It is spring 2025, and as the weather heats up so have the efforts of the tobacco industry and vape prohibitionists. The popular flavors that the vast majority of adult vapor consumers prefer are in serious danger of being banned. 

Opponents of vaping have taken a three pronged approach to denying adult nicotine consumers access to smoke and ash free alternatives to combustible cigarettes. 

Visit the VTA or contact your representative today. 

HB 577: Georgians Foot the Bill for Enforcing FDA Directives

Youth vaping has dropped to 10-year lows. Every indicator is that the "teen vaping epidemic" is in the rearview mirror and it is time to protect adult access to superior nicotine alternatives. Instead, Georgia lawmakers have proposed HB 577. It pushes the state to adopt the FDA regulation of vaping products, which has been judged illegal by critics and whose very future is being discussed by the Supreme Court as we speak.

Why would lawmakers want to impose the worst excesses of federal regulatory capture upon their constituents? Because the FDA's marketing approval just happened to determine that only a half dozen obsolete e-cigarettes manufactured by the tobacco industry are fit for sale in the US. All other products would be barred. 

In a state that prides itself on personal freedom, this is an affront that cannot stand. Studies have shown that cigarette sales increase in areas with flavor bans. The lives of you and your neighbors are being risked and harmed to benefit lobbyists for the tobacco industry, Big Tobacco, and New York-based public interest groups funded by nicotine abstinence zealots like Michael Bloomberg.

His Orwellian-named Truth Initiative promotes a world where "regulations" and "guardrails" mean consumer choice exists at the mercy of well-funded special interest groups. 

HB 605: 

This strange bit of legislation in theory supports the Georgia Quit Line. The issue is that this line promotes the old line of thinking that conflates vaping as equivalent to smoking and an issue to be eradicated, rather than as a superior alternative as more science and freedom oriented health systems in the UK and Sweden have done.

HB 84: A Vape Tax Increase Couched in a Moral Panic

This bill proposes raising the tax on consumer vapor products from 7% to 15% of the wholesale cost. Despite lofty claims of funding healthcare with the windfalls, this tax is more likely to drive adult nicotine consumers back onto combustible cigarettes. The New England Journal of Medicine found vaping to be far more effective than nicotine replacement therapy, but this information has been entirely ignored. We have been fortunate to live in an era where smoking rates have plunged. That adult consumers continue vape

Georgia Vape Ban 2024 RECAP

The punitive laws of 2024 are not the first effort to strip adult nicotine consumers of access to previously legal products, and alternatives to cigarettes. 

HB 1260 is the Georgia PMTA Registry Law.  It has been introduced and assigned to the House Committee on Regulated Industries. Click here or on the call-to-action banner above to visit CASAA and use their customizable email template to make your voice heard.

• CASAA has learned that HB 1260 is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee on
  Thursday, March 14, 2024
  2:00 PM
• Take Action and Call Committee Members TODAY!
  (Talking points are provided below)

Bill Cowsert – (404) 463-1366
Carden Summers – (404) 656-6922
John F. Kennedy – (404) 656-6578
John Albers – (404) 463-8055
Tonya Anderson – (404) 463-2598
Matt Brass – (404) 656-0057
Gloria Butler – (404) 656-0075
Greg Dolezal – (404) 656-0040
Frank Ginn – (404) 656-9222
Steve Gooch – (404) 656-9221
Ed Harbison – (404) 656-0074
David Lucas – (404) 656-0150
Michael ‘Doc’ Rhett – (404) 656-0054

Please also take a minute to send an email to your lawmakers urging them to oppose HB 1260!

Georgia Vape Registry

Under the Georgia PMTA Registry Bill, all vape products released after 2016 will be barred. This means every popular disposable will be gone, leaving Vuse, Juul and MyBlu with a virtual monopoly.

A recent FDA study showed that flavor bans increase cigarette sales. This law flies in the face of that science and would leave less popular artificial-tobacco flavors as the only option.

Youth vaping rates have fallen every year since 2019 yet these laws represent the most aggressive attempt yet to kill the independent vape industry and deny adult vapers access to their preferred products and flavors. 

What if Georgia HF 1260 Passes?

If enacted, Georgia HB 1260 law would effectively make the state of Georgia an enforcement arm of the Food and Drug Administration empowering state authorities to enforce the disastrous federal anti-vaping regulations.

Only a few obsolete nicotine vaping products have received full PMTA approval from the FDA and the entire process is under fire. While the most popular Big Tobacco manufactured products and Juul have also not received approval, they would be permitted due to the wording of the law. More cost-effective disposable vapes, still sold in the flavors that adult vapers prefer, would be barred.

This law would put independent vape shops out of business, force convenience stores to sell expensive and lower margin tobacco flavored products, put hundreds of workers out of jobs, and force thousands of adult vapers to choose between less-appealing artificial tobacco flavored pods and combustible cigarettes. Both being manufactured by the tobacco industry.

CRITICISMS OF PMTA REGISTRY BILLS

1. Structured so that the tobacco industry’s vape products remain on market, despite also not having received PMTA authorization, while barring their less expensive competition.
2. Serves as a flavor ban, denying adult vapers the flavors they prefer. An FDA funded study found cigarette sales increase in areas with flavor bans.
3. Bars easy to use disposable vapes, which are ideal for initiates and not coincidentally compete head-to-head with prefilled pod kits made by Big Tobacco.
4. Harms small businesses, vape shops and convenience stores, by removing high-volume and profitable products while leaving lower margin tobacco industry vapes on shelves.
5. Contrary to spirit of consumer choice and entrepreneurship, barring products released after 2016.

GEORGIANS Will PAY FOR BIG TOBACCO MONOPOLY

The price difference between independent vape industry products and those made by Big Tobacco is staggering. It costs over $200 to vape 30ml of e-liquid from a Vuse Alto. For Juul users, that cost increases to nearly $350 per 30ml.

A Lost Mary MT15000 Turbo costs a $63 to vape the same amount of e-liquid. The difference for the average user can equal a car lease or student loan payment. 

This table does not even account for the fact that a legally enforced monopoly will provide the tobacco industry with the freedom to raise prices further. What is the worst that can happen? Profitable cigarettes sold in place of vapes?

Consumer freedom, choice, and your pocketbook will take a huge hit if the Georgia Vape Sales Ban is to pass.