The Phoenix City Council intends to ban all flavored vaping products. Arizona Smoke Free Business Alliance believes that the flavor ban will be brought up at the August 26, 2020 city council meeting. A flavor ban will close down local businesses and drive consumers back to smoking deadly cigarettes. We need all business owners, employees and consumers to take action against this very harmful and regressive plan to ban flavors.
It is urgent that you take action to make your voice heard. Click HERE to send an email to the Phoenix City Council now!
Business owners can click HERE to become a member of the Arizona Smoke Free Business Alliance. ASFA keeps our members up to date regarding all legislation affecting the vapor industry, including the Phoenix Flavor Ban, as well as state and federal regulations.
Adult consumers depend on flavors to quit Cigarettes
In June 2020, a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that adults using flavored e-cigarette products were 2.3x more likely to quit smoking combustible cigarettes than adults using non-flavored vaping products.
Vaping is an alternative for smokers
E-cigarettes are 95% safer than traditional, combustible cigarettes. The United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians has conducted a thorough analysis of the data available to make this determination. In fact, of the 3.6 million vapers in that country, 54% have fully given up smoking. In October of 2019, they reaffirmed their position stating, “the risks associated with long-term vaping are unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.”
Flavor Bans have Negative impacts on consumer choices
Banning flavored products will offer consumers of these products a variety of alternative solutions:
1. Consumers will travel to areas bordering Phoenix to obtain these products, which will result in a loss of tax revenue to the city, cause harm to Phoenix businesses, and send commerce to businesses in neighboring municipalities.
2. Black market manufacturers and sellers will step in to fill the void left by banning the legal sale of these products. Black market agents do not follow manufacturing standards or ensure quality of ingredients. These unregulated and dangerous black-market products are certain to pose a danger to consumers’ health.
3. Consumers will turn to online platforms to purchase flavored vaping products. It is nearly impossible for a local municipality to enforce a flavor ban on e-commerce platforms.
4. Consumers who depend on flavored vaping products to remain off of combustible tobacco products will simply return to smoking deadly cigarettes. This return to cigarette smoking will put thousands of Phoenix residents at risk of the diseases and death associated with cigarette smoking, which will in turn place a tremendous burden on the health care system. Data from around the country shows that flavor bans result in increased cigarette smoking.
5. In other areas that have enacted flavor bans, we have seen consumers turn to DIY solutions, including using flavoring ingredients found in the grocery store that are meant for ingestion, and can pose very serious dangers when used for inhalation.
Flavor Bans are extremely harmful to small businesses
Vape shops are primarily operated by local small business owners, most of whom are former cigarette smokers who were able to quit through the use of vapor products, and who operate their businesses because they want to share this technology with other smokers who want to quit.
Flavors represent approximately 96% of e-liquid sales for locally owned vape shops. A ban on flavored products would result in a 78% loss of revenue and the closure of all 36 locally owned vape shops in Phoenix.
See the full economic impact report HERE.
Flavors are not the reason young people try e-cigarettes
The most recent National Youth Tobacco Survey conducted by the CDC provides some insight into youth behaviors. In the 2019 survey, almost 80% of respondents said that something other than flavors led to trying e-cigarettes. These reasons ranged from curiosity to peer pressure.