I would think that at a minimum local sourcing of e-
juice would be useful just from the standpoint of quality control.
On thing to remember is that there are two main reasons that industries get regulated in this country.
One is to protect existing interests to erect barriers to entry into a market these regulations are generally promoted by industry lobbyists and don't kid yourselves most regulation that gets through congress is of this nature. This is where the Tobacco and Big Pharma people present a threat to this product.
The other is when public outrage reaches the point that the congress critters figure if they don't do something they'll be drummed out of office and loose access to all the money that comes from the lobbyists working on the other source of regulatory preasure.
The FDA USDA and OSHA weren't created because congress was sitting around bored one day and said "gee lets piss off all these big companies that give us all these campaign contributions" no they happened because public outcry reached a deafening level.
The first will be the harder fight and will be hard to avoid and I would highly recomend that the suppliers need to get together and form a trade group to fight against it.
The second however can be short circuited by proactive behavior. Because all those regulations came into existence because some ....... in the past behaved badly and brought the regulatory hammer down on everyone.
My suggestion is to do more than the minimum in ensuring safety of the product. Check the ingredients used make sure there aren't any known health issues. Don't use any that are questionable (other than Nicotine obviously). Make sure your suppliers are using the best practices to avoid contamination.
Get in front of issues such as recycling, How much of this stuff can be reconditioned and reused? I'm sitting here looking at my Classic Penstyle thinking at a minumum the tubes should be reusable. Talk to the manufacturers about closing some of the supply loop. See if you can convince them to take back cores to recondition rather than having people chuck their old atomizers and
batteries in the trash. Hell maybe it would be cost effective to recondition them in the U.S, bringing atomizers and
batteries in bulk from the Chinese manufacters. (Oh yeah I'd try to stay as far away from disposables as you can we're entering into an age where people are going to be more environmentally concious and I just see nothing good about a product that's going to add even more crap to landfils than is needed.)
Check those manufactures see if some have better safety and labor practices if so use them as prefered sources. Push them to meet reasonable labor standards even if it pushes the price up a bit it will win you some good will and gain allies in the cause.
Oh get some child safety bottles for the liquids get some literature out to warn people to store this crap outside the reach of children do this before some ..... leaves his 36mg bottle out for some toddler to chug down and die from.
I really think the most important thing is for suppliers to get together and form a trade group pool your resources to be able to sponsor some safety research, Get some lines of communication with any reasonable health advocacy group that you can. Do some PR work get some positive spin, buy some add time that will get you some more balanced news articles, you don't really think that GE is trying to sell Jet Engines on CNN do you?
While you may be competitors in business you need to be allies to some extend as well.
Suppliers that want to operate in unethical counterproductive ways can be left out that will give those of you who are in the trade group something you can point to. Kind of like the organics movement a way for you to be differentiated from fly by night MBA holding scam artists.
Basically be proactive answer the critics before they get a chance to criticize, make sure you've done everything you reasonably can to counter their arguments in advance.
I really think this product has the potential to be a really good thing but it also has a huge potential to be a really bad thing. As TB has pointed out many times there is a ton of crap that is real dodgy about these things some mysterious chemical cocktail that you are "vaporizing" and inhaling into your lungs. There is just so much that can go wrong with that.
So self police because if you fail to do so it's only a matter of time before someone does something stupid and brings down the that second form or regulation. Hell it would probably be in your interest to sponsor and push some of your own regulations to short circuit that process.
