Category: People

  • U.K.’s Largest Vapor Retailer Selects One of Its Own to Lead New Quit Campaign

    U.K.’s Largest Vapor Retailer Selects One of Its Own to Lead New Quit Campaign

    A new nationwide stop-smoking campaign launched by the UK’s largest vaping retailer has tabbed a Port Talbot man will be the face of the in-store campaign.

    Douglas Parsons’ stop-smoking journey will be featured across a range of collateral, including on each VPZ store’s in-house screens as he details his switch to vaping.

    The 26-year-old previously smoked a cigarette every hour before being encouraged to kick the habit by his partner.

    Parsons had tried a range of over-the-counter smoking cessation products but admits he continually went back to cigarettes as he struggled to kick the habit once and for all, according to a press release.

    He eventually turned to vaping as an alternative and has never looked back after taking advantage of VPZ’s 28-day support program and money back guarantee on Innokin brand starter packs.

    “The VPZ staff in-store have been brilliant and having the opportunity to be able to track how my body is reacting really puts everything into perspective. It is genuinely crazy the difference vaping has made to my body,” Parsons said.

    Latest consumer research from VPZ shows that 89 percent of customers stated that vaping helped them quit smoking altogether. Among the success stories, 97 per cent stated that vaping helped them most throughout the journey towards kicking the habit. And of those, 79 percent confirmed that they had been smoking for six years or more.

  • Suit: Juul Founders Sold $500 Million in Stock, Denied Minority Stakeholders

    Suit: Juul Founders Sold $500 Million in Stock, Denied Minority Stakeholders

    Juul Labs’ founders used a $12.8 billion investment from Altria Group to enrich themselves, according to a minority shareholder.

    In a lawsuit filed in California state court last week, Daniel Grove says Juul founders Adam Bowen and James Monsees each sold $500 million in stock after the deal with Altria while denying similar opportunities to minority stakeholders.

    The suit seeks to block Juul Labs’ board from approving further transactions involving its members and to make the company hold annual meetings. It also seeks to represent others as a class of plaintiffs.

    Describing the suit as “without merit and filled with factual inaccuracies,” Juul Labs countersued  stop Grove from gaining access to its books and record.

    Grove’s lawyer, Francis Bottini, said his client is seeking information about payments to Juul Labs’ board members related to the Altria deal and that under California law he didn’t sign away those rights as Juul contends.

    Bottini said Juul Labs’ lawsuit against Grove is “without merit.”

  • Vape Shop Owner Says 90 Percent of Business is Open-Tank Systems

    Vape Shop Owner Says 90 Percent of Business is Open-Tank Systems

    Ohio vape shop owner Jeff Kathman’s vape shop is representative of most US vape shops in that open-tank vapor systems are by far the core of his business. Consumers are relieved they will still be able to buy the products they say have been their key to quitting smoking.

    Kathman and others say their business has suffered from federal government declarations that vaping kills and vows last fall by President Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to ban flavored e-cigarettes because youths prefer them, according to an article on wcpo.com.

    “There’s a lot of vapor stores who have suffered and had to close because of this,” said Kathman, who owns Cincy Vapors, the article states.

    “Since that scare started, maybe in August, our business is down drastically and it has just not bounced back.”

    But Kathman is beginning to think he won’t have to close now that the CDC says most vaping-related deaths and lung injuries appear to be connected to black-market marijuana vaping devices, not the products Kathman sells in his store.

    Under the new FDA plan announced in December, the federal government will still ban fruit- and mint-flavored products used in e-cigarettes but allow vape shops to sell flavors from tank-based systems, which let people mix their own nicotine and vaping juice, according to the article.

    Kathman said the open-tank vapes are by far the core of his business.

    “I’m going to say we’re 90% open-tank systems, which is the refillable liquids that you see on the shelves,” Kathman said.

    And Kathman probably doesn’t have to worry about a statewide ban because Ohio lawmakers are not rushing to support either of the two bills that have been introduced.

    Customers like Susan Forrester of Bridgetown are relieved they will still be able to buy the products they say have been their key to quitting smoking, according to the article.

    “It’s been a blessing ever since because I have not touched a cigarette in the last five years,” Forrester said.

