and devices. We're replacing that prohibition with new policy language covering these types of items, as well as e-cigarettes. Under the new language, use of PayPal for cigarette transactions will be prohibited. In addition, merchants will be permitted to use PayPal for sales of non-cigarette tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and prescription drugs and devices only with PayPal’s pre-approval.
...
The relevant parts of the chart under Activities Requiring Approval will be revised to read as follows:
“PayPal requires pre-approval to accept payments for certain services as detailed in the chart below.
[TABLE="width: 552"]
[TR]
[TD] Service Requiring Pre-Approval
[/TD]
[TD] Contact Information
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD] … selling … non-cigarette tobacco products, e-cigarettes or prescription drugs/devices.[/TD]
[TD] Please send contact information, business website URL and brief business summary to aup@paypal.com[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Click to expand...
Let's hope that this doesn't involve you telling them and them freezing your account while they sit on your application for months. But it seems like they might at least be warming to the idea that e-cigs are not the root of all evil.
It is time for us to stand together as consumers.
How can we avoid unfair and excessive taxes?
Taxation is inevitable. The cards are stacked against us. Government officials, Big Pharma & Big Tobacco don't want us to vape. They want us to smoke, pay high taxes & slowly die, while spending our life savings battling ailments from the poison contained in cigarettes.
We all know Vaping shouldn't be categorized with tobacco. We all see the train coming to run us over.
Here are the questions we should all be asking...
What are we going to do about it?
How are we going to get around this?
How can we protect our rights as consumers?
Our generation put the music industry in its place by creating a system of checks and balances with MP3 downloads.
It's time we stop complaining & start uniting to come up with solutions.
Why ? - The many varieties of devices, flavors, and nicotine strengths still available in many places not contaminated by the political whores who apparently hate all tobacco so much that they are willing to jeopardize the lives of many thousands, if not millions, of ex and even current smokers, by killing off the vape industry in favor of their hypocritical agendas of tobacco control.
The fact that vaping tobacco has been proven to be less toxic than lit tobacco products is, to them, all the more reason to restrict and eventually eliminate it. {As has been done in India where all vaping is a crime}
Vaping has been and is still being used by many to wean their way off of nicotine by gradually lowering nicotine concentration - For others who do not want to quit completely vaping offers a much safer alternative to the toxic stew present in lit tobacco, especially cigarettes.
And the fact that vaping for flavor with zero nicotine is available - seems to give them all the more reason to outlaw flavors ?!??!?!
Do they know what they are doing you may ask? - Sure they do, and its all about money. Apparently they make more in tax revenues from old fashioned cigarettes - Still as tax rates go up everywhere on vape products, they may decide there is enough to be made to keep it legal. But don't fool yourself, it has nothing to do with 'saving the children'. In a nation where it may soon become easier, in some places, to buy marijuana than tobacco - I ask who is going to save the children from the political whores who can no longer keep following the mantra that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
Who will save the children from them ?
And no I am not against marijuana legalization - but still must point out that tobacco, a mental stimulant, is being downgraded by a drug often used to get 'stoned'
Maybe this is what they want - Not a thinking population of voters - When a stoned population is easier to fool!
"
Vaping is supposed to be a form of harm reduction, that is, allow nicotine addicts to have access to the drug without the harmful tars and chemicals in cigarettes that cause cancer, heart disease, and other maladies.
Last year, the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study finding that vaping posed as great a heart risk as smoking itself. That study fueled public policies at all levels of government to stifle the industry. A lot of small business people had their livelihoods destroyed or damaged as a result.
Now, the study has been retracted — which is a very big deal in science — because the editors are “concerned that the study conclusion is unreliable” due to what appears to have been an uncompleted peer review process..........."
Major Anti-Vaping Scientific Study Retracted | National Review
Score one for our side. 'They will not stop until tobacco becomes regulated like a hard drug - 'We will not stop until our rights, especially our right to use a less harmful form of tobacco, such as vaping,
is assured.
