The potential passing of House Bill 22-1064 sparked concern and stress for several vape and head shops in Longmont.
On May 10, the Colorado Senate committee voted on and rejected bill HB22-1064, which aimed to ban flavored nicotine and tobacco products.
A statewide ban on flavor isn’t the first regulation sought to be applied to nicotine and tobacco products in recent years. In July 2020, the Senate passed HB20-1001, which raised the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21. Prior to that in August 2018, the FDA added warning label requirements for nicotine products which must be on two of the principal display panels, cover at least 30% of said panel and be clearly readable in a 12-point font.
Statewide efforts may have failed but the ban was passed in nearby Boulder. In October 2019, Boulder banned flavored nicotine products, the repercussions of which caused some small businesses to shut down, such as the Boulder Vapor House on University Hill.
On Main Street in Longmont, there are nine vape and head shops within a 3.5-mile stretch, alone. Vape shops solely sell e-cigarette products, while head shops sell both marijuana paraphernalia and e-cigarette products.
Concerned how the legislation would impact her shop, Pam Jacobs, who owns the Vape Vault, at 2330 Main Street, with her son and daughter, was one of several vape shop owners to sign a letter to the legislature explaining the harm the ban could cause to small businesses and the benefits that these small businesses provide to the state.
As a solely vape shop, the Vape Vault claims it would not be able to survive because it does not sell marijuana products like other shops.
“That’s the majority of head shops sales, so no they would not go out of business,” Jacobs said.
According to the letter sent to the legislature by Jacobs, 96% of vape shop sales are from products that contain flavored nicotine ingredients.
Head shop assistant manager Nicholas Cuccia disagrees, claiming glassware for marijuana use does not account for a significant portion of his sales. He reports 95% of the shop’s sales derive from favored nicotine products.
“They’re just gonna start shutting businesses down, and that sucks because you are shutting small businesses down for big tobacco,” Tyler Weir, an employee of a Longmont vape shop said.
One of the co-sponsors of HB22-1064, Sen. Rhonda Fields, said she and her fellow cosponsors deliberated the impacts of the bill on small businesses. Together they decided the overall economic impact would not be significant.
Fields does not believe that a flavor ban would close the doors on all vape or head shops. Even though 96% sounds extraordinarily high she believes that small businesses will still survive without flavors, because the ban is not on vaping in general, but flavors.
“Would it impact them? I would say yes, but with everything else, when you don’t have a choice, you find another way to fill that void. So if you can still smoke, but it won’t be flavored, you would probably switch up to a not flavored product to still get that same sensation that you got from vaping because you can still vape it just won’t be flavored,” Fields said.
After the ban Longmont vape shop owners and employees claimed they saw an increase in sales due to people traveling from Boulder.
“Our business went up whenever they did the ban over there. We get calls, ‘hey do you have this flavor,’ ‘hey do you have that flavor,’ just so they know which store to go to out here,” Weir said.
The increase in city to city travel for nicotine products led Fields and other co-sponsors to introduce HB22-1064 as a state-wide bill.
“I wanted a statewide ban so that you couldn’t travel from Denver County to Arapahoe County to Adams County, to Fort Collins, and all these other places to get it. It would be banned across the state and if you were that in need or desperate, you would have to go out of the state to get it,” Fields said.
Jacobs also views vaping as a tool to help consumers quit combustible cigarettes.
“We are a small family run vaping store who empowers adults to quit smoking more harmful cigarettes. Since opening seven years ago, we have helped 5,000 adults quit combustible cigarettes by way of a variety of flavors,” she wrote.
Any pros that may exist for vaping do not outweigh the harms, according to Fields. This is the third smoking bill that she has co-sponsored. Even though this bill failed, her work on regulating nicotine more heavily in the state to protect the younger generation, is not over.
“And as far as I’m concerned, I see tobacco as a healthcare issue. I’m not saying that we should ban smoking altogether, but if we know that flavors are hooking and keeping people to smoke then that’s just one small step that we can take and other states have done that,” Fields said.
Jacobs disagrees stating “Flavor bans shutdown responsible small businesses. Flavor bans do not solve the youth vaping issue. Flavor bans do not work. Flavor bans make the problem worse,” in a statement sent to the legislature.
