Wow, conspiracy mongering, paranoia and a good flame war... This thread rocks.
It's the little guys against Big Tobacco and Big Pharma! Ding, Ding, Ding! Of course, we're the little guys who have lined Big Tobacco's pockets for most of our lives. I blessedly have missed out on Big Pharma, but my day is coming.
After looking around at the various suppliers on the board, there are few if any who take a payment system other than Paypal. After a bad experience dealing with Drew from NHaler, my first thought is that E-Cigs are screaming for someone to get on as a supplier who has their act together. This is not meant as an offense to the E-cigt suppliers... But businesses who are still using Paypal as their ONLY form of payment usually don't have their act together. It's not that hard to get a CCard merchant account, and the fees become manageable early on. Why is it that the local lunch place can manage to take real Credit Cards for $7 lunches but suppliers tell us that the fees master-card wants are too high?
I would bet that many of these suppliers do 100 orders a day. At $50 an order, that's $5K a day gross. You're telling me that they can't get a merchant account?
If the FDA's report showed us nothing it's that unregulated products from China often have unwanted toxins and such that we don't want. Whether it's painting your child's toy with lead paint or putting Ethyl Glycol in you e-cig, generally Chinese manufacturers should all be treated with a certain level of skepticism.
An unregulated US system would be a boon to our basement entrepreneurs, but these are the same people who are least likely to be really checking the products they receive. Most of these same places don't even follow good packaging guidelines.
I sell POS systems, shipping systems, and design e-commerce solutions for a living. I work with small merchants all day, every day. I've seen people who only pull in $300 a day gross get a real merchant account with all the major Credit Card companies. I'm amazed that out of the 10 or so suppliers I asked, NONE took anything but Paypal.
These are the people who are supposed to go through the process to get FDA approval?
Frankly, I'm very leery of what might be contained in any bottle of Nic Juice I might get. MSDS sheets are fine, but it's not like they painted Polly Pocket with lead and then stuck a big sticker on the package that said: "Contains Lead!" No, they f**k s**t up and hope noone notices.
The only thing positive you can really say about it is that you KNOW real tobacco has Arsenic, Cadmium, etc... We hope/trust that the e-cig doesn't.
If ANY ingestable product makes a health claim of any sort, it falls under FDA regs. If you say "It's healthier than cigs", it's the FDA's purview. If you market it as a stop smoking aid, it falls under FDA purview. I have not come across an E-cig site yet that doesn't make one of those two claims.
So, send letters to whomever telling them how E-cigs have helped you quit smoking and you're fanning the fires of the FDA. They can point to these letters and say "Well, people who use e-cigs think of them as a quit smoking device, and the FDA has to regulate those."
In a broader sense, the e-cig IS a drug delivery system. It delivers a measured amount of a drug to the user. That certainly falls under FDA perview. The FDA went after analog cigs the same way before having to back off because the cig is not a measured dose... But when you put 26mg on the side of a bottle of e-liquid, you're offering a measured dose.
I am shocked to hear the suppliers talk about this remaining an unregulated industry with us trusting suppliers we hardly know getting items from China where cutting corners is just good business sense. I for one would sleep easier knowing that this was a regulated industry.
I believe that all of the suppliers on this board (except for Drew from NHaler) have the best intentions. However, if this wasn't taking the place of a product I KNOW will kill me eventually, I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. If these same people were selling pot in the same way, I'd pass. "Gee, pot from China via a seller I don't know from Adam? Sign me up."
As a customer, I hope that someone is driven to get FDA approval for these products. I would sleep easier at night. If noone has even begun that step, I can hardly imagine that the pressure from the gov. is so great that the time to act is NOW!
E-cigs will eventually be regulated by the FDA. I don't see any way around that. If they are not FDA approved as quit smoking devices, then they will be taxed as a luxury item much like real tobacco is today.
And for the supplier who raised the scare about the FDA requiring us to have prescriptions for e-liquid.... You can buy both the patch and Nic gum over the counter. How is it logical to assume that FDA approval means that e-liquid will be harder to get than head from a nun? My local drug store has the gum behind the counter where they used to keep the condoms. Now the condoms are out in the open and the cigars and pipes all have to live behind the counter.
Sorry to rant, but whomever said that they want this to remain an unregulated industry isn't speaking to my wants and desires. And anyone who thinks that the Tax Man and the FDA aren't going to get their grubby fingers in this pie is deluding themselves.