The best strategy according Demetris and PBusardo is to hire a professional PR company to combat the false information that the news media and anti-vaping crowd has been churning out every day/nite on TV and social media. That will take a LOT of money (millions according to D & P). The US vaping industry doesn't have that type of money, but the big manufacturers in China do. China manufacturers will be affected by this if the US vaping industry fails, because it will fail if a flavor ban is successful.
Trump is the key person in all of this. He's the one who will make the final call by using his John Hancock, and he's been known to go against the grain of "The Swamp" in Washington. He is basically only interested in satisfying his voter base. All vapers need to personally contact Trump via the White House and tell him, as a voter, that if he is going to get your vote in 2020 he needs to NOT go forward with a flavor ban. Regardless of how you feel about Trump, or whether you'll actually vote for him when the time comes, this must be done and would take each of us only about 5 - 10 minutes of our time.
_________________________
Contact the White House | The White House
WHITE HOUSE: Comment line 202-456-1111 | Switch board 202-456-1414 (the switch board is the best approach as it will put you on hold and give you a chance to speak)
_________________________
Trump probably doesn't have a clue about vaping. He doesn't understand how important the use of flavored e-liquid is to the success to stop smoking. Having only "tobacco flavors" to choose from just won't cut it for the majority of vapers.
What he must understand is that a flavor ban will likely destroy the vaping industry in the US. Vape shops will not be able remain viable and will close - a loss of thousands of jobs and small businesses. This will affect his "sterling" numbers of the lowest unemployment in recent memory. There has to be at least 10,000 potential voters who have something to do with the vaping community (probably more), about the number of votes that gave him the presidency. He's not going to want to lose that many votes in the next election.
A flavor ban will result in creating its own Black Market. Many vapers will resort to making their own flavored e-liquid. How did that work out for the homemade black market THC vials that killed 6 people and put over 400 people in intensive care?
Smokers looking to quit smoking will no longer have vape shops or US based online vendors to purchase e-cigarettes. Many vapers will return to smoking, which will increase the 400,000 smokers who died last year.
Please tale a few minutes of your time to contact President Trump.
VAPING TESTIMONIAL
I smoked for over 50 years and it got to the point where I could barely breathe. I knew I had to quit but I also knew I had no will power to do so. Then 6 years ago I tried vaping and it literally saved my life. I still got my nicotine fix and could finally breathe easier and I was not inhaling all those harmful chemicals. I know taking anything into your lungs is harmful but vaping really is the lesser of two evils. And speaking of evils look at these statistics:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year
68,557 people died in 2018 of an opioid overdose
in 2017, 39,773 people in the US lost their lives at the point of a gun
In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes
30,000 deaths were the result of domestic abuse world wide in 2018.
There are 2,200 alcohol poisoning deaths in the US each year.
so in the last year 631,027 died of unnatural causes, extrapolated over six years that is 3,786,162 deaths
1978 to 1995 a total of 37 Americans were killed by falling vending machines
There have been six confirmed deaths connected to vaping across the US
of these two were from lithium batteries exploding and not the vaping itself
and two were from people experimenting by adding dangerous chemicals to their e-cigarettes.
So in reality only two people died due to vaping.
and you pick vaping as a just cause. Really? where are your values and priorities?
more people die each year from choking or acts of stupidity than vaping.
Of all these causes you could get behind why are you picking the least dangerous and offensive one? I think it's time people learned to pick their battles.
so, 480,000 deaths by cigarettes and why doesn't the government care? Here's why, because for every smoker that dies a new smoker starts. And tobacco is such a cash cow the government doesn't want it to disappear. In Canada the average taxes on a carton of cigarettes is 65%, in the US the taxes are around 45%. That's a lot of free cash. But, if people switch to vaping there are no taxes associated with it. There are no health concerns, it is purely greed.
Here is the thing about statistics: you can make up anything you want or manipulate the facts to get your point of view across. Why? Because they can't be verified. So all the government does is use scare tactics and people are gullible enough to believe it. They have no scientific proof to back up their claims, it is all BS.
Vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking, so why don't they shut down the tobacco industry? MONEY!! MONEY!! MONEY!!
I will defend vaping over cigarettes forever.