I've heard the refrain across social media: vaping is for loser, neckbeard hipsters. Yeah, okay, I'll concede that there are those folks who act like jackasses and cloud up a room just to cloud it up, to the detriment of other people. The majority of people I've had the pleasure of encountering while working at VapEscape in Montgomery and Prattville, Alabama, though, have been folks who wanted to quit smoking. They're folks that want to try a product that still gives them the smoking sensation, and still delivers nicotine, but doesn't produce anywhere close to the harm created by combusting a dried plant leaf and inhaling smoke. I'm one of those folks.
When I was in the Army, I smoked upwards of two packs a day. Hell, when I was out on a field exercise in the truck, there were times I smoked a whole pack in a matter of hours, just to pass the time and kill boredom. Me and the guys in my unit invented new and inventive ways to smoke in the dead of night and not get caught by higher command under night optics; an empty Red Bull can over the cherry became the preferred method, by the way. I smoked a lot. Coincidentally, of course, I also suffered a lot. In a unit where we ran every other day for three or more miles, I was sucking the suck hard. This was especially true in the winter, where the cold made my already tired and ragged lungs burn like fire and close shut. If you've never gone for a 8-minute-mile pace run with a gas mask on, give it a try. Then give it a try after regularly smoking one to two packs a day every day for several months prior to that.
Once I moved back to Alabama from Fort Bragg and decided to quit for real, I latched onto vaping as a substitute. There are a ton of a different flavors, which means you won't taste and smell like a pile of cigarette butts. Vapor dissipates in the air over time, though it can linger in enclosed spaces without ventilation. E-cigarette vapor exhaled from a user releases a negligible amount of nicotine into the air, posing little or not threat to bystanders, and is 95% safer than cigarettes. Hell, even the Mayo Clinic has found that for pre- and post-operative patients in a study conducted to determine the efficacy of e-cigs as a smoking cessation aid, e-cigarettes helped 51% of those patients to stop smoking or significantly reduce their tobacco intake. Anyone who's ever taken basic chemistry will know that evaporating a liquid produces no different chemical constituents than what is found in the liquid; by contrast, burning something changes its chemical composition and releases different chemicals from the reaction. If you get into RDAs and RTAs, where you start building your own coils, it becomes an awesome hobby (albeit a sometimes expensive one). In short, vaping is far, far safer than smoking, doesn't hurt bystanders, tastes awesome, can help people quit smoking, and can be a fun hobby.
Naturally, the government can't stand people finding workarounds for their own carefully crafted regimes. At least with Big Tobacco, the FDA and the Feds had an understanding. Vaping, on the other hand, was completely unregulated in the United States. This is amusing to me, because, despite the horror stories paraded around about e-cigarettes being as dangerous as cigarettes and legitimate concerns about small children ingesting juice and suffering nicotine toxicity, the industry has largely been self-regulating and responsive to consumer concerns. The childproof cap business, for example, was largely taken care of by the end of 2015. The store I work for has been using child-proof caps on our more commonly sold bottles (15ml and 30ml) since they opened, and within the last six months, all of our bottles are now childproof. This was before any FDA regulations or state laws were finalized or passed. Labeling of juices was the same way. Granted, they didn't include the Prop 65 warning since we don't sell to California, but they list the juice ingredients clearly.
Never mind that though. We have to think of the children, according to the FDA, who seem to think that kids who try vapes will want to try cigarettes. Talk about ignorance. Anyone who's quit smoking by vaping can tell you that, after a few months time, cigarettes taste exactly the way the actually taste: freaking horrible. If I'd never tried cigarettes, but I liked the nicotine buzz I got from vaping, I sure as hell wouldn't put down my vastly more pleasant vape for a terrible-tasting cigarette. Then there's the nonsense that all the different fruit, candy, and dessert flavors are marketed to kids. God forbid adults enjoy flavors other than utterly disgusting.
Now it's August 8th, and portions of the FDA's regulations on the vaping industry have begun to take effect. Thankfully, everything that was on the market prior to today can still be on the market (and let's face it: most mods are made in China, and they could give a damn what the FDA thinks). However, there are a host of other restrictions. Now vape stores can't demonstrate how to use vaping devices. Hell, I can't even build coils or replace pre-built coils for customers, which is really going to be rough on my older customers, who can't do it themselves because of their severe arthritis or hand tremors. By this time in two years, our store will have to submit hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars worth of paper work for FDA approval to keep selling our juice, assuming nothing changes; in 2018, the FDA will require approvals for everything sold after 2007. Never mind that practically nothing currently on the market existed in 2007. We have to think of the children.
So in yet another giant middle-finger to consumers, the government has decided that we need to be protected from ourselves. Which begs the question: what would we do without our wise, benevolent, superhuman overlords, who are driven by purely selfless intentions to keep us safe from harm? What kind of world would we live in without these supermen of altruism watching over us?
Why, it would be madness. We'd have utter anarchy.
Andrei Chira is a vaper, voluntaryist, and all-around cool dude. Formerly a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, he now spends his time between working at VapEscape in Montgomery County, Alabama and expanding his understanding of...well, everything, with an eye on obtaining a law degree in the future.