San Francisco officially banned nicotine vaporizers this week, including the ubiquitous Juul.
San Francisco is now the first major U.S. city to outlaw the sale of Juuls, along with other e-cigarettes and vapes. According to a report by CBS News, local lawmakers voted to pass an ordinance banning the products on Tuesday, and now vaping enthusiasts are weary of other cities following suit.
Videos by PopCulture.com
The new law is thorough — if passed, not only will it prevent stores from carrying nicotine vaporizers of any kind, it will forbid online retailers to ship the products to the city either.
The ordinance will now go on to the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed. Elected just last year, Breed is a Democrat with a long history in local politics, and she is expected to sign the vape ban.
The new ordinance is especially surprising in San Francisco, where Juul Labs first began. Apparently, the city wants nothing to do with its hometown success story now that it has become a global phenomenon. Retailers will be given a six month period to remove all vaporizers from their shelves. After that, punishments for carrying the products could include jail time.
Nicotine vaporizers were initially created as a method to quit smoking, although more and more questions about their effectiveness and their own health effects have been raised. Unlike other nicotine alternatives, such as gum and topical patches, users tend to keep vaping at the same rate that they once smoked. In some cases, nicotine consumption even rises rather than reducing.
An even bigger concern to some is the rash of vaping among teenagers. San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton told CBS MoneyWatch that the ordinance was specifically meant to combat this issue.
“Middle school and high school students are becoming addicted to nicotine because of e-cigarettes, so we want to do everything we can to keep e-cigarettes out of the hands of young people until the FDA conducts the appropriate clinical trials and finds out how these should be marketed. We need to make sure we protect young people,” he said.
Firing back, a statement from Juul predicts that this ordinance will “drive former adult smokers who successfully switched to vapor products back to deadly cigarettes.” The company told CBS that the law will also “deny the opportunity to switch for current adult smokers, and create a thriving black market instead of addressing the actual causes of underage access and use.”
Last year, Juul reported $2 billion in revenue, with an estimated 72 percent share of the e-cigarette market. More than a third of the company is owned by Altria, a large tobacco company.