    Going forward, the FDA ruling means cartridge or pod systems like JUUL and others will only be able to sell tobacco or menthol flavors.

    But Kathman said he wishes there was more government regulation where kids are concerned.

    Kathman said the federal limits ignore online sales, which make it easy for underage people to buy vaping products, and leave loopholes for other devices like disposable vapes that he won’t even carry in his store, according to the article.

    “We do have to protect our kids, but they’re not doing it sensibly,” Kathman said. “They’re leaving these huge gaps that are going to cause problems in the end that could come back to hurt us.”

  • Lava Love

    Lava Love

    Hawaiians on the Big Island are falling in love with Black Lava Vape.

    By Timothy S. Donahue

    Vapor is hot on the island of Hawaii. The largest island of the U.S. state of Hawaii has seen a boom in vaping over the past few years. Black Lava Vape (BLV), which has the largest vape shops on the island of Hawaii, has also seen rapid growth at its two current locations. It’s needed too. While Hawaii has smoking rates well below the national average, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smokers still made up 13.1 percent of the state’s nearly 1.43 million adult residents in 2016. Nationally, the rate was 17.1 percent.

    In order to help further reduce smoking rates, Sean Anderson opened the flagship BLV store in mid-2013 in the town of Kailua-Kona on Hawaii’s Big Island. Today, BLV has outgrown its retail footprint in Kailua-Kona three times and is now in its fourth location in the town of about 12,000 residents on the island’s west coast. “We expanded after the first six months. Our growth has happened quickly,” says Anderson. “We saw a bit of leveling off this year, but our first year we probably doubled our growth, and we did it again in the second year. We are still growing, just not as quickly.”

    The shop has done well—so well that in 2017, Anderson opened a second store in Waimea, a town of about 7,000 residents 40 miles north of Kailua-Kona. “The vaping community here is growing quickly,” says Anderson. “This has helped us grow as we see more and more adult smokers convert to vaping. As a former smoker, I know firsthand how vaping can save lives.”

    On May 3, 2018, things started to look less lively. The Kilauea volcano erupted dramatically several hours after a magnitude 5.0 earthquake struck the Big Island. It added to a busy day for residents, who were already grappling with five separate eruptions from two fissures on the volcano, according to news reports. Tourism on the island of Hawaii slowed to a near crawl, if anything, according to Patsy Anderson, Sean’s mother and a part owner of BLV. Hawaii typically averages about 1.75 million visitors per year, according to www.govisithawaii.com.

    “The volcano going off had a big impact,” said Patsy. “Our customers are mainly locals who count on us, and tourism was falling off, and it took a long time for everyone to get back on their feet. Locals had a hard time after the eruption. We have a heavy tourist clientele too—probably around 70 percent of the tourists that visit the island looking for vapor products shop here. There is only one other vape shop in Kona, and then some gas stations sell limited vapor products too. We also see a lot of the cruise ship staff and vacationers who vape stop by to check us out for new batteries [and] liquid or people [who] have also had their vaporizers taken away by airline security. The volcano put a hold on all that business for a few months. Hawaiians are strong though; we pulled through.”

    The idea for BLV began more than a decade ago while Sean was living in California and smoking traditional cigarettes, which he quit by using dip tobacco. He saw someone vaping and quickly became interested in what he thought “was just a fad.” The more he learned about the new products, the more interested he became, and soon he used vapor to quit traditional tobacco products altogether.

    Then he converted his brother, also a smoker, to a vaper. It wasn’t long after that when he realized he wanted to become a part of the potentially lifesaving industry. “I thought it was just a gimmick at first. Then, around Christmas of 2011, after I got my brother started vaping, I realized that I was growing tired of the corporate environment I was working in,” says Sean. “I lived in Hawaii from the age of four until about 11 and the place has always been very close to my heart. Driving around [Los Angeles] looking for a vape shop one day with my brother, it just clicked. There were probably not many vape shops in Hawaii. I Googled it and there wasn’t, other than Volcano [eCigs] vape shops on Oahu island.”

