With less than a week to go before a statewide ban of flavored nicotine vaping products goes into effect, vaping stores across Michigan may soon go out of business. Vaping Business across the state have until October 2nd before a statewide ban of flavored nicotine vaping products will be implemented under emergency orders from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The Governor argued that liquids with flavors like “bubblegum” and “root beer” are meant to target children under the age of 18, and lure them into vaping.
After the Department of Health and Human Services last Friday gave retailers just two weeks to comply with the new ban, a number of businesses owners say, they haven’t been given enough time to sell their inventory, and their businesses face financial ruin because of it.
Demario Culp is the owner of Lakes Vapor in Muskegon County. He says 75% of his inventory is e-flavored products. I asked him if his business is going to survive.
“Honestly, I would be lying if I said I knew. We don’t know,” Culp said. “Everything happened so quick, we didn’t get any warning, anything to say, ‘hey, you are doing this wrong.”
Culp says that the new ban is unfair, since seemingly he has done everything by the book since his store opened, like requiring ID from everyone before they walk in. The problem, he says, isn’t the vaping stores.
“If it had never gotten into convenience stores like Walgreens, we never would have had a problem.”
On Wednesday, the first lawsuit challenging the emergency ban was filed. Culp says he and other vaping business owners are considering doing the same.
