Attention Nebraska business owners and vapers. Your access to vaping products has never been in more danger. Big Tobacco's newest scheme to eliminate the independent vape industry has landed in your statehouse. 

LB 1296, known to advocates as “PMTA Registry” legislation, has been introduced and referred to the General Committee. Please click on the banner above or visit CASAA's Call to Action: Stop the Big Tobacco Protection Act (Nebraska).

Advocates in Nebraska are encouraged to submit written testimony. You can do so by using the committee’s Online Comment Form.

You can also use the Legislator Lookup to find who represents you and let them know that you vape, you vote, and that this scheme will destroy jobs and lives.

Let politicians know that your business and customers will pay a great price if this law is passed. 

What Is Next?

If enacted, this law would effectively make the state of Nebraska an enforcement arm of the Food and Drug Administration empowering state authorities to enforce the disastrous federal anti-vaping regulations. 

This would put independent vape shops out of business, workers out of jobs, and funneling vapers back towards combustible cigarettes.

CRITICISMS OF PMTA REGISTRY BILLS

1. Structured so that the tobacco industry’s vape products remain on market, despite also not having received PMTA authorization, while barring their less expensive competition.
2. Serves as a flavor ban, denying adult vapers the flavors they prefer. An FDA funded study found cigarette sales increase in areas with flavor bans.
3. Bars easy to use disposable vapes, which are ideal for initiates and not coincidentally compete head-to-head with prefilled pod kits made by Big Tobacco.
4. Harms small businesses, vape shops and convenience stores, by removing high-volume and profitable products while leaving lower margin tobacco industry vapes on shelves.
5. Contrary to spirit of consumer choice and entrepreneurship, barring products released after 2016.

Nebraskans Will Pay to Enforce a Big Tobacco Monopoly

The price difference between independent vape industry products and those made by Big Tobacco is staggering. It costs over $200 to vape 30ml of e-liquid from a Vuse Alto. For Juul users, that cost increases to nearly $350 per 30ml.

A Lost Mary MT15000 Turbo costs a $63 to vape the same amount of e-liquid. The difference for the average user can equal a car lease or student loan payment. 

This table does not even account for the fact that a legally enforced monopoly will provide the tobacco industry with the freedom to raise prices further. What is the worst that can happen? Profitable cigarettes sold in place of vapes?

Under the  Nebraska PMTA Registry Bill, all vape products released after 2016 will be barred. This means every popular disposable will be gone, leaving Vuse, Juul and MyBlu with a virtual monopoly. A recent FDA study showed that flavor bans increase cigarette sales.

National Lobbying Initiative to Ban Vaping

The tobacco-industry lobbyists carefully worded their PMTA Registry scheme so that it bars products released after 2016, using the FDA’s shaky PMTA process as a guideline.

PMTA Registry laws are already in place in Oklahoma, and Louisiana. CASAA refers to this cookie-cutter and self-serving piece of legislation as the “Protect Big Tobacco Act”. Make no mistake. They are a de facto vape ban.  

When passed, PMTA Registry bills force vape shops to close, decimate the industry, deny adults access to vape products, and leave the tobacco industry with uncontested control of the market.

PMTA Registry Bills Nationwide

Youth vaping rates have fallen every year since 2019, and the odds of a national flavor ban that would only benefit the tobacco industry seem more remote than ever. The FDA's PMTA debacle is under fire as conservatives Senators raise questions about the fairness of the entire process. 

To tilt the playing field decisively in their favor, Big Tobacco has devised state level restrictions based on the FDA’s flawed PMTA system. But a salient issue is that only a couple of defunct cigalikes have been approved by the FDA. 

As lobbying at the state level is a negligible expense for the deep-pocketed tobacco industry, these laws are expected to be proposed in every state.

The tobacco-industry lobbyists carefully worded their PMTA Registry scheme so that it bars products released after 2016, as the FDA has not approved the most popular tobacco industry vape pod products either.

With the FDA's shaky PMTA application process as the guideline, these laws essentially convert state governments into an enforcement arm for clueless federal regulators. Adult vapers, and smokers will pay the price for this political maneuvering and thousands of jobs will be destroyed in the process.

Consumer freedom, choice and your pocketbook will take a huge hit if the Nebraska Vape Sales Ban is to pass.