Numerous headlines have come out today following the nation wide panic over what is perceived to be a youth vaping epidemic. I very much doubt any of us are under the age of 18 let alone under the age of 21, so none of the new laws should realistically apply to us, but I fear they still will.
Here is the FDA's statement on the matter. It is all I can find on it - I haven't managed to find it codified as law anywhere, just a press release, so the specifics are hard to determine.
If you have information to share on this matter, I figured this thread could serve as a gathering place for those who have greater knowledge of the industry. If you know things that we don't about this new ban, I'd like to know as these new regulations might have significant effects on the DIY community depending on how they are written and how the FDA plans to enforce them.
Overall, it seems like the government is moving to to do something about a problem they perceive to exist. The law is aimed at preventing youth vaping, but it seems to me like it may actually be aimed at knocking out small time players so the big companies can get their products fast tracked through the FDA while the rest of us languish because we don't have the funds or the lawyers for the approvals process. I fear the end result of this will be JUUL cornering the market via regulatory capture while all other products remain completely banned or extremely hard to come by.
Please post your thoughts or any information you may have on the matter. I believe this pertains to us in every way and we should all be concerned about this.
The flavor ban isn't a concern because it pertains to ENDS. The flavors we use are multi-purpose and most existed before vaping. The proposed nicotine tax and state by state bans are the real threat to DIY.
Yeah, nobody can ban food flavoring and vg/pg because their primary application is arguably not vaping related.
I am personally stocking up on nicotine though, as some of the proposed tax structures would make a couple of liters of 100mg/ml nic cost thousands of dollars.
This is probably the best advice out there. I'll be ordering quite a bit of nicotine at some point in the next couple days - it seems like it's going to be the real limiting factor with future regulations.
There’s some potential for them to make the sale of flavors illegal when from suppliers who also sell nicotine, or they could actually try to make the sale of nicotine in VG/PG also illegal to close any potential loopholes or ease of use. If they didn’t, the same companies could sell one-shot kits that would require no measurement or skill (or understanding of what’s happening) and they might even be able to get away with doing it in stores too. Literally every company will try to sell a one shot without nic, maybe shelved next to nic if they didn’t. I hope these laws fail or aren’t comprehensive enough to deter the above.
But yeah flavoring will never be illegal. Impossible.
mind sharing any articles pertaining to the nicotine taxes?
https://taxfoundation.org/tax-nicotine-products-quantity/
Regarding how cheap nic is as an untaxed product, I'd expect a huge black market. Even more profitable than driving combustible cigarettes from New Hampshire to New York, see https://taxfoundation.org/cigarette-taxes-and-cigarette-smuggling-by-state-2017/
Now, imagine a bottle 100mg/ml+ nic, it's size and the potential profit. Liquid gold for smugglers.
I'm not sure for the federal ban, but I do live in a state with a flavor ban and as a DIYer I've been fine. I can still get my ingredients no problem, and in fact, ecigexpress is located in my state and they seem to be doing fine. It still pisses me off though. All the good shops have shut down, leaving only 2 in my the area that only sell devices, coils and batteries. It's quite sad to see a shop that was booming become a ghost town overnight.
"To date, no ENDS products have been authorized by the FDA — meaning that all ENDS products currently on the market are considered illegally marketed and are subject to enforcement, at any time, in the FDA’s discretion."
Been thinking about this since yesterday. This is what bothers me the most. With the wrong social or political trigger hardware could be disappeared from the market.
Which means we'll all be using mech mods, eventually...
I guess I'm not the only one worried about the Nicotine, rather than the flavors. If it comes down to it, I will go out of my way growing tobacco and extracting the nicotine from the leafs.
I do have a closed loop hydrocarbon based extraction system for... other plants, so that might be feasible for me. I don't know how feasible it would be for Joe schmoe to extract pure nicotine, though. I'd have to read up on extraction techniques to know.
If the taxes go through on nicotine and I run out unfortunately I'm just gonna be done. I've got probably 2 liters of 100mg/ml nicotine stashed away at this point in a fridge that isn't opened often. Guess we'll have to see.
If anything it's comforting the house bill didn't pass with a super large majority.. Something like 25-15. Still not good news though.