For those who imagine that small vendor products are somehow less safe than the ones that BT is protecting with this regulatory scam (that's what this is all about) - really? From the folks who bring you Marlboros? You prefer pink slime to a donut baked in your local bakery's ovens? They can't give Monsanto all of our food business (just most of it), too much at stake in the public eye, so regs for food products don't put the little guys out of business, but they surely intend to hand this one to Philip Morris et alia. Prohibitively expensive regs that can only be managed by gigantic corporations are the smart way to go on that one.
Something I need to say, somewhere, so I might as well here, since there's always been some conflating of our issue with general libertarian politics, Obama-bashing and so on in here:
I'm for all sorts of regulations.
I'm not government-phobic.
I want clean air and safe food and worker safety and a nice, firm safety net and all sorts of things that I think need federal oversight to a degree that's anathema to the lively libertarians and right wingers in here. I'm a passionate, active, long-time progressive liberal, and I understand those among us who suspect that the deeply negative spin on this FDA maneuver in ECF is tied to a generalized loathing of all things involving the federal government amongst some of our fellow vapers.
But look again. Corporate overreach is the issue here, and big money and corrupt, powerful profit motive. That one bites right and left. This is about government in bed with big money. That issue isn't owned by the right by a long shot and it's not paranoid doom-crying to recognize and deplore it.
Vendors don't respond effectively to the crisis for several reasons, I think. They fear contributing to a general panic amongst their customers that could hurt business in the (ever diminishing) long run. They won't acknowledge anxiety about the viability of their operation as things unfold for obvious reasons - if Apple is going to fold you switch to PC; if they're all going to fold you seek alternatives to computing. I'm not going to blow $150 on a Provari if I'm going to have to get used to sealed, prefilled cartos on a cigalike from QuikMart in a year or two (a very possible outcome here). Spreading the word that the FDA is going to make it difficult for vapers plays one way in here, but for the general public, including new/potential vapers, it seriously undercuts the perceived advantages of switching over if it looks like e-cigs will be difficult to obtain (seriously, how many of us would have switched if we'd had to purchase on a black market, or thought that we might someday have to?), are frowned upon by Many Doctors and the Guardians of the Nation's Health (sic), and/or are relatively ineffective, expensive items manufactured by the largely loathed and mistrusted big tobacco industry? And vendors as political advocates aren't going to be trusted - there's a little conflict of interest problem.
But mostly I think many of our vendors are as new to this tricky little document and as confused as many in here. Human nature denies painful eventualities for as long as possible. They're hanging out with their fingers crossed at this point; I don't really much blame them.
But that's the intent.
