Shifting Sands
Regulations are coming, but there seems to be quite a lot of too and fro taking place in current approaches and expectations.
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by Dave Cross
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In California, Ground Zero of the anti-vaping movement, vape stores embody everything progressive in the industry: mood lighting, welcoming ergonomics and high ceilings to disperse the vape. There’s no sign of gunfights or brawls on a spit and sawdust floor in The Vapor Spot but that won’t be good enough for pharmaceutical company-funded Senator Mark Leno, a man still smarting after the defeat of his imbecilic legislative proposals.
It is the ramifications of Wells Fargo’s predictions (as we reported last month) that continue to fuel Leno’s fears, not the science. A short-term prediction of market value to be worth $10billion by 2017 and a forecast that tobacco companies will buy up businesses until they hold around three-quarters of this frightens him witless. “Irrespective of the fact that there are small independent players, Big Tobacco is buying up this industry faster than I am speaking,” said Leno.
Leno misses the point that regardless of shop owner or product manufacturer, electronic cigarette technology remains safer than the alternative. These people are so blinded by hatred of an industry that lied, cheated and killed millions they are prepared to condemn the current generation of smokers to the failing replacement products from pharmaceutical companies.
Oddly, it is the users and the industry itself that is driving the greatest change and improving standards rather than Leno’s prohibitionist slant. Rather than seeing classification of vaping as a tobacco product (something it clearly isn’t), users publicise bad products and manufacturers constantly look to raising standards in order to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded market.
In the UK, we are seeing ECITA and large vape companies co-opted onto committees as health bodies and the government look at how the Tobacco Products Directive is to be implemented. Growing numbers of vapers are expressing unease at the low standards of companies like Five Pawns and voting with their wallets as vendors delist their stock.
What will irk Leno even further is the news that America’s First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech, has quashed advertising restrictions already put in place. Advertising buffer zones were put in place in 1998 and recently extended to include ecigs, companies prevented from promoting their products within 1,000 feet of libraries, shopping arcades and recreation centres.
Myrtle Cole, a local councillor, was exceptionally upset about products like “raspberry chai” being marketed to children. “I’m offended by this,” she said. What Cole fails to understand is that the majority of the vape community already appreciate the need for sensitivity – even if no one apart from her sees the danger being posed to children by a sweet-flavoured vape.
Rather than turkeys voting for Christmas, the industry desires to be seen as responsible and honest. With stringent legislation being the exception to the rule and companies involved in the discussion process it could well prove that it gets its wish.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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