Will the new Postal Ban effect liquid nicotine on its own?

[lostbladder]

I have been mixing my own juice for the last 1-2 years since my state (NJ) banned all flavored E-juice sales. None of my favorite sellers would ship to me anymore.

I did not stock up. I did not know this postal ban was a thing until 2 hours ago when I noticed the wholesaler I purchase from removed most of its products. Even if I did, the stuff will only last me about 2 years. With the way things are, these kinds of laws rarely get reversed once enacted. I thought the 21 age for buying tobacco products would never catch on and be repealed, but look where we are now. No matter how many angry letters you send or how many signatures you get, nothing will happen.

And so, I am left thinking about what I can and can not get in the future. VG and PG will always be around in bulk as it is not only used for vape juice. The flavoring is the same flavoring used for brewing and baking, so no issue there. The liquid nicotine, specifically the extract and not the salt, is where I question the future availability (the salt is almost definitely out of the question).

Are there any other uses for liquid nicotine or is this it for DYI?

Edit: Apparently VG and PG will also be banned, at least by UPS (link below). I guess nicotine solution is also out of the question there.

UPS: Shipping Tobacco - United States.

 

[Territoo]

The liquid nicotine, both base and salts, all strengths, is affected by the ban. FedEx and UPS have already banned these and other vape items. USPS will announce any day now when their ban will go into effect. You should stock up on high strength nicotine right now, as much as you can afford and can store. Nicotine in PG has become scarce and some sites are out of it, others are charging steep prices. Nicotine in VG is readily available. @UncleJunkle has a blog where he lists vendors for nicotine and also sites where you can buy glass bottles to store the nicotine in.

https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/ubs/list-of-usa-based-nicotine-base-vendors.17/

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

Edit: Apparently VG and PG will also be banned, at least by UPS (link below). I guess nicotine solution is also out of the question there.

UPS: Shipping Tobacco - United States.

Here's the problem. PG and VG have been available from non-vape retailers for not vaping use and not branded as a vaping product or made by vape manufacturers, for quite some time.

If UPS is going to stop non-vape retailers from using UPS to ship plain old, non-vape branded PG and VG, then Fedex will get their business. But if FedEx also decides to take that route, then they are in for some lawsuits because these non-vape retailers aren't going to stand for being treated like tobacco resellers when all they are going is selling VG and PG, which they have done for years and years and years. It's not a vaping product, it just happens to be used in vaping.

Steel is not a vaping product, it happens to be used to make vaping devices.

Glass is not a vaping product, it happens to be used to make vaping devices.

Kanthal A1 is not a vaping product, it happens to be used to make vaping devices.

On and on. They may try to take it too far, but I don't believe they will take it too far for very long. This is completely asinine.

Is a remote control a tobacco product becuase it has an up and a down button?

 

[lostbladder]

@UncleJunkle, You are absolutely correct. Steel is not a tobacco product. None of those things are tobacco products. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this, excluding the people who make laws apparently. If vape juice with NO nicotine in it can be qualified as a "tobacco product" I have no faith in anyone in charge.

I appreciate your research and @Territoo for recommending it. I don't think I will be stocking up though. Only keeps for so long and I don't have room for it in my freezer. Just postponing the inevitable. The postal restriction has been in place for cigarettes a long time and no one has been able to reverse it. I doubt this will be reversed either.

4 years since my last cigarette. Why wait another 5 before the freebase goes bad? Tobacco flavored e-juice is all I can get around here now and to me it tastes way worse than the real thing.

DIY e-juice mixing has been more than a better tasting and less harmful alternative, it's been a fun hobby. Sucks it has to end here.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

@lostbladder

Out of curiosity, what mg do you vape and how many mls a day do you consume, roughly?

Also, there is an alternative for people who can't or don't want to stock up on nic base. You could make 0mg ejuice and vape that for the hand-to-mouth satisfaction and use nic gum or lozenges for the nic fix.

