N
F
E
R
NEWS
H
OUTRAGE AT
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S
“MISGUIDED” VAPE
FLAVOUR BAN PLAN
Banning fl avours would be a “public health travesty” and
petition calls for Trump to think again
Words: Patrick Griffin
U
S President Donald Trump has caused widespread anger
in the vaping community by moving to ban flavoured
e-cigarettes because of the - totally unrelated - THC vape
death crisis.
By apparently confusing one vaping issue with another, the Trump
administration could decimate the American vape industry by
imposing such a rash measure.
It has been estimated that a federal flavour ban could shut down
10,000 small businesses, put tens of thousands of Americans out of
work and cause millions of adult vapers to return to smoking.
Flavour bans, age restrictions and other curbs on the sale of
e-cigarettes have, up until now, been proposed to deal with the so-
called ‘teen vaping epidemic’ in the US.
However - announcing the new crackdown on vape flavours -
President Trump said: “We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t
have our youth be so affected. People are dying from vaping, so we’re
looking at it very closely.”
It is this statement which has made the vaping community
incandescent with rage because it totally misses the point that the
recent spate of hospitalisations and deaths in the US have not been
caused by people using legal vape products.
The deaths are apparently related to people vaping illegal THC
cartridges which have been obtained on the black market and have
nothing to do with the flavours used in commercial e-cigarettes.
18 VM25
Mike Hogan, from the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association
said: “It’s like having salmonella in Romaine lettuce and calling to ban
peanut butter. It is literally public health malpractice.”
The Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association - TVECA - said
hundreds of millions of vape products had been sold worldwide in
the past 11 years without “a single incidence of harm when used as
intended.”
It said that as well as traditional e-cigarettes there were CBD vaping
products, aromatherapy vaping products and THC vaping products
and that lumping everything together as ‘vape products’ was harmful
and misleading.
The TVECA said: “In talking with the industry’s largest e-Vapor
insurance company, not a single claim has been fi led in regard to
harm done by any nicotine e-Vapor product.
“All issues of harm have come from bootleg THC products…if
e-Vapor products are harmful or dangerous why are there not similar
concerns being raised in the EU and other countries where nicotine
e-Vapor products are sold?”
A petition on the ‘We the People” website to stop The President
signing the federal flavour ban was quick to receive the required
100,000 signature goal to get a response from the White House.
It said: “Vaping has saved millions of lives with flavors being one
of the major reasons [for this]. Legal vape products that have been
regulated are 95 percent safer than traditional cigarettes. Bans and