If you live or do business in Ohio and use vapor products in any way please make a couple of calls today to these are key contacts in this battle to protect adult access to the best smoke and ash free alternatives 

Leave a message for this long-time foe of vaping:

Governor Mike Dewine
1-614-466-3555

Here are four crucial contacts. Also contact your location representative. 

(D) Senator Matt Huffman (Senate Pres) 1-614-466-7584

(R) Rep Bill Seitz (House Majority Leader) 1-614-466-8258

(D) Senator Jerry Cirino (Vice Chair Finance Committee)
1-614-644-7718

(R) Rep Jay Edwards (Chairman Finance Committee)
1-614-466-2158

Stop the Ohio Flavor Ban 

It is the best play in Big Tobacco’s playbook to destroy the independent vaping industry and deny adult vapers access to the products they prefer.

Now it is being executed to perfection in Ohio. Eliminate the competition by having legislative allies add an anti-vaping amendment to a must pass appropriations bill at the last minute.

CASAA, prominent advocates and lobbyists for adult vaping and independent vaping industry, have made it easy for Ohio adult vapers to make their opposition known.

Stop the Ohio Flavor Ban has a call to action which can be filled out and sent in just seconds. It also includes a full text of the bill and additional information.

Ohio Vape Flavor Ban 

In Ohio, an R.J. Reynolds promoted flavor ban was added and passed on the State Senate version of appropriations bill HB33. The House bill does not include the anti-vaping amendment and committees will work on ironing out the differences between their two versions by the end of the week.

It is imperative for Ohio vapers to make their concerns about this flagrant example of influence peddling by Big Tobacco immediately. 

The vape industry decimating PACT Act appeared under similar circumstances. Few politicians are willing to go to the mat to oppose the will and money of Bloomberg or Big Tobacco funded groups to support adult access to vaping products.

But where Bloomberg sponsored groups can hide behind misleading rhetoric about protecting children, the naked self-interest of Big Tobacco seeking a flavor ban is impossible to miss. 

CASAA Call to Action: Stop the Flavor Ban

A case study in the influence large corporations hold over state lawmakers is playing out across the country.

Tobacco companies are shutting down their competition AND foisting off FDA enforcement on state departments without giving up a thing.https://t.co/t86ShJJGNR #ohpol

— Gregory Conley (@GregTHR) June 20, 2023

How the Ohio Flavor Ban Will Work

A ban on flavored vapes in Ohio would decimate small vape shops, and deprive adult vapers of their preferred products. It would directly benefit R.J Reynolds, Juul and other purveyors of tobacco flavored vapes which are sold at convenience stores and gas stations. 

If the bill becomes law, it bans the sale of any flavored vaping product that has not been authorized for sale by the FDA. The FDA has yet to authorize a single bottled e-liquid or any non-tobacco flavors. In fact, the only seven products that have been authorized are made by tobacco giants, are tobacco flavored and outdated designs. 

Even the more modern Big Tobacco closed pod products cost significantly more per ml than disposable vapes or bottled e-liquids. The federal flavor ban blocks Vuse Alto and Juul from offering their prefilled salt nic pods in characterizing flavors.

The combination of no flavor selection, higher price, low eliquid capacity, and shorter lived batteries has made products like the Vuse Alto, MyBlu or Juul a tougher sell when forced to compete on a level field of play and vulnerable to pressure from disposable vapes. They are still the best selling products in this space, but a monopoly would be better for their bottom line. 

The actual PMTA approved products, the Vuse Vibe and Vuse Ciro, are obsolescent and ineffectual. A short lived cigalike with harsh and unsatisfactory vapor production poses less of a threat to combustible sales and simply can't hack it when compared to any refillable device or disposable vape. For more information on the best prefilled pod alternatives, check out our feature on the best disposable vapes for convenience stores. 

Fall Out from Vape Restrictions 

As most adult vapers recall, regulations began to really take a toll in 2020. The EVALI vaping lung disease scare was completely unrelated to commercial nicotine products but resulted in flavor restrictions in many states. A buried story at the time was that smoking rates hit a historic low in 2019. 

Just two years into the full frontal attack on the independent vaping industry, cigarette sales are increasing for the first time since the mid-1990s.