 

[DaveP]

Worry more about flavors that you vape than the PG, VG, and Nicotine components. It's not the base ingredients ... it's more about certain flavor additives. PG and VG are much more benign. That's why many of us vape flavorless liquids with or without nicotine that we make ourselves.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-e-cigarette-ingredients-surprisingly-toxic.html

 

[englishmick]

@UncleJunkle, You are absolutely correct. Steel is not a tobacco product. None of those things are tobacco products. I know this. You know this. Everyone knows this, excluding the people who make laws apparently. If vape juice with NO nicotine in it can be qualified as a "tobacco product" I have no faith in anyone in charge.

I appreciate your research and @Territoo for recommending it. I don't think I will be stocking up though. Only keeps for so long and I don't have room for it in my freezer. Just postponing the inevitable. The postal restriction has been in place for cigarettes a long time and no one has been able to reverse it. I doubt this will be reversed either.

4 years since my last cigarette. Why wait another 5 before the freebase goes bad? Tobacco flavored e-juice is all I can get around here now and to me it tastes way worse than the real thing.

DIY e-juice mixing has been more than a better tasting and less harmful alternative, it's been a fun hobby. Sucks it has to end here.

I've got 5 year old nic in the freezer that's as good as new. I know people have kept nic for a lot longer than that without problems. I don't think anyone knows how long nic in PG or VG will stay good, it just hasn't been around long enough.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

I've got 5 year old nic in the freezer that's as good as new.

Seeing some good reports on nic base longevity here What's the oldest nic base you've ever used?

 

[lostbladder]

@lostbladder

Out of curiosity, what mg do you vape and how many mls a day do you consume, roughly?

Also, there is an alternative for people who can't or don't want to stock up on nic base. You could make 0mg ejuice and vape that for the hand-to-mouth satisfaction and use nic gum or lozenges for the nic fix.

At 6ml nic per 100mg PG/VG I calculated that at my current usage, a liter of nic would last me 5.4 years. I vape a little over or a little less than 60ml a week.

I thought about spending the $50 annually and however much a tobacco license costs in my state so I can qualify as a business. That would still probably be cheaper than buying 60ml a week at the local vape shop.

Extracting the nicotine myself seemed doable until I realized the difference between extract and freebase. I'm not much of a chemist.

I think I'll just buy a liter of freebase and put it in the fridge. Try filling smaller bottles up to the top with it to limit oxygen. Gives me another few years to figure something out long-term.

Thanks for all your help.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

I thought about spending the $50 annually and however much a tobacco license costs in my state so I can qualify as a business.

That is not a solution because with all the requirements it will end up costing you way more money in both hard money and time.

Not to mention, if you buy it at wholesale, that means your intent is to resell. Yet you will never have any proof of actual sales. Do you plan to form a reselling business entity and expect to report ZERO sales every quarter to your state and on your quarterly and yearly taxes...yet keep buying wholesale inventory and get away with it? Good luck. You will get flagged and audited eventually. You can't keep buying inventory and claim to never sell any of it without raising some eyebrows.

Someone else already brought this up in another thread it it really is a bad idea that will get you in heap of trouble down the road on both a state and federal level....'cuz you're dealing in tobacco, son. Both state and fed govt don't take kindly to that kind of funny business when it comes to their #1 drug....tobacco.

Instead of thinking you can fool the tobacco mafia, you are better off spending $200 on a small compact freezer and $2-300 on come nic base and glass bottles.

That's a $400-500 investment. It'll cost you more than that in both money and time to form a business and pay for things like a tobacco resale license and other fees that go along with registering a business alone!

