"A ban would be a disaster for public health"
"Prohibition has never worked in the United States. It did not work with alcohol. It doesn't work with marijuana, and it won't work with e-cigarettes". So says Gregory Conely, American Vape Organization (AVA), commenting on Donald Trump's announcement to ban the sale of flavoured e-juice nationwide.
The announcement came after several deaths and over 400 cases of illness, as the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA, linked to vejpning of THC-filled e-juices. However, the Trump administration has chosen to focus on flavors, which they believe attract young people to use e-cigarettes.
- We want to clear the market from flavored e-cigarettes, announced the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar on Wednesday.
According to Alex Azar, the ban will apply to all flavors, except tobacco flavors.
- But if we notice that young people are attracted to these flavors, the ban will apply to them too," says Alex Azar.
"Public health threatened by the ban"
Protests have already started and several public health commentators, researchers and business organizations have commented on the announcement.
- A ban would be a disaster for public health. Many ex-smokers who now vejpar would return to smoking tobacco. We would also have a completely uncontrolled black market for flavored e-juice, says the debater and experienced public health researcher Michael Seigel in a post on Twitter (vaping360)
Roadside shops go under
The vape industry in the United States consists of well over 10,000 players in the form of e-juice manufacturers, flavor manufacturers, vejpshops and hardware manufacturers. A ban on the most profitable product, e-juice, would hit the industry extremely hard, says Gregory Conely, AVA.
- The 10,000+ vejp shops here in the US would go under in no time. We're talking about 100,000 jobs that would be lost if this happens. The only people who would benefit are the tobacco industry. People would start smoking again," says Gregory Conely in a debate on TV station CNN (facebook)
Aggressive anti-vejp organizations
Several vejp organizations are now mobilizing to try to influence the Trump administration's decision. But even the groups that have long worked to ban not just flavors, but e-cigarettes in general, are now focusing on major campaigns to make the decision a reality.
The US currently has a limited regulatory framework to deal with vejp products. Age limits and local control of e-juice production are already regulated, but a more comprehensive regulatory framework with pre-market registration of all vejp products is planned to come into force in 2020.
However, the regulations have been heavily criticized because they risk wiping out a large part of the US vejp industry due to an extremely expensive administration fee. Only larger companies, in practice parts of tobacco companies, will be able to cope with the regulations, financially, writes the online magazine vaping360.