    That’s when Sean called Patsy. He told her he wanted to open a vape shop back in Kailua-Kona, where the family had lived so many years before. “When he first brought it up, he had a great job. I thought this would be a huge mistake,” says Patsy. She thought he should discuss it with his dad, Bob Anderson, who is now co-owner of BLV. “He told his dad, and, surprise to me, Bob thought it was a great idea.”

    Bob had worked construction on the island in the mid-1980s and always wanted to go back. He and Sean decided to go to Kailua-Kona and see if the plan was viable. “We went to Kona, and there was a Volcano [eCigs] kiosk in the mall in Hilo [a town of over 40,000 residents about 80 miles east of Kona on the other side of the Big Island], and that was it,” says Bob. “I did some research, and I really thought this was a good idea. We were all-in at that point. We got a mailbox in Kona and went back to California to start planning out the adventure.”

    Then it happened. The Andersons opened the first BLV in June 2013. “My dad invested a lot of money with me. We didn’t have a clue about running a business or how to get the product, and I only had a little business experience,” says Sean. “But I had a real desire and ambition to do this. I knew it was a great business opportunity, so I needed to learn quickly to make it work.”

    The reaction from the local community in Kailua-Kona was positive. The store quickly expanded. Soon, the Andersons saw the need for another shop and opened BLV’s Waimea location in 2017. That’s when things got interesting, according to Sean. The Waimea community didn’t initially embrace its new vapor shop. By its third month, the community had planned a town meeting to discuss the new business.

    SMALL TOWN, BIG ISSUE

    Much like the mainland U.S., Hawaii has some issues with vaping. In early 2018, the Waimea Community Association (WCA) held a meeting to discuss the growing number of vapers in the small town. The meeting was in response to the presence of BLV. Residents at the WCA meeting discussed concerns over vaping, such as health issues, addiction and whether vaping could lead nonsmokers to smoking traditional cigarettes.

    There was the typical talk of diacetyl and the potential for popcorn lung. Formaldehyde was brought up several times too, according to Sean. These are age-old industry arguments with simple answers. Most liquid companies don’t use diacetyl, and no one vapes at high enough temperatures to create any significant levels of formaldehyde, according to numerous studies. However, it seems the general public still does not understand this, Sean explains.

    During the meeting, residents also expressed concern over BLV’s proximity to a school in Waimea. During the meeting, Sean quickly questioned why his vape shop’s location was concerning when a convenience store selling alcohol, tobacco and vapor products is located even closer to the school than BLV. Sean says he was surprised by the meeting. He didn’t get this type of negative feedback when he first opened the Kailua-Kona location. “It was disheartening,” he said. “It seemed the more adult smokers we converted, the bigger these issues became.”

    It is concerning. After all, Hawaii has some of the strictest anti-vaping laws in the country. Restrictions on public smoking also apply to vaping, and you must be 21 to purchase vapor products. Hawaii was the first U.S. state to raise the legal smoking age to 21, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2018. For the last several years, the state’s legislature has tried to pass bills like S.B. 2304, which would have prohibited the sale of any tobacco or vapor products within 500 feet of any school or public playground, and S.B. 2654 that called for up to an 80 percent tax on e-liquids and the ban of all online sales.

    “When they started regulating, Sean went to Honolulu to testify numerous times. We have signed so many petitions, and we have managed to table nearly every attempt,” says Patsy. “This vape community has stuck together through everything. We had to get a license last year, but all tobacco sellers did. We have been fortunate in that the vaping community has been really supportive in this state.” While defeated in 2018, it is expected these bills will reappear in 2019.

    The meeting in Waimea, however, was mostly based on another concern about the vapor industry that is growing across all the state’s islands and other U.S. states as well. According to a Hawaii Public Radio story from September 2018, Sally Ancheta, the Hawaii island coordinator for the state’s Tobacco Free Coalition, the state has a significant youth vaping problem—especially on the Big Island.

    “Forty-nine percent of our kids are trying e-cigarettes at the high school level, about 35 percent of our middle school students—a daily use rate of 34 percent of our high school students. This is Hawaii County. At the state level, about 27 percent of high school students are trying these devices. The U.S. national high school rate, it’s about 20 percent,” she stated. Ancheta goes on to say that multiple issues factor into why Hawaii’s youth rates are so high. “Our youth influence each other very well. There is not a big perception or an outrage that [vapor] is bad. So, I think [there are] no boundaries, even for families, somebody older than 21 to provide this to somebody under 21.”

