U.S.A: PACT Act 2009

[sattec]

Originally Posted by kristin

HEY! Don't blame me - it started before I got here on post #36!

hey! I thought we were on topic! It's all connected! If nobody censors the board, I would think any post is fair game to respond to...Bad boy Brewster, no "kids vaping" talk allowed in this thread.

[Halcyon]

...So did anything happen? I felt like I was holding my breath all damn day at work over this and I can't even find any info on if a decision was made or postponed or even brought to attention at the proposed 10am... Should've Tivo'd CSPAN, lol.

opencongress.org and several other sites show no progress.

Anyone in the know? :fingerscrossed:

[Brewster 59]

Actually I wasn't talking about kids vaping I was stating that this bill is hiding under the skirts of keeping minors from illegaly obtaining tob prod when in reality this is about control and revenue. Control by making it so we can only purchase the prod our state says are ok and I guess i dont have to explain the revenue part.

Does anyone know the results of this bill? This bill is more worrisome than the FDA issue by far.

[TropicalBob]

This bill goes far beyond e-cigs. E-cigs have never satisfied my nicotine needs, but do a great job of satisfying the habit part of cigarette smoking (which I quit July 17, 2007). For nicotine, I turn to snus and dissolvables. I also use nasal snuff and puff a pipe a few times each day. I would not stay "quit" on e-cigs alone.

This bill threatens to prevent shipping of Swedish snus, nasal snuff, and Stonewall dissolvables to me. If my local tobacco shop doesn't have an item, I'll be out of luck. I don't order online to avoid paying tax -- although that's great! -- but to obtain items I cannot buy locally. I need that outlet.

And I know I'm not alone. Read forums devoted to snus, nasal snuff or pipe tobacco to understand that there are many thousands of us in the U.S. who rely on online ordering of supplies.

The bill is not final yet, and we'll see if allowances are made for small shipments to residences. That's key. Shipments will be made to businesses. That's allowed by the bill. It's the little guys like me and you that will be shafted here. As far as this bill is concerned, all we're doing is avoiding taxes.

P.S. The bill was held over, and will be considered at some future date.

[olderthandirt]

Originally Posted by TropicalBob

This bill goes far beyond e-cigs. E-cigs have never satisfied my nicotine needs, but do a great job of satisfying the habit part of cigarette smoking (which I quit July 17, 2007). For nicotine, I turn to snus and dissolvables. I also use nasal snuff and puff a pipe a few times each day. I would not stay "quit" on e-cigs alone.

This bill threatens to prevent shipping of Swedish snus, nasal snuff, and Stonewall dissolvables to me. If my local tobacco shop doesn't have an item, I'll be out of luck. I don't order online to avoid paying tax -- although that's great! -- but to obtain items I cannot buy locally. I need that outlet.

And I know I'm not alone. Read forums devoted to snus, nasal snuff or pipe tobacco to understand that there are many thousands of us in the U.S. who rely on online ordering of supplies.

The bill is not final yet, and we'll see if allowances are made for small shipments to residences. That's key. Shipments will be made to businesses. That's allowed by the bill. It's the little guys like me and you that will be shafted here. As far as this bill is concerned, all we're doing is avoiding taxes.

P.S. The bill was held over, and will be considered at some future date.

Mayhaps you can help me out here T Bob.

I posted in a related thread that I had skimmed the bill. Admitted, it was a skim, but what I got out of reading through S1147 was that it puts in place the means to collect taxes and it seems to dis-allow transport by USPS. Appeared that as long as applicable taxes were payed, shipment by other than USPS would continue.

That's a huge paraphrase of what I skimmed, wheewwww only 74 pages as opposed to the 1990 pages f HR 3962 I spent several days on last week.

I'll be reading more closely at this so I can better speak, but could you point me to the meaningful sections that spell out why we'll no longer be able to get smokeless tobacco products shipped to.

Oop I see where you do address the ship to business vs residence in your post. Lord trying to make sense of proposed bills can be a trial for common folk like me

[TropicalBob]

It's a trial for me, too, and I profess no expert qualification for understanding all the legalese. The bill is being discussed on several forums I read each day.

I can't point our specific sections for you. I have read that some companies will just throw up their arms and abandon online ordering/shipping if this bill becomes law. Imagine you're a small Swedish business selling snus or nasal snuff and now the U.S. wants you to keep track of taxes due in 50 states, collect those taxes, and get them to the states for every order you fill.

Sure.

