Vape shops fear USPS ruling could put them 'out of business'

Jul. 6—JC Perry and Brad Everett have co-owned a West Toledo vape shop for over eight years.

Their clientele includes a roster of 9,000 customers, and under normal circumstances — before the coronavirus pandemic — they would see around 75 to 100 customers shuffle in and out of their Laskey Road location each day.

But despite their sustained success, which has involved surviving the pandemic and navigating through governmental regulations that have further restricted what specific products can be sold and where they can be marketed, the business owners — like many in their industry — fear they could soon face their biggest threat yet: a ban on shipping vapor products through the United States Postal Service.

With other shipping companies already refusing to handle their products, USPS has become the go-to parcel carrier for the industry.

"A USPS business-to-business ban would put us out of business," Mr. Perry said Thursday at his shop, Nice Cloud Vapor, while noting he has already lost a significant number of sales because of inability to ship to online customers.

The postal service, he said, is "the last game in town as far as getting anything shipped to you. If that happens, all vape shops will be gone."

An amendment late last year to the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act — first passed in 2009 as a comprehensive way to regulate cigarette sales — added provisions pertaining to e-cigarettes, an increasingly popular product that has drawn praise in some circles for weaning smokers from tobacco, but condemnation in others for its prevalent usage by teenagers and its own health risks.

The PACT Act was in turn an amendment of the Jenkins Act of 1949, legislation first designed to curb illicit cigarette sales and monitor tax avoidance by requiring interstate shippers to report sales to administrators. The PACT Act prohibited use of the Postal Service to deliver cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products directly to buyers, and last year's amendment extended that prohibition to e-cigarettes.

It is unclear what, if any, exemptions would exist and if the ban would apply strictly to online orders from customers, or if business-to-business deliveries also will be affected. The uncertainty is making it hard to navigate the next couple months, Mr. Everett contends.

"There's a lot of confusion," he said, pointing out that some shops are still finding ways to ship vapor products to customers online in defiance of the order.

In February, the Postal Service issued a "notice of proposed rulemaking" detailing a pending ban on shipping such vapor products as e-cigarettes, e-hookahs, e-cigars, vape pens, advanced refillable personal vaporizers, and electronic pipes — among other products — to comply wit the PACT Act.

The Postal Service gave itself an April 26 target date to adopt final language and implement the ban, but it missed that deadline while it continues working on a careful review of the process, spokesman David Coleman said in a statement to The Blade.

"Despite our best efforts, in order to ensure thorough and thoughtful consideration of the complex issues and voluminous comments by industry, individual, and governmental stakeholders, the Postal Service was unable to publish a final rule by April 26," the statement read. "We continue to review the comments carefully, consult with partner agencies, and analyze how best to address the complex issues raised, in the interest of developing and issuing the final rule."

Mr. Coleman said, however, that industry owners "should be prepared for implementation upon publication at any time."

Private parcel handlers United Parcel Service, DHL, and FedEx each began refusing shipments of e-cigarettes and vaping products. Mr. Perry said the USPS' looming rule could be catastrophic to his business' survival.

"So now you've got millions of internet customers who can't get their product shipped to their homes anymore," he said. "So now they're reliant on a vape shop to supply what they need. With this ban affecting products, it could take a week, two weeks, three weeks for me to get something in.... I used to be able to have things overnighted."

He also worries if vape shops close, individuals will be induced to get their products elsewhere, such as the black market — an unintended consequence he argues could lead to an increase in supply of Vitamin E Acetate, the antioxidant sometimes found on the black market that studies have proven to be harmful when inhaled.

"It's an oil, so you vape an oil, you're going to get lipoid pneumonia, and you're going to die," Mr. Perry said.

There's also the threat of people returning to smoking tobacco, he argues, as crackdowns on shipping products and bans on flavors legislators argue target children could take away incentives to quit traditional smoking.

But for some organizations, getting e-cigarettes and vaping devices out of youthful hands is reason enough to support efforts to ban online shipments. In a March letter to the Postal Service, eight national anti-smoking and anti-vaping organizations submitted suggestions to beef up the ban, but in general supported the PACT Act's extension to e-cigarettes.

"The PACT Act has helped to address the once widespread delivery of tobacco products, especially to youth," stated a letter signed by organizations including Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes, Truth Initiative, the American Heart Association, and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "However, tobacco product deliveries to youth remain an ongoing problem, especially from overseas, and the youth e-cigarette epidemic has emerged as a serious new problem worthy of special attention."

The letter continued: "As such, we support the E-Cigarette Act's extension of the PACT Act to e-cigarettes and the general nonmailability of [electric nicotine delivery systems], as broadly defined in the E-Cigarette Act. The Proposed Rule to implement the nonmailability of ENDS is strong overall, and with the suggested changes we propose above, we believe the Postal Service is well positioned to reduce youth access to e-cigarettes."

Mr. Perry argued that forbidding products' mailing unfairly harms business that take precautions to keep those products out of young people's hands.

"Vape shops are not the problem," he said. "...We don't sell to minors. I don't want to have some agency come in here and arrest me or fine me. So I pay a lot of money for an electronic verification system. You come in, you get zapped, if you're good, we serve you. If you're not, you're asked to leave."

First Published July 6, 2021, 8:00am