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Policy and Regulatory Impact on the Vape Shop M Slis 2022.pptx
- 1. POLICY AND REGULATORY IMPACT ON THE VAPE SHOP: FORCING MILLIONS BACK TO SMOKING IN THE NAME OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND CONTINUED TOBACCO CONTROL FUNDING. MARC SLIS 2022
- 2. THE VAPE SHOP AND TOBACCO CONTROL • Thousands of shops providing a nationwide network of harm reduction • Millions of people smoke-free • Tobacco Control: legislatures, regulatory bodies, policymakers, academia, research, the public “health” lobby groups and media working together • Collectively crafting policy, regulation and public opinion
- 3. TOBACCO CONTROL • Smokers are treated as acceptable collateral damage in a war against Big Tobacco. • People control, punishment, hate and fear • 93% failure rate and bird-watching “You trained the public to despise us. You trained us to despise ourselves”
- 4. VAPING IS A CONSUMER-DRIVEN SOLUTION • Invented, developed and improved by smokers • Significantly more effective • Humane • Requires no Tobacco Control funding
- 5. TOBACCO CONTROL RESPONSE TO VAPING • Prohibition • No regard for human life • Health is a business deal • Protection for Big Tobacco and pharma products
- 6. LEGISLATIVE AND REGULATORY IMPACT/MESSAGE • FDA E-cigarette deeming regulations: Vaping is deadlier than smoking • PACT and Jenkins ACT amendments: Vapor products are as deadly as alcohol, firearms and tobacco • Taxation, vaping and flavor bans Vaping is addicting, poisoning and killing our youth
- 7. TOBACCO CONTROL IS NOW A CAUSE OF LUNG CANCER You lie, you mock mental illness and depression. You deter people from quitting smoking and force those of us who’ve quit back to smoking and you’ve increased cigarette sales for the first time in 2 decades. None of you have ever set foot in a vape shop and appear to have no idea what we do. Yet, you are eliminating us, our products and sending our clients back to smoking and dying. You’ve become a cause of lung cancer.
- 8. HOW DO VAPE SHOPS FACILITATE CESSATION? • Meet smokers where they live • Tell them the truth • Education • Empowerment
- 9. HOW DO VAPE SHOPS FACILITATE CESSATION? • Unique solutions for every smoker and their unique circumstances • The Pleasure Principal: Maximizing enjoyment
- 10. BERNIE I use a pit bull to get people to successfully and enjoyably quit smoking, even while on vacation and the best that the massive funding and might of the tobacco control industry has to offer smokers after 60 yrs, is to stop me from helping them. I don’t even advertise other than the sign above my shop and my girl Bernie in the window
- 11. HOW SHOULD WE REGULATE VAPOR PRODUCTS? Common sense manufacturing and marketing standards Electronic cigarettes are proven safe and effective cessation products employed by hundreds of millions of consumers over the last 18 years with no significant harm Vaping can be easily, safely, and inexpensively regulated with a set of common- sense manufacturing and marketing standards. Standards that we’ve been begging for as an industry, for years If you think the public benefits from taxing, banning, restricting and lying about the most effective and popular means of smoking cessation ever devised, you need to get out of our way because we are saving lives and you are taking them
- 12. TAKEAWAY: TOBACCO CONTROL HAS BECOME A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO PUBLIC HEALTH As someone who smoked for 41 yrs, vaped for 8 yrs and spent 6 ½ yrs helping others to successfully quit smoking, I want to leave you with this observation: Tobacco Control has become a clear and present danger to public health and a direct threat to the lives of people who smoke and those of us vaping to be smoke-free.
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon. My only disclosure is that I make my living directly helping people to quit smoking with flavored vapor products. I smoked for 41 yrs and then successfully quit smoking with vaping over 8 yrs ago. I’ve owned and operated a vape shop for 6 ½ yrs and I’ve helped over 2,000 people in my small community to also successfully quit smoking with flavored vapor products. I want to thank everyone involved, especially Amanda, for inviting me to speak today from the perspective of an independent vape shop owner and operator.
- Thousands of vape shops like mine are the human face of tobacco harm reduction, providing the products, personal service and support currently keeping millions of Americans, smoke-free despite Tobacco Control efforts to stop us. When I say tobacco control, I mean everyone, collectively; legislatures, regulatory bodies, policymakers, academia, research, the public “health” lobby groups and of course, media. You all have a collective, singular effect on everyone who smokes and vapes, regardless of your individual beliefs and efforts. I use the term “smoking” for brevity’s sake but refer to all deadly forms of tobacco use. I’m here today as a vape shop owner, but I’m also here to deliver a message to Tobacco Control on behalf of all of us who use electronic cigarettes to be smoke-free and live longer, healthier lives.
- You trained the public to despise smokers. You trained us to despise ourselves and now you want to do the same again for vaping. Why? Why would you want to prevent smokers moving from a deadly, life-long addiction to vastly safer vaping? Why would you put up barriers? Is this what you would want for your friends…family? You taxed us, punished us and segregated us from the rest of society. You passed laws against us, not for us. And in return, you hold us to a status quo of a 93% failure rate and tell us to bird-watch. Quit, or die. And we die, 480,000 of us every year.
- Your inability to help us to quit forced us to develop our own solution-a far more effective and humane solution and as a result, we stopped paying you. We pulled your pants down and exposed the truth. Deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, many of you want us to smoke. You need us to smoke. You can’t deny it because now you’re forcing us back to smoking, after we’ve quit.
