@Uma
The e-cigarette industry is divided into several groups who all have one ultimate aim - to survive - but who have opposing agendas in their daily business. This is a common scenario in other industries and they eventually learnt that to survive, they had to put aside their differences and work together. Here are some of the divisions:
Chinese manufacturers / Western retailers
Vendors of 2-piece cartomizer models to first-time buyers / the rest of the retail industry
Impulse purchase vendors / aftermarket vendors
Hardware vendors / e-liquid vendors
Stock model vendors / mod vendors
Some vendors are in more than one group, but there are a multitude of groups who do not have the same commercial aims and who will react to regulation in different ways. The biggest split in the retail area is between the vendors who service the 2-piece first-time buyer market, and everybody else. The first group, 99% of whose trade is essentially carto models (let's call them the Cartovendors), can easily survive under the toughest regulation. Nobody else can. Therefore the Cartovendors have two excellent reasons for supporting tough regulations: it suits them fine, and all their competition will be killed off for them by government.
Essentially this means the Cartovendors have no reason at all to listen to the rest of the industry, once the business itself has survived the first onslaught (as it has). In fact they will support tough regulations gladly as that will perform a useful commercial job for them: removing all the competition.
David G is in a difficult position here because he needs to go with the group that will win out whatever the end result, and who have the best resources to pay him - and that's the Cartovendors. Can't blame him at all.
The only good thing about this situation is that pressure from the Carto group also helps the rest of the trade - up to the point where they start to sing the same song as the FDA, which eventually they will, as that means the removal of all their competition.
What it needs now is for the bulk of the trade to get together and start a big PR campaign to refute the lies spread by the pharma industry agents. That takes money and nobody wants to spend a cent, even though they are going to be slowly and surely wiped out if they don't. Where are all the ecig /eliquid vendors going to go when the FDA makes it illegal to sell liquid; illegal to sell flavors; illegal to sell atomizers and carts; illegal to sell cartos over 12mg strength; illegal to sell mail order?
Mexico. That's where most US ecig businesses will have to relocate.
It's kind of hard to see why they aren't getting together to fight this. They need to start a lobbying and PR campaign with our message, not that of those being paid by the pharma industry to kill e-cigs. Until the ridiculous situation stops where public figures repeat the lies as if they were true, it will never end. It needs half-page ads in the media, giant billboards, posters put up everywhere - with the truth, not the lies. That or say goodbye to the bulk of the US e-cig trade in 2 or 3 years, as the FDA stranglehold starts to work. Ads like this:
