Vaping is not the same everywhere. Vapers in the United Kingdom currently enjoy the backing of the government while vapers in the United States are living under the threat of a ban on flavored e-liquids at the federal level. This proposed countrywide ban would include all flavors except for tobacco.
The difference in views on vaping between the US and the UK is startling but not as bad as in other places, such as India. Earlier this year, India announced a ban on all vaping products. Strangely, India’s vaping ban says nothing about other tobacco products, which are far more popular in the country than vaping products like e-cigarettes. While you might assume cigarettes are the tobacco product of choice in India, sundried tobacco wrapped in leaves, which is known as beedi, is smoked more than conventional cigarettes. Back to the point, while the US is moving towards a ban on flavored vaping products, it could still be worse. There could be a complete ban on vaping products like there is in India.
India isn’t actually the only place with heavy restrictions on vaping products. There’s also Thailand, Lebanon, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Phillippines to name a few others.
Across the US, vapers are finding themselves facing serious pushback from government regulators, and not just on a federal level but a state level as well. In Washington state, flavored vape products are now banned. In Massachusetts as well.
On the other side of the Atlantic in the UK, vapers are receiving government backing. The UK government’s inclination to implement science-based policies has resulted in vaping being endorsed for smokers. The UK government mandated that Public Health England, part of their public healthcare system, investigate e-cigs by conducting an e-cigarette evidence review. After doing so, PHE found that e-cigs are less harmful than cigarettes so the government took the position of endorsing the use of e-cigs for smokers. As a result, there are various government-backed programs available to smokers, like a voucher program that essentially gives free vape kits to smokers in the hopes that it will help them switch to vaping. At the least, the idea is that it constitutes harm reduction as the government currently believes e-cigs to be safer than conventional cigs.
Perhaps due to the UK’s stance on vaping, there are no shortage of vape shops in the UK, both on the streets and on the web. As many know, competition among retailers can have the benefit to consumers of driving down the costs as retailers compete with one another to have the lowest prices. Access to cheap vape juice with free shipping is just one of the many benefits that vapers in the UK enjoy in the currently pro-vaping atmosphere in which they reside. Some countries, by contrast, have comparatively high retail costs for simple vaping products such as e-juice, Australia being one such example.
In Australia, vapers are unable to buy nicotine vape juice locally and are forced to go online searching for retailers that ship to their country. Add to this the fact that Australia is an island and that these products are being imported from overseas and the cost goes up further. Between the various factors in play, Australian vapers find themselves among the worst off as far as retail prices on vaping products are concerned.
If you live in the UK and you vape, try not to take it for granted. Vapers elsewhere in the world aren’t all quite as fortunate. In some countries, vapers can be subjected to fines or incarceration, or both. Compare this to free voucher kits, cheap e-liquids, free shipping, widespread access to different flavors, and the support of the government and you can see just how good you have it.
For US vapers, there’s a possible ban on flavored e-liquids on the horizon. The FDA is supposed to outline a plan in just a matter of weeks that will remove flavored e-liquids from the market, according to health and human services secretary Alex Azar. Not surprisingly, the threat of an impending ban on flavored e-liquids has led some vapers to jump into action and begin stockpiling flavored e-liquids in order to continue vaping the flavors that they enjoy with what will hopefully be no interruption.