- Your policy and regulatory response to vaping is deadly, bald-faced prohibition, your loudest voices are chilling in their utter disdain for our lives and your prevailing narrative on nicotine vaping is nothing short of a fucking fairy tale. Vape shops and the independent vapor industry are being systematically eliminated and our products, banned, because they work. We are being driven back to smoking and dying by the very people we entrusted to help us to quit. The products we use to successfully keep ourselves and millions of other Americans smoke-free are being replaced by a handful of Big Tobacco, high-nic, shitty-tasting, archaic devices that will NOT help millions to be smoke-free. You’ve reduced the lives of 32 million US smokers and 11 million US vapers to a series of business deals made with Big Tobacco and Pharma. Let’s look at those business deals and their impact on vape shops, our cessation efforts and public opinion.
- FDA regulatory authority over electronic cigarettes ultimately stems from the Tobacco Control Act. Electronic cigarettes don’t contain tobacco, yet the e-cig deeming regs apply a greater regulatory burden to vapor products used for cessation, than that applied to deadly tobacco products, themselves. The message to the public being that quitting smoking with vaping is more dangerous than smoking itself. The PACT and Jenkins ACT amendments ban US Postal Service from shipping vapor products, also placing them under ATF enforcement, treating them the same as the tobacco products, alcohol, explosives, and firearms that kill millions. The message being that vapor products are among the deadliest products ever sold. Taxation, vaping bans and flavor bans send the same message. That vaping is dangerous and the purpose of my industry is to addict, poison, and kill our children. Those of us that do quit with vaping face a hostile public, friends and family, misinformed and whipped into a moral panic by your lies. Other businesses and industries are being forced by regulation and a misinformed public to sever ties with independent vapor and vape shops, carpet-bombing our supply chain, increasing the cost of quitting smoking and inflaming the public into thinking we are addicting and killing their children. National campaigns depict us as monsters, selling depression sticks to children.
- You lie, you mock mental illness and depression. You deter people from quitting smoking and force those of us who’ve quit back to smoking and you’ve increased cigarette sales for the first time in 2 decades. None of you have ever set foot in a vape shop and appear to have no idea what we do. Yet, you are eliminating us, our products and sending our clients back to smoking and dying. You’ve become a cause of lung cancer.
- As an independent vape shop owner and operator, I’ve assisted thousands in my community to successfully quit smoking. I’ve also helped others to quit across the nation and around the world by employing video chat from my shop. I educate them and help them to craft the unique solution they require, then hand them over to a local shop to make their purchases and become smoke-free. We’re not just an industry; we are a community helping millions to quit smoking and we do it far better than you ever have and ever will. Locally, my clients are physicians, nurses, single moms, couples, multiple generations of families, seniors on fixed incomes, disabled, veterans, residents of assisted living facilities and teachers at the local elementary, middle, and high schools. Most are dealing with serious issues other than their smoking, further degrading their quality of life and their ability to quit smoking. From 18 to 96 years old, with an average age of over 40, nearly all referrals by other successful clients. Most have smoked for decades-the result of your 93% failure rate. They don’t believe you and don’t trust you, with damn good reason. You will never reach these people. They know you don’t care and they despise you for it.
- I greet them in a T-shirt and blue jeans. I sit down with them face to face. I learn who they are and how they live. I educate and empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to create and maintain their own unique solution, tailored to fit exactly who they are, how they live and work, why and how they smoke. I’m not only familiar but experienced with the thousands of products we use to create nearly infinite combinations of size, shape, color, texture, cloud size, density, throat hit, nicotine level and flavors required to allow anyone to successfully quit smoking. There are no rules. No limits. Only guidelines and the ability to adjust every aspect of our experience to one end-maximizing our enjoyment, making quitting smoking more enjoyable than smoking, itself. And that’s the key: Every one of us who smokes or used to smoke will tell you that we enjoy everything about smoking except that it’s expensive, stinks and kills us. Vape shops provide an effective solution that’s more enjoyable than smoking, smells and tastes wonderful, costing less than their smoking habit and we do it in a relaxing, non-judgmental atmosphere they trust.
- I don’t even advertise other than the sign above my shop and my girl Bernie in the window. I successfully employ Bernie, a 5 yr. old female pit bill to not only both improve my client’s experience and their chances of success, but also to bring in her own clients. In less than 2 years, 39 of them have noticed Bernie, walked in off the street and quit smoking on impulse. Those people have brought in others to do the same. Bernie watches the children of my single parents, she comforts my clients on their bad days and occupies them while they wait to be served, massively increasing the effectiveness of the service I provide to my community. She’s become a local celebrity with a large fan club and her own line of merchandise using the proceeds to fund the local shelter I adopted her from. Tourists are told about her when they arrive. They come to meet her and end up quitting smoking, on the spot. I assist them while in town and then refer them to a reputable, independent vape shop where they live. I use a pit bull to get people to successfully and enjoyably quit smoking, even while on vacation and the best that the massive funding and might of the tobacco control industry has to offer smokers after 60 yrs, is to stop me from helping them.
- Electronic cigarettes are proven safe and effective cessation products employed by hundreds of millions of consumers over the last 18 years with no significant harm and have significantly reduced both adult and youth smoking rates. The scientific and statistical evidence, the consensus of the world’s experts and the global population experience of millions of successful ex-smokers all agree. Vaping can be easily, safely, and inexpensively regulated with a set of common-sense manufacturing and marketing standards. Standards that we’ve been begging for as an industry, for years. If you can’t see that you’re in the wrong business. If you’re focused on the mythical harms of an equally mythical youth vaping epidemic, you’re in the wrong business. If you think the public benefits from taxing, banning, restricting and lying about the most effective and popular means of smoking cessation ever devised, you need to get out of our way because we are saving lives and you are taking them.
- As someone who smoked for 41 yrs, vaped for 8 yrs and spent 6 ½ yrs helping others to successfully quit smoking, I want to leave you with this observation: Tobacco Control has become a clear and present danger to public health and a direct threat to the lives of people who smoke and those of us vaping to be smoke-free.