https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisr...ala-harris-kneecapped-vaping/?sh=2aab585d7180
Mar 22, 2021, 04:19pm EST
The End Of Mail-Order JUUL: How Donald Trump (and Kamala Harris) Kneecapped Vaping
Before he quietly and timely exited office on January 20, one of former President Donald Trump’s last acts in office was to threaten the business models of both the nicotine and the marijuana vaporizing industries.
And it’s quite likely neither Trump nor most of Congress knew what they were doing.
What happened?
WASHINGTON, DC: Former U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a listening session on youth ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES
On Dec. 27, 2020, a little more than a week before the deadly Jan. 6 US Capitol riots, Trump signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.
Along with cash for COVID-19 relief and to avoid a government shutdown during the pandemic, the 5,000-page, $2.3 trillion spending bill included an update to the “Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking,” (or PACT) Act.
A decade-old law that makes shipping tobacco products via the U.S. mails or private carriers like FedEx or DHL more costly and difficult, the PACT Act was written before the vaping craze, before cool-mint and mango-flavored JUUL became popular at high schools, and before the accompanying moral panics.
Several lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), had been trying to apply the PACT Act’s restrictions to vaporizers for years.
The spending bill notoriously included many provisions unrelated to government spending or COVID-19 relief. As the National Law Review noted, that included most of the amendments to the PACT Act that Feinstein and Cornyn had been pushing. (One of their cosponsors: former California Sen. Kamala Harris, now the vice president.)
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 18: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, leading a recent virtual labor ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES
Even worse, after the law was passed, it was interpreted to include “all vaping products.” As of this spring, the previous rules and prohibitions on sending cigarettes via the mails now also apply to nicotine, hemp and cannabis vaporizers as well as their component parts: batteries, tanks, and anything else you can think of.
It’s important to note that it is still legal to ship tobacco and vaporizer products via the mails. It’s just very burdensome—companies need to verify customers’ ages, register with law enforcement agencies, and send to state authorities a detailed list of all transactions—and the penalties the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) can impose on violators are severe.
So most carriers have chosen not to bother.
Starting this month, the US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, and other carriers are refusing to ship “vape devices, products, and accessories.”
The last day to order JUUL pods directly from that company is April 21. (A company spokesman declined to comment for this article.)
JUUL, a massive corporation with significant footprint at brick-and-mortar retailers, will likely be fine.
But many small businesses that do direct-to-consumer sales—including, within the broad tent of the cannabis industry, providers of legal hemp vaporizers as well as generic vaporizer components—are now scrambling to figure out a reliable and affordable way to reach consumers.
Those that can’t are already cutting staff, scaling back operations, raising prices, or preparing to go out of business, representatives for the industry said.
“That’s not what Congress set out to achieve,” said Shawn Hauser, a Denver-based partner at law firm Vicente Sederberg LLP and chair of the law firm’s cannabis practice. “The potential impact really is severe.”
A Pax Era vaporizer used for cartridges with marijuana concentrates. Legal to own in all 50 states, ... [+]
HEARST NEWSPAPERS VIA GETTY IMAGES
The irony is that if applied to cannabis and hemp vaporizer products, the PACT Act directly contradicts other areas of law including the 2018 Farm Bill, which broadly legalized both hemp-derived products and shipping them via the mails.
The US Postal Service will apparently continue to mail certain hemp products, like smokeable hemp flowers. But purveyors of hemp-based vaporizer products, including cannabis products with delta-8 THC, are all captured in the new PACT Act prohibitions.
Again, that doesn’t mean that any of this is outlawed. It’s just trickier and more expensive. At the least, that means a disruption of existing business models.
At least one-quarter of retail vaporizer sales are currently conducted online, with products shipped directly to consumers, experts said.
“The good news is that you should never underestimate American ingenuity,” said Gregory Conley, the president of the American Vaping Association, a trade group that’s been lobbying against the rule changes. “To some smaller logistics companies, this represents a profitable business opportunity.”
“The bad news is that if you are a small manufacturer or retailer, that does business in the hundreds of packages per day, you’ll have to work extremely hard to figure out how to stay in business, if you want to do things the legal way,” he added.
Some companies experienced with shipping “sensitive” or restricted goods, including firearms and ammunition, have already quietly segued into the vaporizer industry, Conley said. He declined to name names.
Lobbyists and advocates for vaporizer companies affected by the PACT Act’s expansion are trying to get attention from lawmakers as well as the US Postal Service, which was accepting comments from the public regarding the rule changes through Monday.
There is hope that the law will be amended or re-clarified to allow at least some use of the US mails to ship certain products.
But Conley noted a disturbing and depressing parallel: some of the law’s sponsors, including Cornyn and Feinstein, were also longtime advocates of the drug war.
“And now the drug war is coming for nicotine,” he said. “As we’re kind of pulling off the chains of the worst offenses of the drug war, we’re looking to start a new one with nicotine.”