    Sean says that the numbers do matter. Youth uptake is a concern that should be addressed. He can also only regulate who he and his associates sell the products to, and as Ancheta suggests, it’s difficult to stop someone of age from buying vapor products for teens. That is why BLV is doing what it can to make sure its salespeople only sell to adults of legal age, according to Sean.

    “The islands have numerous adult smokers and those are the only potential clients we seek,” he said. “Our mission is to help people quit smoking through a safer alternative. If they can then wean themselves off nicotine through lowering the nicotine levels in their e-juice, we applaud that success. I’m OK with losing customers because people are quitting. It makes us proud to know we are saving lives.”

    LIVING ALOHA

    The BLV shops carry more than 5,000 stock-keeping units. Sean says he tries to stock numerous coils, even for tanks he doesn’t sell because he serves so many tourists on the island. The shop also stocks about 40 brands of e-liquid with different flavors and nicotine levels. Some of the popular products are Smok hardware and Naked e-liquids. Sean says most of BLV’s inventory comes from customer requests and employee recommendations.

    “Our employees are very knowledgeable. I learn from them all the time. They are much more knowledgeable about the industry than me, especially our general manager, Joe Sarabia. He has been with us since the beginning,” says Sean. “When we started, people would want certain brands, and then it became specific flavors of certain brands. Now it’s all over the place.”

    BLV currently has nine employees, and Bob says everyone is like a member of the family. “We pay our employees well, and we have very little turnover,” he says. “It’s a fun environment, and we encourage everyone to dress how they want and be comfortable. It’s a very Hawaiian type of vibe. After all, it’s expensive to live here and lots of people have to work two or three jobs.”

    A major challenge for BLV, according to Sean, is just getting merchandise to the island in a timely fashion. He says that everything costs a few dollars more in Hawaii just because of the cost to get merchandise shipped over. “That also means we are competing harder against online sales. For the companies on the Mainland, for the most part, their customers don’t pay any shipping at all. It is insanely challenging to keep up with that,” he says. “We hope that our personal service and extensive product line set us apart.”

    During Vapor Voice’s December 2018 visit to the Big Island, the news of youths vaping Juul Labs products was being broadcast by numerous national news outlets. Sean says he was disturbed by how Juul Labs handled the situation. Then, when Juul Labs sold a minority stake to Altria, the largest U.S. tobacco company, he decided he wanted to do something.

    “Juul has already put a stain on the industry with the whole youth vaping issue, and now it’s a tobacco company. I don’t want to sell their stuff, and I have been getting a lot of the same response from other vape shops on the other islands,” says Sean. Therefore, he is trying to start a coalition of Hawaiian vape shops to agree to refuse to sell Juul products. “I started that today—a business-to-business ban—if the vape shops stop selling Juul that would be good for the industry. We don’t want to be a part of all of the negativity the Juul brand brings.”

    Federal regulation is also a concern for Sean. He says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) view of vapor is overreaching. He sees the regulatory agency as handpicking certain studies instead of looking at the bigger picture. “The U.K. is looking at vaping very differently. They have some strange regulations, for example tanks and e-liquid bottle sizes, but they want people to switch because they understand vaping is safer. I can’t understand why the FDA is taking the completely opposite approach.”

    Sean says he will keep pushing forward. The BLV team knows it is helping to make Hawaii healthier. Sean says the family is planning on opening more stores and saving more lives (depending on what happens with FDA regulation, of course). In 2019, BLV will open a third shop in Pahoa, a town 20 miles south of Hilo. In 2020, BLV will open a location in Waikoloa, a village between Kailua-Kona and Waimea.

    “We are also looking at possibly expanding to Kauai island [about 300 miles away from the Big Island on the other side of the Hawaiian archipelago],” he says. “Maybe even Maui [the next major island closest to Hawaii island]. We just want to help Hawaiians quit smoking. That’s our aloha, meaning it’s our love, peace and compassion. It’s a guideline for how we should live.”