 

[lostbladder]

Worry more about flavors that you vape than the PG, VG, and Nicotine components. It's not the base ingredients ... it's more about certain flavor additives. PG and VG are much more benign. That's why many of us vape flavorless liquids with or without nicotine that we make ourselves.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-e-cigarette-ingredients-surprisingly-toxic.html

The flavors I have been using are the ones they use in brewing. I stay away from custard flavors and go for fruity. A lot of the adverse health effects, from what we know so far, come from the more artificial flavored things. Most of the fruit flavors are somehow originated in the actual fruit they are meant to taste like. The only fruit flavor that can cause popcorn lung is some grape flavors, far as I know. I only use mango, guava, passion fruit, and stuff like that. No sweeteners because they have ingredients that I can not pronounce, therefore should not inhale by my logic.

As for shipping availability, because the flavors I use are food grade (edible), they do not qualify under the restrictions. I won't be able to buy them from the DIY shops, but I will be able to buy them straight off the manufacturer website or secondary distributors.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

1 cu ft freezer $116 shipped

4 liters of nic - about $200 shipped

Bottles, maybe another $75? shipped

See my blog post for list of nic sellers and links to glass bottles

 

[ShowMeTwice]

Is a remote control a tobacco product becuase it has an up and a down button?

I just checked the replacement remote control I received earlier today. I am now very concerned about the future. How did they sneak this into legislation?

 

[BillW50]

That is not a solution because with all the requirements it will end up costing you way more money in both hard money and time.

A vaping co-op?

 

[BillW50]

Is a remote control a tobacco product becuase it has an up and a down button?

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

A vaping co-op?

Nope. Still need to register as a business and a tobacco reseller and show sales data. US wholesalers aren't interested in dealing with co-ops of end-users anyhow. That doesn't sit well with their real reseller customers.

 

[lostbladder]

Nope. Still need to register as a business and a tobacco reseller and show sales data. US wholesalers aren't interested in dealing with co-ops of end-users anyhow. That doesn't sit well with their real reseller customers.

You think I could go to local vape stores and ask if they can order it and resell it to me? Surely there will be a market for resale DIY stuff now. Probably be marked up like hell though.

I was actually thinking of asking if they would be able to do that back when my state banned flavors. Figured it was a decent loophole to exploit.

 

[NCC]

1 cu ft freezer $116 shipped

4 liters of nic - about $200 shipped

Bottles, maybe another $75? shipped

See my blog post for list of nic sellers and links to glass bottles

Might want to figure into the expense: 150 kWh annually, and possible replacement (they don't last forever).

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

Might want to figure into the expense: 150 kWh annually, and possible replacement (they don't last forever).

But I'm talking about initial investment.

Currently, I keep my nic in the freezer of an old, extra fridge I have that's from about the late 80s or early 90s. The cost to run it is about $10 per month.

I know this becuase I only started using it again when I started hording nic, and that's how much my electric bill increased, $10 per month.

I guarantee you that 1 cu ft freezer will cost less to run.

However, my main point was not about how cheap it is to store nic, but how cheap it is to store nic as opposed to trying to play games with state and local governments (and their alphabet goon squads) by pretending you are a tobacco reseller when in fact you are just an end user. If you want to talk about long term costs, let's talk about how much lawyers cost, never mind tobacco lawyers. And we don't even have to talk about the time and anxiety expense to come to the conclusion that the choice is clear: get a freezer and stock up and sleep well.

If a person is going to go through all the time, expense and inevitable legal trouble that comes with setting themself up as a fake tobacco reseller,one would be better just off buying a small freezer and nic while they still can.

 

[UncLeJunkLe]

You think I could go to local vape stores and ask if they can order it and resell it to me? Surely there will be a market for resale DIY stuff now. Probably be marked up like hell though.

I was actually thinking of asking if they would be able to do that back when my state banned flavors. Figured it was a decent loophole to exploit.

You have to ask them. Some might do it, some won't. But considering that the REAL profit in a vape shop is in consumables, especially juice, and I see little reason for a vape shop to go through the expense that comes along with storing nic base inventory. Let's face if MOST vapers are not into DIY. they are perfectly happy to buy premade eliquid. Cigarettes are easy, buy, light-up, smoke, buy again.