Mar 22, 2021, 04:19pm EST
The End Of Mail-Order JUUL: How Donald Trump (and Kamala Harris) Kneecapped Vaping
Before he quietly and timely exited office on January 20, one of former President Donald Trump’s last acts in office was to threaten the business models of both the nicotine and the marijuana vaporizing industries.
And it’s quite likely neither Trump nor most of Congress knew what they were doing.
What happened?
WASHINGTON, DC: Former U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a listening session on youth ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES
On Dec. 27, 2020, a little more than a week before the deadly Jan. 6 US Capitol riots, Trump signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.
Along with cash for COVID-19 relief and to avoid a government shutdown during the pandemic, the 5,000-page, $2.3 trillion spending bill included an update to the “Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking,” (or PACT) Act.
A decade-old law that makes shipping tobacco products via the U.S. mails or private carriers like FedEx or DHL more costly and difficult, the PACT Act was written before the vaping craze, before cool-mint and mango-flavored JUUL became popular at high schools, and before the accompanying moral panics.
Several lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), had been trying to apply the PACT Act’s restrictions to vaporizers for years.
The spending bill notoriously included many provisions unrelated to government spending or COVID-19 relief. As the National Law Review noted, that included most of the amendments to the PACT Act that Feinstein and Cornyn had been pushing. (One of their cosponsors: former California Sen. Kamala Harris, now the vice president.)
WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 18: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, leading a recent virtual labor ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES
Even worse, after the law was passed, it was interpreted to include “all vaping products.” As of this spring, the previous rules and prohibitions on sending cigarettes via the mails now also apply to nicotine, hemp and cannabis vaporizers as well as their component parts: batteries, tanks, and anything else you can think of.
It’s important to note that it is still legal to ship tobacco and vaporizer products via the mails. It’s just very burdensome—companies need to verify customers’ ages, register with law enforcement agencies, and send to state authorities a detailed list of all transactions—and the penalties the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) can impose on violators are severe.
So most carriers have chosen not to bother.
Starting this month, the US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS, and other carriers are refusing to ship “vape devices, products, and accessories.”
The last day to order JUUL pods directly from that company is April 21. (A company spokesman declined to comment for this article.)
JUUL, a massive corporation with significant footprint at brick-and-mortar retailers, will likely be fine.
But many small businesses that do direct-to-consumer sales—including, within the broad tent of the cannabis industry, providers of legal hemp vaporizers as well as generic vaporizer components—are now scrambling to figure out a reliable and affordable way to reach consumers.
Those that can’t are already cutting staff, scaling back operations, raising prices, or preparing to go out of business, representatives for the industry said.
“That’s not what Congress set out to achieve,” said Shawn Hauser, a Denver-based partner at law firm Vicente Sederberg LLP and chair of the law firm’s cannabis practice. “The potential impact really is severe.”
A Pax Era vaporizer used for cartridges with marijuana concentrates. Legal to own in all 50 states, ... [+]
HEARST NEWSPAPERS VIA GETTY IMAGES
The irony is that if applied to cannabis and hemp vaporizer products, the PACT Act directly contradicts other areas of law including the 2018 Farm Bill, which broadly legalized both hemp-derived products and shipping them via the mails.
The US Postal Service will apparently continue to mail certain hemp products, like smokeable hemp flowers. But purveyors of hemp-based vaporizer products, including cannabis products with delta-8 THC, are all captured in the new PACT Act prohibitions.
Again, that doesn’t mean that any of this is outlawed. It’s just trickier and more expensive. At the least, that means a disruption of existing business models.
At least one-quarter of retail vaporizer sales are currently conducted online, with products shipped directly to consumers, experts said.
“The good news is that you should never underestimate American ingenuity,” said Gregory Conley, the president of the American Vaping Association, a trade group that’s been lobbying against the rule changes. “To some smaller logistics companies, this represents a profitable business opportunity.”
“The bad news is that if you are a small manufacturer or retailer, that does business in the hundreds of packages per day, you’ll have to work extremely hard to figure out how to stay in business, if you want to do things the legal way,” he added.
Some companies experienced with shipping “sensitive” or restricted goods, including firearms and ammunition, have already quietly segued into the vaporizer industry, Conley said. He declined to name names.
Lobbyists and advocates for vaporizer companies affected by the PACT Act’s expansion are trying to get attention from lawmakers as well as the US Postal Service, which was accepting comments from the public regarding the rule changes through Monday.
There is hope that the law will be amended or re-clarified to allow at least some use of the US mails to ship certain products.
But Conley noted a disturbing and depressing parallel: some of the law’s sponsors, including Cornyn and Feinstein, were also longtime advocates of the drug war.
“And now the drug war is coming for nicotine,” he said. “As we’re kind of pulling off the chains of the worst offenses of the drug war, we’re looking to start a new one with nicotine.”