    AGED OUT

    Not on these islands. By 2024, only centenarians may be able to buy combustible cigarettes in the U.S. state of Hawaii. At the forefront of combustible tobacco legislation, the Aloha State plans to ban what it calls “the deadliest artifact in human history.” E-cigarettes are exempt because they “differ from regular cigarettes in that they have a much lower carcinogenic potential than cigarettes.”

    If passed, H.B. 1509 would raise the legal minimum age to purchase or possess cigarettes to 30 by 2020. It would then increase to 100 by 2024 (40 by 2021, 50 by 2022 and 60 by 2023). The timetable allows for a planning period to combat losses in cigarette tax revenue, according to news reports. The bill does not apply to electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS), cigars or chewing tobacco.

    Hawaii was the first state in the nation to outlaw tobacco products for those under 21. It is one of six states that has raised the tobacco age to 21. The others are California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and Maine. Studies have shown Hawaii to have more vapers than cigarette smokers. – T.S.D.

    Picture of Timothy S. Donahue

    Timothy S. Donahue

  • Common ground

    Common ground

    A pragmatic health advocate, David Sweanor, is recognized for philanthropy.

    By George Gay

    There seems to be an unwritten rule that says you should never talk to an adversary until circumstances dictate that you have to talk to him, no matter how much harm is caused in the meantime. To start with, you simply lob rocks at him in the certain knowledge that your rocks are bigger and sharper than are his, and that soon he will admit to this difference in firepower and capitulate. But, after a while, your arm becomes tired and your head sore, and you become conscious of the idea that there could be another way of settling your differences that would result in less harm being inflicted on both sides. With any luck, some of the rocks that fell short of their target will have mingled in no man’s land, forming a little common—if bumpy—ground. At this point, talks can start. They’re a bit formal to start with—stiff even—but they loosen up once you realize that the other guy isn’t all bad and, in fact, occasionally makes some fair points.

    Such a scenario has been mapped out during many government campaigns against freedom fighters/terrorists, and it reflects the course of the tobacco industry’s dealings with public health campaigners/anti-tobacco activists. The tobacco wars weren’t fought with rocks, of course, but they did involve statistics and arguments so weighted that they should have been banned under some international convention. If anybody is under the impression that truth first took flight during last year’s votes in the U.K.’s EU referendum and the U.S. presidential election, they should look back at the history of the tobacco wars.

    But at least we have reached the point where, barring some skirmishes, the wars are largely over. Both sides have made significant concessions. The major tobacco companies have stated publicly that cigarettes are addictive and can cause a wide range of diseases that are often fatal. And some thought leaders in the tobacco control community have conceded that, even given this danger, it is not an easy matter for people simply to stop consuming tobacco and nicotine in any form, a view that has led them to focus on tobacco’s most dangerous and most commonly used product, the cigarette.

    Stifling the conversation

    The common ground, of course, is the concept of harm reduction in the form of e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, some smokeless tobacco products and no doubt other devices that researchers and entrepreneurs are developing. But it is also made up of the need for the industry—now the tobacco and nicotine industry—and tobacco control to work together to ensure that the process doesn’t take any wrong turns on its new journey toward massively less hazardous alternatives for consumers.

    Given the importance of the above, it seems odd that some would want to stop the nascent conversation between the industry and tobacco control. But that is clearly the case. The seventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which was held in India in November, barred from attending—even as an observer—anybody associated with tobacco or nicotine, whether they were industry players or government employees, along with a lot of other groups, including the media, and individuals.

    And before Vapor Voice’s sister publication Tobacco Reporter staged the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in Belgium in October, at least some tobacco control advocates and researchers who were scheduled to attend received a letter from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention, informing them that these organizations hoped that the “misunderstanding” that had led to the prospective participants signing up to attend would soon be “rectified.”