[olderthandirt]

Originally Posted by TropicalBob

It's a trial for me, too, and I profess no expert qualification for understanding all the legalese. The bill is being discussed on several forums I read each day.

I can't point our specific sections for you. I have read that some companies will just throw up their arms and abandon online ordering/shipping if this bill becomes law. Imagine you're a small Swedish business selling snus or nasal snuff and now the U.S. wants you to keep track of taxes due in 50 states, collect those taxes, and get them to the states for every order you fill.

Sure.

Understood. I'm reading through it right now. The sections that cover required record keeping, tax payments received and age verification, could well put a lot vendors either out of business or as for the folks in Europe, just wash their hands of US sales.

Sticky one with out doubt...

[whistlrr]

what I unfortunately predict is that the online shops will come down, they'll be forced to take their websites down, told that these are illegal. The very least/best they'll be able to hope for wold be allowed to exist but forced to sell to the very scant few (and getting fewer all the time) number of countries who can legally accept/buy e-cigs and supplies.
I'm afraid this is how the US sellers are going to go away because they're going to hit us two fold

1. "E -cigs are a a nicotine delivery device, yes, even when you don't use nicotine in them" (see a maddening exchange someone here actually had with the FDA via email about this)

2. E cigs are a tobacco product, the PACT (I think thats the one) is going to ban the mailing of tobacco products" -- this one's really rotten because its also liable to close down snus and nasal snuff suppliers as well

3. Nicotine liquid will either be considered a 'tobacco product' along with the e cig (see above) or will be reclassified as a controlled substance and therefore considered a drug and the sale of products containing pure/liquid nicotine (in amounts above the amount a tomato etc will hold) will be prohibited.

I'm thinking as long as passthroughs don't break, we don't manage to melt or lose our cartridges and we can figre out the amazing feat of how to construct our own atomizers or come up with creative alternate devices (that don't even resemble cigarettes in any way whatsoever) we may at least be able to vape (but just vape, no nicotine)

otherwise we're going to have to learn how to get creative with loose tobacco we can still buy directly over the counter (how to make our own snus etc from it for either snusing or maybe even vaping a la tropical bob's ingenious idea).

this is kinda gonna be like people who have permission to partake of certain medicinal herbs.. they can possess it, they can supposedly use it, but good actually luck actually getting a hold of it, cultivating it, sharing it with others also permitted to partake or finding a device or a place in which you can safely partake , etc etc without somebody's risking arrest.

in the event of Emageddon, seriously I'm thinking for me the most likely outcome will be

I'm still planning on one of my options being possibly to go down to 0 e-cig nicotine and just using it for the hand-to-mouth pyschological piece of the 'hey, I'm smoking!" thing and seeing what smokeless tobacco work arounds I can device out of standard pipe/'american spirit' etc types of tobacco (like maybe trying to make my own snus out of it) from tobaccos that I can still buy directly over the counter

maybe by the time all my atomizers wear out I wouldn't need the e-cig any more, sad but true that's today about how realistically it would work out for me, but at least I still wouldn't be smoking


edited to add here:
I see the healthcare thing passed 'the house' on saturday, needed 218 votes and got 219 or 220, now it needs to go to the senate or whatever

Do you think Big Pharma NRTs will magically be affordable to all as a result?
(Can anybody tell me why somehow I just don't think thats gonna happen, no matter what?)

[sattec]

Our best bet is Obama gets on the wrong side of big tobacco somehow, the way he got on the wrong side of the media when he jumped FOX news and the other medias stood with FOX, those media outlets look at Obama different today than they did...all it takes is for enough power house's to line up against him and he's toast, I hope the Senate is next power house to lineup against BO...remember what happened to the governor of Illinois when the powers lined up against him....

[Webby]

I own an ISP and we write shopping carts for a living. Changing the code to parse out individual state taxes would be a PITA, but wouldn't shutter my business. Most of my sales are done through a network of tobacco retail stores so I could even survive an outright ban on mail shipments although it would involve hiring more delivery drivers.

The real loser here would be the user. SE and Njoy have established delivery chains in truck stops and malls and (assuming e-cigs aren't banned altogether) would come back on top as the last man standing.

It isn't rocket surgery to build a list of manufacturers and Country of Origin paper trail to go back to halting shipments at the border. While it's true that most orders would still make it through, all it would take is a few "examples" being made of some poor saps who bought supplies through the mail and the KGB - I mean FDA, would succesfully scare most people out of vaping.