Gregory Conley did not set out to become one of the most vocal vaping advocates in the country. Conley, president of the American Vaping Association (AVA), described himself more than four years ago as a “dedicated lifelong smoker” who had tried all approved cessation options. Nothing took until he discovered the world of e-vapor in 2009.
“Then I saw that the FDA and states were trying to ban electronic-cigarette sales,” he told attendees of the CSP Vaping Academy in December. “It got me in an uproar and made me an activist.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may not have succeeded in banning e-cigarettes by classifying them as medicinal devices, but the fight is far from over. Besides the FDA’s proposed deeming regulations (which Conley says “will effectively ban 99.9% of vapor products” through the financially burdensome Pre-Market Tobacco Application process), state and local governments are proposing onerous taxes and regulations on the segment by the minute.
“I believe vaping, like Uber, is a disruptive technology,” Conley said. “And just as Uber is being attacked at the city and state level by competing forces, vaping is also under attack by various forces that have a lot to lose.”
It’s a fact that may be shocking: Federal, state and local governments make more money off tobacco sales than actual tobacco companies, thanks to Master Settlement Agreement payments and taxes.
“The government is the biggest player in the tobacco industry because they get around $40 billion annually from tobacco,” Conley said. “The tobacco industry, meanwhile, nets only $9 billion in profits. So the state and federal governments have a huge role in not seeing cigarette sales decline.”
Wells Fargo senior tobacco analyst Bonnie Herzog credits sales of e-vapor for roughly 1.5 percentage points worth of cigarette declines over the past few years. It’s a relatively small number that’s not giving many legislatures pause—yet.
“We’re going to see continued cigarette sales decline,” said Conley. “I think we are going to see governments be more transparent. Instead of making the public-health argument, they’re just going to start saying they need that tobacco (tax) money.”
That isn’t to say that the so-called public-health argument will go away anytime soon. Not when Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is going before Congress to make bold claims about youth usage of the products. Though the CDC has claimed e-cigs are hooking youth non-smokers, the agency’s own youth usage data shows only 0.3% of never-smoking teens have used an e-cigarette in the past 30 days.
Beyond the state and federal government, cities are “picking up the slack” from the states in passing vaping bans, Conley said—and then some. About 20 cities in California alone have banned vaping in private apartments, he said.
With many powerful players standing to benefit from anti-e-cig regulations, fighting back may understandably seem a daunting task. In going up against the ideology-driven deep pockets of tobacco control, the cold, hard facts often win the day. “The big question for public health is: Do e-cigarettes help smokers quit?” Conley said, pointing to multiple studies that say they undoubtedly do.
In what Conley described as “probably the most important vaping study of the last year,” researchers followed smokers attempting to quit for a full year. The results, which were published in the Journal of Addiction, found that smokers who attempted to quit with electronic cigarettes were twice as successful as those who used traditional nicotine replacement therapy. Twenty percent of e-cig users quit, vs. 10% for NRT and 15% for cold turkey.
There’s also ample data on what Conley says is the most frequently cited issue for anti-e-cig regulation: the gateway effect.
“You have a lot of opponents falsely claiming that e-cigarettes are acting as a gateway to cigarettes,” he said, pointing to an Oklahoma study that found only one of 1,300 college students had become a smoker after first using an electronic cigarette. Conley also cited the CDC’s own numbers, which show youth experimentation with e-cigarettes increased by 3% from 2011 to 2013, while cigarette usage among high school students dropped by 3.1%.
Aside from statistics, Conley said retailers need to remain aware and involved in any anti-vapor regulatory actions happening on the local level. He pointed to advocacy groups such as the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA), which allows retailers to sign up for email alerts specific to their states of operation and get store owners and consumers involved when an onerous measure is proposed.
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