Vapouround magazine Issue 25 | Page 88

N F E R F E AT U R E S H PROHIBITION IS BACK Almost 100 years since nationwide prohibition gripped the US, it has returned - in a different form. Words: Phoebe Fuller A sorry scene is currently playing out in various states across America as the country wakes up to a new era of prohibition. Vaping - an industry which has done so much to get smokers off killer cigarettes - is the new enemy of the people and vape stores are being forced out of business. Massachusetts now has some of the harshest regulation in the US – with a complete ban on anything related to vaping. This means no hardware, accessories or juice can be sold in or shipped into the state. The speed at which this has been implemented has been brutal. Once thriving businesses have been reduced to empty shells overnight. Wicked Vaped in Mansfield, Massachusetts, was forced to stop trading within two days of the vaping ban coming into effect last month. Brian Phillips from Wicked Vaped said: “We all showed up for work on the Tuesday morning and, in the afternoon, we were told to shut our doors and clear the shelves.” For Brian the “biggest wrong” about this situation was that their state completely bypassed restrictions and flavour bans, instead going straight for an all-out ban. And, to top it off, there was no grace period for selling off stock – one minute they were in business, the next they weren’t. “They’ve plunged us into an absolute era of prohibition,” Brian says, “a huge concern now is black market vapes. “We’ve had customers come in with tears in their eyes, asking 84 VM25 “They’ve plunged us into an absolute era of prohibition. A huge concern now is black market vapes.” ‘What am I going to do now? and we have no answers for them.” The huge irony here is that it is illegal black market vapes that got Massachusetts – and the US at large – into this situation in the first place, with contaminated THC cartridges springing up under the guise of cheaper vaping pods. “Products like this need to be regulated and controlled because there is a huge hole in the market now and somebody – somewhere - is going to capitalise on that,” Brian says. And this will, of course, put a huge amount of people at risk. For Brian and everyone else affected by this prohibition, the main takeaway is clear: the government’s solution to a black-market problem has been to create a new one. This new war on vaping will drive people back to smoking and to the black market. Politicians say they are acting to protect the health of American vapers but the very real danger is that their actions will have exactly the opposite effect.