On February 7, flavored e-liquid and other vapor products returned to store shelves in the U.S. state of Washington. The state’s lawmakers amended the ban on vaping last week. During the four-month period the flavor ban was in effect numerous local vape shops suffered financially.
Flavored vape products were one of the High Beast Vape shop’s biggest seller. When they were forced to take them off shelves in October, they say they had to turn down more than 40 customers per day, according to an article on klewtv.com.
“We had a lot of customer that came into ask and we had to answer; we can’t sell it and it’s not on the shelves anymore,” Lakhvir Sohal said.
Owner of High Beast, Lakhvir Sohal says she is relieved that flavored vapes returned to the shelves. When Governor Jay Inslee implemented the state-wide ban, businesses were impacted.
“It has changed,” Sohal said. “A lot our sales have gone down a lot like more than 50 to 60% off of regular sales every day.”
Some vape shops had to give their flavored products to stores in Idaho.
While Sohal says she took down more than 500 flavored vape bottles from her shelves. Each bottle ranging from $10 to $30.
“The taxes itself cost $4000 but the products I can’t really estimate it because it was a lot,” Lakhvir said.
Since the ban is removed, she will be able to sell the products she already bought. However, the products are making their way back with another restriction of the new age law, which changes the tobacco buying age from 18 to 21 years old, according to the article.
“We check ID of each customer especially that they’re under 50 and anyone we feel like we must check ID on,” Sohal said.