BY LAUREN A. WILLIAMS / STAFF WRITER
Vaping laws around Orange County:
-Buena Park, Garden Grove and Laguna Niguel have passed
laws banning vaping in public places where California law bans tobacco smoking.
Laguna Niguel also prohibits e-cigarette lounges because they are not listed in
the city's zoning code.
-Mission Viejo and Seal Beach have interpreted existing
city laws banning tobacco smoking in parks to include e-cigarettes.
-Costa Mesa is banning vaping in public facilities and
parks.
-San Clemente officials considered a ban on vaping in
public places but decided to wait to learn more about whether secondhand vapor
is as dangerous as secondhand smoke.
-The OC Fair prohibits e-cigarettes in the
amphitheater, grandstand and bleacher seating areas.
Sources: City staff, municipal code and American Nonsmokers'
Rights Foundation
– Jordan Graham
Randy Freer is all in on the vaping business, even if he
worries that pending laws and regulations could make him go bust.
Freer’s construction career dried up during the housing
crisis, and he became an entrepreneur. In spring 2013 he launched P.O.E.T., a
boutique Seal Beach-based manufacturer of e-liquid, or “juice” as it’s called –
the stuff loaded into vaping devices to create an inhalable vapor that
simulates cigarette smoke.
Freer sees himself as an artisan. Creating new flavors
of vaping liquid, “electronic nectar” as he calls it, is akin to crafting
a high-end alcoholic beverage layered with differ-ent tastes. “It’s almost like
a fine whiskey or a fine wine,” he said. “You can start to pick the layers
apart in the flavor profile.”
Freer is far from alone in his enthusiasm. As vaping has
caught on, it has attracted legions of aficionados here – not only the ones who
inhale the stuff but also entrepreneurs staking their claim to a burgeoning
industry. Orange County has become a vaping hub – home to 15 percent to 20
percent of e-liquid manufacturers in the U.S., by one estimate.
Health concerns
Not everyone, however, is as enamored of vaping as are Freer
and his peers in the business. The growing distribution of an essentially
unregulated product has drawn the attention of lawmakers, regulatory agencies,
city officials and the medical establishment.
And their scrutiny has intensified with the appearance of
studies showing that the chemicals contained in the liquid inhaled by vapers
may have serious health consequences.
One study by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed
that “the tobacco solution used in e-cigarettes contains a toxic chemical found
in antifreeze and several cancer-causing chemicals,” according tocancer.net, the website of the American Society
of Clinical Oncology.
In response to these concerns, some cities in Orange County
have begun to impose restrictions on vaping.
The state Legislature is pushing to classify – and perhaps
tax – vaping products as tobacco. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has
drafted regulations that would require testing every strength of each flavor a
manufacturer offers.
Under this rule, 80 variations of Freer’s products would
need costly laboratory analysis that he says his small business can’t afford.
Freer, along with many other vaping juice manufacturers, worries he might be
forced out of the state – or out of business entirely – because of such
regulations.
“If the FDA regs roll the way they’re proposed, I will find
a new industry,” Freer said.
Austin Hopper, who has worked at three big e-liquid
companies in Orange County, says proposed state legislation is too stringent.
Lumping vaping liquids in with traditional tobacco products will only damage an
industry that could help people quit smoking cigarettes, he warned.
“Being classified as tobacco is a stigma we don’t need,”
Hopper said. “It is killing an industry that is saving people.”
Some researchers believe the opposite: that vaping may lead
people to cigarettes.
“The FDA’s mandate is to protect Americans from
tobacco-related disease and death in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace,”
Michael Felberbaum, a press officer with the agency, wrote in response to an
emailed question about its pending new e-cigarette regulations.
“Under the proposed rule, all newly deemed tobacco products
would require market authorization” from the agency, Felberbaum noted. He added
that the FDA is sympathetic to the concerns of small businesses and is
proposing to stagger the compliance dates.
O.C.’s emerging
“vapreneurs”
Many of the biggest names in the vaping industry are
headquartered in Orange County, most of them led by young entrepreneurs.
“This is our Silicon Valley of vaping – of e-liquids
certainly,” said Norm Bour, the founder of VapeMentors, a Newport Beach-based
consultancy for what he calls “vapreneurs.”
Some e-liquid manufacturers point to the intersection
of a hip emerging industry and the area’s status as a hub for drug and alcohol
recovery services as the driving force behind vaping’s big foothold in
Orange County.