    Even leaving aside the fact that the letter seemed to insult the intelligence of those to whom it was addressed by suggesting that they didn’t have the wit to realize that a tobacco and nicotine forum staged by a tobacco and nicotine industry magazine would attract tobacco players, this was an extraordinary missive. It seemed to be aimed at raining down “friendly fire” on tobacco control’s advanced units as they used the GTNF to gauge whether the industry was serious about tobacco harm reduction and whether significant numbers of people could be encouraged to quit smoking by switching to the new generation of products being offered by the industry, the use of which might not be 100 percent safe—what is?—but that are by most people’s reckoning hugely safer than is smoking.

    But if that weren’t insult enough, in reporting on the GTNF, The Times newspaper, while generally supporting the case for tobacco harm reduction using new-generation nicotine products, turned its fire on the industry, which was to have been expected, but also on five of the nonindustry tobacco control advocates and nicotine researchers and experts who attended. In fact, its aim when it came to the nonindustry people was so far off target that it retracted the stories and had to issue an apology, saying that, despite what it had previously written, the five were “internationally respected for their long-standing global work to reduce smoking, and their work on the issue of nicotine harm reduction,” and that their work “has not been tainted by the influence of tobacco industry funding.”

    Vapor Voice asked one of those who had been named in the Times report, David Sweanor, a long-standing public health expert and adjunct professor of law with the Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics at the University of Ottawa, what his reaction had been to the newspaper’s piece, and he simply replied, “Here we go again.”

    “I have studied the history of public health and know that virtually any rational advance engenders vicious attacks from those committed to the status quo,” he said in an email exchange. “Their challenges are not based on facts but on very personal attacks. It is disturbing but it is very common, and I feel I am walking in the footsteps of many of the historical public health innovators I have long admired.”

    Sweanor made the point that it was not just “working with” the industry that was condemned as on a par with “working for” the industry, but any contact at all, even if you were simply trying to understand the dynamics within and between the various players within the tobacco/nicotine universe by, sensibly, talking to the various players. “This really hits home when senior anti-tobacco people claim that there is no difference between, say, [Philip Morris International] and an independent vape shop—that they are all, equally, ‘industry’ and thus the enemy!” he said.

    Quiet philanthropist

    Sweanor wasn’t chosen randomly to answer the question about how he had reacted to the suggestion that he had been working on tobacco harm reduction for the money. On Nov. 17, not long after attending the GTNF and the publication of the Times piece, he was named by the Ottawa chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals as the city’s Outstanding Individual Philanthropist for 2016, an award for which he had been nominated by HealthBridge. It turns out that, far from accepting tobacco money, he has been working on tobacco harm reduction for free, while donating millions of dollars to charity.

    Sixteen years ago, Sweanor created a family fund with the Community Foundation of Ottawa, but he has only recently chosen to go public about his philanthropy. And it is interesting to note that his reasons for giving anonymously at first, for lately going public and for his support for tobacco harm reduction are all grounded in his rationality and pragmatism.

    As Don Butler wrote in a piece for the Ottawa Citizen, Sweanor gave anonymously when he set up his family fund with the foundation in 2001 because he wanted to protect his young children from the glare of publicity; because he saw anonymity as representing the highest level of gift giving, one where you expected absolutely nothing in return; and because it shielded him from being bombarded by requests from charities he wasn’t supporting. But when the circumstances surrounding his giving started to change, Sweanor decided to discard his cloak of anonymity. With his children grown into young adults, it was time to go public in the hope of encouraging other people to look at setting up funds within the foundation.

    Rationality and practicality were there from the start. In a video interview posted on the Ottawa Citizen website (goo.gl/zdBx5f), Sweanor describes how he spent his legal career doing public policy work to reduce smoking. He said he had found there were many things that could be done that were incredibly cost-effective. There were things that could be done that saved a tremendous number of lives for very little in terms of time, effort and money. And there were so many issues like that in the world, so many things where people could cost-effectively make a difference, and that was why he had worked with HealthBridge, which he described as a really cost-effective international development body working on a wide range of projects in a number of countries.

    And rationality and practicality are still there. Having spent much of his working life in the front lines of the fight against smoking, he now thinks that e-cigarettes could be one of the biggest breakthroughs ever in public health. And watching him speaking on the Ottawa Citizen video, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he is not going to be shaken from this view by a few sticks and stones. If you want to change his opinion, you’re going to have to venture onto the common ground—armed with some impressive arguments.