Do you think Big Tobacco can kill the e cig market as we know it now?
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The biggest threat to the e-cig market is the politician through excessive taxation and limiting of the use of e-cigarettes. Do the major tobacco companies have lobbyists pushing these taxes, you bet they do. It's even easier for them to push for taxes and regulations when there getting into the market cause the politician can turn around and say, see even the companies that produce this product want these regulations placed on them. Calling e-cigarettes a gateway to traditional cigarettes is an unfounded allegation, when they have these hearings can they find anyone who started vaping and then moved to burning analogs? If so why don't we ever hear about such cases? If someone did go from vaping to smoking would they have just started with smoking if the technology for vaping didn't exist yet? These are questions people who vote for these bills and taxes never seem to consider but they feel like there doing something good by doing so and plus they feel like they know how to control the peoples lives better than they know how to live their own lives. The taxes I fear may become very real soon as the government loses a lot of "sin" tax revenue every time someone switches from analogs to electronics and they have lots of different products they want to spend our money on so they need to figure away to get that money back out of our pockets and back into their coffers.
The principal value of the ecig to tobacco corporations is that it is a win-win investment. If ecigs survive regulation and taxation, the investment pays off. If they don't, then cigarette sales revive and it's also a win.
The question is whether backing ecigs or killing ecigs is the best move for a cigarette company. In the end it depends on the market, the regulatory climate and the taxation climate - so there are no easy answers until some of these variables go concrete. In the EU it's a little easier to see what will happen because the regulatory climate is now finalised. What the EU intend is now clear:
- Implement regulations that can, over time, be used to eliminate all ecigs except the obsolete 1st-gen products that tobacco companies sell (minis with cartos), eliminate advertising, eliminate international web sales, and impose a fee structure that only giant corporates can afford.
- This gives the business to the tobacco companies.
- Therefore, at some point, only cigarette firms will be able to sell ecigs; therefore ecigs wil be able to be classed as another form of cigarette.
- This allows all advertising and all web sales to be prohibited.
- The cigarette firms can then make a decision regarding the continuation of the sale of ecigs, if profitable, or to dump them.
For a tobacco company, decisions are based on current and projected profits and nothing else. Essentially, all ecig products apart from minis and small refill bottles are finished in the EU now: they are dead men walking. The cigarette companies will own the business and can act according to which way the market and profits are going. Basically, cigarette sales are protected in the EU (mainly in order to protect tax revenues and pharmaceutical industry income), so ecigs will be viewed as an ancillary product by the cigarette companies who will own the (legal) business. The black market will take over everything else, as most of the small firms will go under.
In the US, when the FDA are allowed to act, the nature of the new regulatory climate will allow the same sort of projection to be made.
The question is whether backing ecigs or killing ecigs is the best move for a cigarette company. In the end it depends on the market, the regulatory climate and the taxation climate - so there are no easy answers until some of these variables go concrete. In the EU it's a little easier to see what will happen because the regulatory climate is now finalised. What the EU intend is now clear:
- Implement regulations that can, over time, be used to eliminate all ecigs except the obsolete 1st-gen products that tobacco companies sell (minis with cartos), eliminate advertising, eliminate international web sales, and impose a fee structure that only giant corporates can afford.
- This gives the business to the tobacco companies.
- Therefore, at some point, only cigarette firms will be able to sell ecigs; therefore ecigs wil be able to be classed as another form of cigarette.
- This allows all advertising and all web sales to be prohibited.
- The cigarette firms can then make a decision regarding the continuation of the sale of ecigs, if profitable, or to dump them.
For a tobacco company, decisions are based on current and projected profits and nothing else. Essentially, all ecig products apart from minis and small refill bottles are finished in the EU now: they are dead men walking. The cigarette companies will own the business and can act according to which way the market and profits are going. Basically, cigarette sales are protected in the EU (mainly in order to protect tax revenues and pharmaceutical industry income), so ecigs will be viewed as an ancillary product by the cigarette companies who will own the (legal) business. The black market will take over everything else, as most of the small firms will go under.
In the US, when the FDA are allowed to act, the nature of the new regulatory climate will allow the same sort of projection to be made.
Of all the giant lobbying groups out there our biggest threat is the pharmaceutical industry not big tobacco
Tobacco wants in on the ecig market not to dismantle it, purposely anyway
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Tobacco wants in on the ecig market not to dismantle it, purposely anyway
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
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