I've only worked in the vape industry for a few years so far, and it's still a fairly Wild West beast, waiting for some Stetson-wearing cowboy with a rifle and saddle to come tame it. At first I was reticent to get into a field I wasn't completely familiar with, but a friend of mine pointed out that this is how I've made my career my whole life—start something I've never done before, become good at it, and move on until I find the right fit. However, when it comes to vape products, one quickly realizes that they are dealing in a field with a reputation nobody seems to quite have nailed down yet. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it as sinister as cigarettes, or is it the savior of reformed smokers everywhere?
The answer seems to differ, depending on whom you ask.
For clarity I will say that, despite being a devout non-vaper, I'm certainly not against vaping in any way, shape, or form. A lot of people have kicked their nicotine habit thanks to the advent of vaping. Many people sing its praises as a healthier alternative to cancer-inducing cigarettes. It seems cleaner, safer, and ultimately better for you. (Plus, nobody has caught themselves on fire by accidentally falling asleep while vaping in bed, to my knowledge.) It seems like a win/win for a lot of people.
However, over the years, I've come to realize it isn't a win/win for everyone, and it certainly appears that someone out there (with pockets deeper then the Mariana Trench,) has a paleontological-sized bone to pick with the vaping industry.
Who might that be? Why, the tobacco lobby, of course.
When you have an industry so deeply entrenched in the zeitgeist of culture around the world, (as Big Tobacco does,) then it can be truly terrifying to those people when something comes along that threatens to usurp their throne. This “usurper” in question appears to be the vaping industry.
At first, Big Tobacco left things alone for the most part. But slowly, people started to realize that consumers were more interested in buying delicious flavored juices than they were interested in tobacco-flavored juices. (That's not to say that there aren't people interested in tobacco flavored juice, but the see-saw was tipping pretty far in the opposite direction.)
We currently live in a world where “making slightly less profit” is treated with the same nail-biting severity as “losing all of our money, and going out of business forever,” regardless of how true it may or may not be. In 2019, revenues from tobacco tax amounted to 12.46 billion U.S. dollars. The forecast predicts a decrease in tobacco tax revenues down to 11.55 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Big Tobacco doesn't look at these numbers as, “We made eleven billion dollars this year; that's a lot of money!” they look at it as, “Hey, we lost a billion dollars, we need to plug this hole somehow,” and that is a very skewed perspective to have.
If I handed you eleven million dollars, and you said, “Hey, why isn't this twelve million?” rest assured that I—and most of the rest of the sane people in the world—would be judging you very harshly.
So, when you have a powerful lobby that's being threatened with slightly less profits, (Gasp! Eight percent!) they do whatever they can to block the leak. They just needed a foot in the door; and in 2019, they got it. People bought some black market vape cartridges, and sadly died. Now, Big Tobacco had their torch, and they were going to do whatever they could with it to burn the vaping industry.
Suddenly, flavored vape juice was under attack. It was being falsely blamed for the deaths, and—surprising nobody—tobacco flavored vape juice wasn't being blamed at all. (Not that either one was actually at fault, really.)
