Vape Shops Face a Choice: Close or Rebrand?

It's called Prohibition. Doesn't work. Look it up.

good morning, I am an Italian vaper friend. the disinformation campaign that the multinationals of smoking are perpetrating against vaping is pathetic. I believe that, at this point, there is a need for a medical examiner commission that is not hired by these multinationals to examine carefully. the result, certainly positive for the vape, will be used against these multinationals for smoking for crimes against public health and tendentious and mystifying advertisements. We must shut him down as soon as possible.

Most of you are so typical to judge vaping exactly like cigarettes, which it absolutely isn’t even close. Science has shown its 99% safer then the carcinogenic effects of cigs and that 1% for me and the million plus other ex-smokers is life saving. Flavoured e-juice is targeted to vapers, not just teens as adults enjoy it as much, if not more then teens. Tainted THC JUUL Pods bought off black market dealers caused 87% of those hurt/damaged, not a single authorized dealer sold any from their shops. All these narrow minded comments are from those who only care about things that are in their lives and anything else they don’t care like sheep. People suffering in other countries or animals going extinct, these people really think nothing since it’s not effecting their lives....

An evidence-based approach would seek to answer one question: Are the overall societal harms increased or reduced by these proposed prohibitions?

It does not take a genius IQ to get to the root of the harm - nicotine addiction. Ban nicotine. Period.

“Every smoker who does not quit because of a lack of availability of flavors is a public health failure for the state of New Jersey,” ....really? Splitting hairs in this disgraceful type of commercial activity should be called out for what it is... nonsense. Also attempting to manufacture sympathy for these same characters because legislation damages their businesses is laughable when compared to the damage they do to public health.

I'm sorry that these guys are left to find another line of business, but it's necessary.

Nicotine is a drug that constricts and hardens arteries. It is not food. Maybe he could sell sniffing paints.

With what we know now, with aaaaaall the info out there, anyone who decides to use nicotine nowadays must realize they are risking their health. Including adolescents, who are not toddlers. Look. I stared smoking at 11 - that would have been in 1958 - in secret. You just went into the corner store and bought a pack of cigs "for my father" ( if asked). This was a sporadic indulgence, since that same guy would have brained me if he knew i was smoking. Then at 18 I started to smoke openly, and rapidly became a pack-a-day consumer. Until 11/1977 when the price of a pack went up (it was either to 85c, or from that to $1) and also, my then husband badgered me relentlessly about the habit. So one evening a sister in law and I went out for a cup of coffee, and over our last cigarettes ever, made a pact to quit cold turkey. We both did. In preparation i had made a long list of the many reasons to quit. But essentially, it was a series of both affirmative and negative statements to self that did it. "I AM A NON-SMOKER. Smoking makes my breath stink. I am repelling people by smoking. I will die young (get cancer, etc) - for real - if i don't stop. Etc etc. It worked. I never went back and didn't struggle with the temptation (go figure). P.S. Don't bother trying this if you're traveling to Italy any time soon. Wait till you get back (really!!).

Super simple. Mr. Mitrani can just rename his shop to "Death Vapor".

Yet gun shops continue on. Insane, America...insane.

Where do youth obtain the money to pay for vaping products? Even in my day, delivering newspapers provided marginal remuneration. And where are the parents? Isn't this as much an issue of lax parental supervision as much as one of easy money for the vendors?

Vape shops provide largely unknown substances, as well as the drug delivery systems needed for their administration, to users who are predominately young. What could possibly go wrong? "Saving jobs" seems a poor excuse for destroying the health of so many. If every vape shop closed we, as a nation, would be no poorer... but likely much healthier.

The article mentions that e cigarettes are twice as effective as other nicotine replacement products. Why not simply sell them right next to nicotine patches, etc? Surely these civic-minded entrepreneurs who say they are motivated to sell e cigarettes because of tobacco-related deaths wouldn't object

While I understand that the full effects of vaping have decades to be fully understood, electronic cigarettes are hardly new, and it's undeniable that they have improved the quality of life for a huge number of smokers. Flavors are a part of that, and certainly aren't specific to teens. We don't have many initiatives to ban White Claw or Smirnoff flavors, and the same fallacy-ridden arguments could be made there. However, regulation is important. The UK has taken a much more measured and lucid approach to vapor products, brushing off flavor bans and opting to limit nicotine levels and screen products through the MHRA. I suspect that many nonsmokers here in the US are taking a puritanical approach to the issue, which will only encourage black-market sales and smokers who have effectively switched back towards cigarettes. New Jersey's legislature letting menthol cigarettes slide in this case is quite telling, and vetoing fines increases for those selling to minors sends a clear message that public health is currently taking a back seat to political optics.

