Cautious Shopper

[szot]

I hope Big tobacco sells a zillion garbage mini Ecigs and makes some monies....then they will be happy and leave lil ma and pop ego and other ecig types alone, like egos and mods and let BT focus in on their junk mini ecigs and make all the jing they want.....and fight our battles with the FDA who determines our fate with ecigs and its future regarding legislation, taxation and bans...I think PPL don't know who can help them (BT) and who ultimately calls the shots (FDA, not BT)...learn to use others strengths to your advantage and be aware of their weakness and capitalize on those as well..

 

[mkbilbo]

I hope Big Tobacco sells a zillion garbage mini Ecigs and makes some monies....then they will be happy and leave lil ma and pop ego and other ecig types alone, like egos and mods and let BT focus in on their junk mini ecigs and make all the jing they want.....and fight our battles with the FDA who determines our fate with ecigs and its future regarding legislation, taxation and bans...I think PPL don't know who can help them (BT) and who ultimately calls the shots (FDA, not BT)...learn to use others strengths to your advantage and be aware of their weakness and capitalize on those as well..

No, they've already made their tactics very clear. By "raising the bar" in regulation, they can drive out everybody except the large players (themselves). R. J. Reynolds has been caught (and CASAA has pushed back) trying to get state level bills to ban Internet sales of e-cigs and nic juice. Places popular with vapers such as, oh, Mount Baker aren't big enough to have their stock in all the stores. Kill Internet sales, you kill MBV. And all the other highly regarded, highly popular vape shops. BT positions this as (wait for it) "for the children" but the actual point is to sweep the field clean and take over.

They mean to raise the regulatory bar so high (you know, FOR THE CHILDRUUUUUNNNN!!!!) that only large corporations can afford to operate in the field. And their entire model is basically what Blu does. Prepackaged, prefilled, high margin. DIY liquids will be wiped off the map. Mom & pops, gone. Clearos and cartos and refills and all that? Banned. You'll buy your high priced, FDA approved cartridges at the store from the handful of corporations remaining. And you'll buy and buy and buy and buy and buy...

I think we've seen a "taste" of the intended future. Blu. Anybody else noticed their disposables are higher nic than their cartos? I started with a Blu disposable. It was quite good. And I literally forgot to light up for the next nine hours. Which stunned me.

But the cartos are teeny little things with far lower levels of nicotine. I kept track of my spending and dumped them fast. I was spending just as much as I would if I were smoking. Just. As. Much. I went through cartos at a speed that was really rather startling.

Now that I'm doing my own mixing (not full on DIY liquids with recipes yet, just basic stuff), I'm even angrier at what Blu is doing. This stuff is basically dirt cheap. The liquids and flavors are just not that expensive. Such as I recently saw some talk of Wizard Labs, went, checked them out and figured I could get my 50/50 plain nic juice for about $30 a liter. A liter. Which is 200 days worth at a rate of 5ml a day. Imagine how cheap it is for corporations to get the stuff in giant vats.

(Not bashing the small shops that do their own mixes by the way. Like I really enjoy several FlavorZ by Joe. Which aren't cheap. But you're paying for expertise there. And that's fine. You expect a high quality meal to cost more than fast food. The tobacco companies want to charge "boutique" prices for mass produced burgers. If they can capture the FDA, they'll do exactly that. Mass produce at a high profit margin. They won't want small shops and DIY to exist. That would wreck their "business model". Watch them come after ECF at some point with some kind of attempt to squash people talking about such things as DIY. Because, you know, THE CHILDREN!!!!!)

I think BT should be barred from entering the market at all. They screwed us all. I trusted them once. Look what it got me. No, they should be forced to accept being no more than maybe the suppliers of nic juice. At most. They do control a large amount of the tobacco in the US and have the expertise to do the extraction on a large scale. But I doubt they're willing to accept shrinking drastically as companies and making millions in profits instead of billions (short sighted greed is pandemic these days, it'll wreck this country). I think they're going to be serious, serious trouble. Between them and pharma (slogan: "Suicide is a way to quit smoking!"), we'll be facing quite a squeeze play. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

 

[dtrud0h]

Love the stance that says the FDA makes the rules. Somebody doesn't follow the money. How do you think the people at the top of the decision making chain afford to get elected to the offices they hold? It's not from the " Do you want $1 of your refund to go to the Presidential election fund" question on your tax forms. BT, BO, BP make the rule makers, not the rules.

Sent from my XT901 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2

 

[Cactus Breath]

I'm not sure I understand the reluctance to BT or wonder if the association with them being the Evil Empire is misplace. In the US, the FDA is the regulator of tobacco products, not BT...

True, in theory. But make no mistake - Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, with all their money, are deep in the pockets of the people who DO control the regulations. BT and BP see e-cigs as a threat because 1) they're turning people away from cigarettes, which eats into BT's profits, and 2) so far, they seem to be far more successful at smoking cessation than BP products, which eats into BP's profits.

Neither BT nor BP want to see people successfully quitting cigarettes. BT makes their living selling them, and BP makes their living treating the diseases they cause. The only way they want to see e-cigarettes succeed is if they have as much control over them (and make as much money from them) as they do cigarettes and prescription drugs...and they're in bed with Big Government, who only wants e-cigarettes to succeed if they can impose huge "sin taxes" on them like tobacco products.

These are not benevolent industries looking out for the public good - they're money-making machines whose biggest concern is filling their deep pockets even deeper.