Vaping Shop Opens Amid Controversy Over Liquid Nicotine
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Jordan Fouts-
Theresa Landrum George smoked a pack a day for decades before she tried “vaping” at a shop in Fort Wayne. She was soon hooked on what she considers a safer alternative to cigarettes – and for some, even a stepping stone to quitting – and opened her own store in Warsaw about six months later. Vape Street Vape Shop, 2302 E. Center St., Warsaw, offers liquid nicotine and atomizers for vaping, which delivers nicotine by vaporizing the liquid to be inhaled through a “pen.” It’s a trend she’s watched grow in the area in the past few months; her own store comes on the heels of Village Vapors in Winona Lake. “In Fort Wayne, in the last three months there has been three more (shops) open and I have heard of a few others that will open there as well,” she said. “It is popular with the younger crowd (19 to 25), which I think most were smokers and are now ‘vapers,’ but I believe there is an audience that has not been introduced to vaping as a way to substitute smoking with a ‘safer’ way of enjoying smoking and getting the nicotine addiction satisfied, and that is my age group. We are the ones who really want to quit smoking but we enjoy the act of it, not the harm of it, and vaping gives us exactly that.” She educates her customers on how to use the equipment, safely store and handle the liquid nicotine, called e-liquid, and how to wean themselves off the habit by gradually lowering the dose while still being able to go through the motions. She stressed that she only markets vaping supplies to current smokers over age 18 and doesn’t encourage anyone to begin vaping if they don’t already smoke. “No one is promoting vaping as a ‘safe’ act, but more a safer means of getting what a smoker craves most, nicotine and the habit of the motion of smoking,” she said. “They start with usually an 18mg and go down to as low as 0mg nicotine but still have the ‘physical’ habit of smoking. I went from an 18mg to now vaping a 6mg nicotine level and you cannot do that with cigarettes.” She was excited to find a way to stop smoking after so long and said she wanted to help others quit too. She also considers vaping, which uses a tank and a more powerful battery, a better alternative to electronic cigarettes. “I had tried so many other methods (patches, Chantix, cold turkey, electronic cigarettes) and nothing worked until I found vaping,” she said. “I smoked a pack a day for 31 years and from day one of starting to vape, I have not smoked a cigarette for five months. I have heard and seen so many of these stories over and over again. I feel better, I breath better, I taste better and my sense of smell has returned... The ability to wean yourself off a highly addictive poison alone is a huge benefit that cigarettes cannot allow you to do.” Vaping is relatively new and only beginning to come under FDA scrutiny, but Landrum George said she doesn’t think the side effects of vaping or the unknowns surrounding it, such as possible longterm effects, are worse than smoking cigarettes. She also noted the liquid used in vaping contains only four chemicals – propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine and food flavoring – compared to more than 4,000 chemicals in cigarettes. A vaping also pen doesn’t contain tobacco and doesn’t burn. “The chemicals found in a vaping device are chemicals we eat or breath already (and) most of the side effects (of starting) are from switching to a vapor vs. smoke in your body and your body’s reaction to quitting smoking. Most new vapers will experience throat irritation, coughing, stomach irritation and dehydration. Most of these effects diminish after a few weeks of switching from smoking to vaping,” she said. “Vaping costs about $1 to $1.50 per day depending on how often you vape, but it beats the cost of regular cigarettes and the electronic cigarettes sold in convenience stores... The reason smokers are not content with an electronic cigarette is the taste, cost, the power of a ‘hit’ does not mimic a cigarette – a vaping pen solves all those issues.” She also wants to educate customers on emerging industry regulations and concern over liquid nicotine, which the National Poison Data System attributes with 1,351 calls to poison control centers last year and an expected doubling of that this year, according to a March 23 New York Times article. She said fear raised over nicotine poisoning is a misportrayal and is causing a bad reputation for the vaping industry, which she said will only allow big tobacco companies more power in the industry at large. The nicotine levels found in e-liquids don’t exceed 36mg, she said, noting it’s fairly strong but that most bottles are no larger than 30ml. “If a small child would ingest the entire bottle it would most likely make them very ill, but would probably never result in death – and no deaths have been reported of a child dying from nicotine poison. The responsibility must be with the parents to keep their e-liquid out of the reach of children,” she said. “All bottles are labeled with that warning, ‘keep out of reach of children and small pets,’ some even add the soon-to-be requirement of the FDA to label bottles with nicotine as a poison.” FDA regulations proposed in April would require manufacturers to register all their products with the agency and only market new products after review. They would also need to provide scientific evidence before making any claims of risk reduction with their products, and would no longer be allowed to give out free samples. “The FDA regulation is welcomed by most in the Industry, but if the FDA totally begins to regulate the product and makes it extremely hard for the small business to sell and market vaping to smokers, it may keep a lot of people smoking when they might have quit smoking with vaping,” she remarked. Landrum George also said she is collecting data on customers, such as demographics and success or failure in quitting smoking, in order to contribute to the growing body of study on vaping. “Kosciusko County alone has 27 percent of its population that smoke, and I am sure most would love to quit smoking and move to a less harmful method of smoking,” she said. Vape Street is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. The shop is online at www.vapestvapes.com and on Facebook.
