The Death of the American Vape Shop

The tobacco harm reduction space in America has changed dramatically since 2007, when the first vaping device landed on U.S. shores and reshaped how adults consume nicotine.

What began under the shadow of Food and Drug Administration overreach - and continues to be stifled by it - grew into a movement powered by thousands of small business owners, millions of consumers and passionate advocates sharing their personal journeys of quitting smoking and helping others do the same.

But in America, small things that grow too large often end up crushed.

There are far too many parallels to Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman to dismiss. Unless there is a course correction, the American vape shop will become yet another casualty of bureaucratic hostility, corporate favoritism and moral panic masquerading as public health.

As in “Death of a Salesman,” vape shops once embodied the American dream. Over several years, these brightly lit stores appeared across the country - in strip malls, downtowns and neighborhoods from coast to coast. They weren’t arms of large tobacco companies. They were run by adults who had quit smoking, or by hobbyists who created their own flavors and turned their kitchen experiments into small businesses. They didn’t just sell products - they helped build them. From early cigalikes like blu (which the FDA initially tried to regulate as medical devices) to open systems, tanks and ultimately pod systems, vape shops led innovation.

Then, just like in Miller’s story, came the squeeze.

In 2009, after relentless pressure from anti-tobacco lawmakers like Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. The law gave the FDA sweeping authority to regulate all tobacco products and required that any new product - including every vapor product developed in vape shops - undergo a formal application process just to stay on the market. In 2016, the FDA officially “deemed” e-cigarettes and other nicotine alternatives as tobacco products, triggering that requirement industry-wide.

Around the same time, beginning in 2015, public health agencies - backed by government bureaucrats and a billionaire former mayor-turned-philanthropist - launched an aggressive crusade against e-cigarettes. Then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden insisted vaping was a ploy by the large tobacco companies and claimed it would lead youth to start smoking. His successor, Brian King, who until earlier this year was at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, declared that the CDC rejected any idea that replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes was beneficial and argued that vaping was causing kids to smoke.

Meanwhile, large tobacco companies like Reynolds and Altria first rolled out e-cigarettes in 2014 - to little fanfare from vape shop owners. A decade ago, most of the products on shelves were developed by U.S.-based manufacturers. While many components were sourced from China - just like most consumer electronics - the innovation itself was homegrown.

Then came JUUL. Its sleek, easy-to-use design changed everything.

Small manufacturers were forced to keep up, pivoting away from bulky, maintenance-heavy devices and toward compact pod systems. While government agencies and anti-tobacco groups decried the shift, JUUL was a genuine breakthrough in tobacco harm reduction. It also marked the beginning of the end for the independent vape shop.

JUUL’s investment deal with large tobacco companies revealed the truth: cigarettes were becoming obsolete. Tobacco companies saw the shift and adapted. But instead of being punished for it, they were protected. Their dream survived.

The same cannot be said for the independent market. In early 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order with a partial ban on flavored vape pods. JUUL had already removed most non-tobacco flavors by then, but the ban formalized the crackdown.

That same year, the FDA required all vapor product manufacturers to submit premarket tobacco product applications - even as COVID-19 shuttered businesses and created supply chain chaos. The applications were expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions, per product. Millions of products were submitted by the deadline and granted a temporary reprieve. Then in 2021, the FDA began issuing blanket denials - not to tobacco companies, but to the small, American-made flavored e-liquids that had helped so many adults quit smoking.

In November 2021, the FDA issued its first market authorization for an e-cigarette product - to R.J. Reynolds, the makers of Camel and Newport cigarettes.

This was the beginning of the end. Today, only 39 e-cigarette products are authorized for legal sale in the United States. Four companies hold those authorizations. Three are big tobacco companies. The fourth used to be one of them.

Vape shops weren’t just retail spaces. They were educational centers. They offered adult smokers information, guidance and an array of options tailored to individual needs. What helps someone quit Marlboros might not help someone trying to quit Virginia Slims.

Choice was critical. So was community.

As Willy Loman famously pleads to his boss in “Death of a Salesman,” “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.” Yet that is exactly what happened to America’s vape shop owners. Their innovation was harvested, their success exploited, and their contributions erased.

Their deaths have been quiet. Their storefronts faded away. Their role in helping more than 20 million American adults quit smoking has received no recognition.

Only silence.

Originally published at The Well News. Nothing in this is intended to influence the passage of legislation, and it does not necessarily represent the views of Tobacco Harm Reduction 101.