From Shawn Anderson: I have been reading the comments over the last couple of days. Since I saw the comment “The silence is deafening,” I figured I needed to say something. I cannot believe how fast an industry is willing to rip someone apart. There is a gentleman in Florida ripping me up, and yet have never had one conversation with the man. You journalist YouTubers need to stop trying to divide the industry. My company and I have worked tirelessly to try and save vaping in this state. Spent thousands of dollars and man hours towards the fight. Many of us have been working long hours trying to find ways to help the industry survive. All of it to keep the costs as low as possible and help keep as many flavors on the market as possible. I told the owner of a national brand just last week that I would be willing to damn near package for him at cost to keep his liquids in the state. I spent 3 months preparing my application for the state. It was over 650 pages, outlining my entire business. That’s because I wanted to be transparent as possible. That is something I cannot say about our state organization, which is ultimately why I, and others, left. The biggest problem with some of the resistance in our industry is based on lack of knowledge. So I gave them EVERYTHING they needed to know. Our company currently does mix on demand, while most of the rest of the state sells prepackaged e-liquid. This was a huge undertaking for us. Not only putting in a new facility, but also to change our entire business model. I reached out to many national advocates and asked what I should do. Many told me “Protect your business, even if that means working on it now.” This conversation took place this past December. I took those words under advisement and started my application. I had not known if I would be picked. I also offered for other local shops to buy part of the facility, because I felt it was right to share it with the industry. NO ONE else was willing to make the financial contribution to stay alive, so now I am being dragged through the mud. There were less than 20 applications to Mulhaupt’s NATIONWIDE! IF people are so worried now, where were you when this was happening? Probably being a keyboard warrior, like always There are more than 20 bottling facilities here in the United States. Why did none of these people get a license, or even bother to apply? This information was made public so that anyone nationwide could try. This was a huge cost and gamble for us with the deeming regs poised to come out this year, which they did. Those regs came in stylish fashion, only 2 days after I got approved. After reading the deeming regs, none of this will matter in 2 years as we will ALL be gone. I needed an LLC for the new company, and filed for that when I was over 50% done with my application. That happened to be in February. All along, all I was doing was trying to survive, and keep as many options in Indiana as I could. During all of this, I have been working with a flavoring company to remove all diactyl and related chemicals from our e-liquid. Trying to make sure I have a safer product. That project has been going on for over a year now. All the shop owners I have been talking to have been told about this project I’m working on, and are excited for the new liquids. Talk to the shop owners we have visited over the last month, we are just trying to survive a bad situation, all of us! When I have to look at all the employees in our 10 stores, I don’t think it is a “horse ....” excuse to keep the business going. Not just my stores, but the employees of all the stores I’m trying to help stay open. Most of these employees working and living paycheck to paycheck, it is NOT a horse .... excuse. Especially after one of my Fort Wayne employees told me on Friday how thankful he was for his job. He is one of the most talented mixers in the company. He goes on to tell me that his mother is a store manager at a local convenience store. She works more hours, gets treated unfairly, and makes less than he does. Those are the people I have to look at. The sad thing is, I am sitting here at 3am still wondering if it was even worth it to get a license. This was a legal play that was going to happen whether I was involved or not. To even think that any of us, that have been fighting, would try to hurt the industry, you are wrong. Go ahead and ridicule me, you won’t shake me. Keep trying to create more divide, we will rise above it. I am and will continue to fight for this industry, but cannot help if we are out of business.