Stores selling starter kits, e-liquid and the devices that
turn it into vapor also have proliferated in Orange County with the popularity
of vaping.
Data provided by Yelp show 238 Vape shops across Orange
County opened and registered with the site over the past decade, most of them
concentrated in the northern part of the county. Anaheim spawned the most, with
35 opening and listing on Yelp.
In 1963, the first patent for an e-cigarette was filed, but
it would be four decades before a pharmacist in China developed a more
sophisticated version of the e-cigarette. In the mid-2000s, e-cigarettes came
to the U.S., and by 2009 their popularity had boomed.
By 2014, vaping had mushroomed into a $2.5 billion
industry. This year the e-cigarette market is on track to grow to $3.5 billion,
said Greg Conley, president of the New Jersey-based American Vaping
Association. Most of the people benefiting from this exploding industry
are the owners of small operations – shops employing a handful of workers.
“This is really a small business revolution,” Conley said.
‘Wild West’ of vaping
When e-cigarettes first caught on, there was no body of research
measuring their health effects, and government officials were caught off guard
by the need to classify, tax and regulate them. Business owners abounded, and
the quality of the e-liquid they produced varied widely.
“It was a little bit of the Wild West when this industry
started,” said Doug Hughes, a manufacturer and retailer of vaping products who
is the co-president of the Southern California chapter of the Smoke-Free
Alternatives Trade Association.
But the industry is no longer a free-for-all.
Several cities across Orange County are changing their laws
to ban e-cigarette consumption in parks and public places. Under the
regulations being prepared, the FDA is poised to crack down on free giveaways,
require health warning labels, and generally treat e-cigarettes and vaping
products much like traditional cigarettes.
Since the early days of vaping, academic studies monitoring
its effects have appeared almost weekly. Some show more dire findings; others
more benign.
One study released late last month by Public Health England,
a UK government agency, found that most of the chemicals that cause
smoking-related diseases are absent in vaping and that those that are in the
vapor pose less of a risk.
Earlier this year, however, the California Department
of Public Health determined that heated e-liquid delivers ultrafine particles
that canbecome trapped in the lungs.
More ominously, a study by the New England Journal of
Medicine published in January found the lifetime cancer risk from formaldehyde
inhalation was significantly higher for long-term vapers than for cigarette
smokers.
And yet another study published last month by JAMA
Pediatrics found that young people who Vape are more likely to start smoking
cigarettes.
“As an organization we are very concerned in having another
generation addicted to nicotine,” said Cynthia Hallett, executive director of
Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
Vape business owners say they are concerned, too.
Freer launched the Vape Free Youth campaign and a set of
standards for those in the industry to follow. The Smoke-Free Alternatives
group is pushing Age to Vape, an effort asking businesses to hang signs in
their stores showing their commitment to keep vaping products out of the hands
of children.
“These products are for adults, sold by adults, and we want
to keep these out of the hands of minors,” said Cynthia Cabrera, the executive
director of the national Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association.
High-tech production
In preparation for stiff regulations, many manufacturers
started about a year ago to move away from amateur methods and establish
high-tech labs. Hughes estimated 10 percent of manufacturers don’t have
high-quality labs.
Jeffrey Nelson left a job at a pharmaceutical company to
join Cosmic Fog Vapors, a Costa Mesa-based maker of e-liquid, to prepare its
facilities for a state-of-the-art lab. And he brought his expertise on FDA
regulations with him.
“I realized this is not just a trend among a generation,”
Nelson said of his decision. “This is a cultural shift.”
For Hopper, who has worked at three big-name e-liquid makers
and recently launched his own line, Revol, in Orange County, some regulation is
welcome.
“We need to be made in a lab,” Hopper said of the products.
“We need regulations. We need a nomenclature that’s not geared toward
children.”
Stuart Christensen of Laguna Beach said if regulations sent
the cost of e-liquid skyrocketing he would stop buying it.
“I would probably try to start making my own,” he said.
Freer worries others will return to smoking cigarettes. And
he said the extra regulations would push out the small businesses that have
propelled the industry.
At that point, “the only kind of money that can do it is big
tobacco and pharm,” Freer said. “This is small business, middle America
latching onto brand new technology that really is a viable technology. We’re
kind of the new electric car.”
Staff writer Jordan Graham contributed to this report.
Contact the writer: lwilliams@ocregister.com orjgraham@ocregister.com
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