This is an amazing article, but it brushes over both side's refusal to own up to the facts: vape shop owners are peddling products as an alternative to cigarettes, it's an industry almost entirely financed by tobacco conglomerates with a proven history of targeting underage users, and as a friend of mind who owns vape shop readily admits, most of vape shop customers are young adults looking to buy products they can use with THC (marijuana) products they acquire elsewhere. The fruity flavors are designed to rope in the young and the prominence of a nationwide, barely regulated marijuana industry is the direct and only source of vaping injuries. On the law maker side, they're just applying a blanket approach to try and stop an industry - and while I may personally support that because targeting underage users to increase sales is beyond illegal — it's pathetically unethical — adults have a legal right to do as they please. Many, many law maker attempts to ban products and stifle business keep failing in court because they don't have facts on their side — it would be a much better win to enforce existing laws, but current trends indicate otherwise for a dim vape shop future - with the ultimate joke on the law makers; once this industry shifts to online-only I can't imagine how they'll fight it effectively, and that's already in play.

I have no sympathy for these peddlers of nicotine addiction devices. The flavors and marketing is expressly directed at kids, and kids are falling for it right and left. Vaping is rampant at my kids middle school despite constant efforts by parents, school officials and pretty much any responsible adult. The devices are too easy to get, and too easy to hide. And they come in teen-favored fruit and bubblegum flavors.

New Jersey, the state that thinks it's too hazardous for you to pump your own gas, now wants to protect us from this latest 'evil'. Folks have been ingesting nicotine for hundreds if not thousands of years. Leave it to our politicians to stop an application and product when technology finally provides a safe delivery system. Vaping products are sold in UK hospitals and more enlightened places actually can point to a decline in lung cancer. It helped my wife, who smoked from the age of 17, to finally quit the cigarettes 7 years ago through vaping. Now at 67 her biggest worry is that the government will take this away. Keep it from kids, OK. But if you can buy an AK-47, you should be able to buy vaping supplies.

I have no problem with all of these nicotine addiction purveyors failing. The quicker, the better.

You know, normally I am empathetic to small businesses and like to make purchases at them despite my having to pay more - the personal service is usually worth the difference. However, in this case, to me, this is evolution in action. Part of me is silently screaming at these owners right now: "Why did you get into the vaping business to begin with? Didn't you see this was a doomed and unethical business that could not possibly last for more than a decade? You might as well have started 'Asbestos 'Я' Us'. What were you thinking?" I am sorry these shops are facing hardship. As a scientist, I try to see the silver lining in this as akin to learning from the failure of an experiment; you don't learn from success, but you learn from failure. So, I hope these shop owners learn from their failure of investing in an unethical unsustainable fad enterprise and, next time, invest in something a little healthier and long-term.

We’ve known for decades that nicotine is harmful. Just because the delivery system is different was never enough reason to allow this to happen again. There was never any evidence that vaping was safer or that would cure you of smoking unless you consider Facebook posts the final word on everything.

I have no sympathy for these vaping shops. My teenaged son has no difficulty buying these products despite the LAW that they are not to be sold to minors. They created this problem themselves. Really, how many adults would want to vape a bubble gum or blueberry flavored Juul?

Vaping is a public health crisis getting an entire generation of young people addicted to nicotine. I don’t have sympathy for these shops, which willingly do the bidding of Big Tobacco. Many of the people who used vape liquid will now transition to cigarettes.

These articles are missing the point: the "vaping illness" was caused by low-quality THC vaping products, not nicotine vaping products. If the state governments really wanted to address that, they would legalize recreational marijuana and let people purchase high-quality cannabis products from a licensed retailer, instead of having to buy dodgy cartridges from some guy's trunk. Banning nicotine vape juice is just another example of this country's various moral panics. Next, we'll see news about another lung disease caused by vaping black market juice. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's easy to pick off a product for regulation that you do not like or will never use and it is ok so long as they do not come after something you do like. Alcohol is far more dangerous than vaping and does not kill innocent people nor break up families and ruin lives. One day once all the low hanging fruit is gone they will come for it.

I'm the owner of a small chain of retail stores, and I have no sympathy for these stores. Their entire business model revolves around selling (highly addictive) poison to people. I would never sell a harmful product in my stores, regardless of how much money I made on it. I've turned down selling bad, yet profitable products before, and I'll do it again. These stores ONLY sell harmful products. Good riddance. They contribute nothing of value to society.

A Star Wars themed store selling fruit and candy flavored vapes to adults who want to quit smoking? Really?? I'm delighted that these businesses are failing--the health of our children demands it. Maybe your next venture can be in counseling or addiction services, where there is now a great need to help undo the serious damage this epidemic has done.

As a lifelong cigarette smoker I must say that this hysteria over vaping products is both unwarranted and unreasonable. There are far more serious issues we should be dealing with. But because of the simple fact that many teens took to vaping because their parents didn’t do their job so now we all must pay for it. Much like the whole class being disciplined by the teacher for one bad student.