Vape shop suing state over e-cigarette ban
A vape shop is suing the state of Michigan with the hope of stopping the state's ban on flavored e-cigarettes.
Mark Slis, the owner of 906 Vapor, spoke with FOX Business' Stuart Varney about why they filed the lawsuit.
"First and foremost, for the lives of my customers that are on the line that are using electronic cigarettes to quit smoking," Slis said Friday on "Varney & Co." "That's the first thing. The second thing is the lives of all the people around the state and the other states that have followed suit with this. And then, of course, my business as well."
Slis said the recent negative press surrounding vaping has driven his business' sales down.
"As of next week, we'll be forced out of business, and most of us into bankruptcy. Myself included."
While the ban is only on flavored e-cigarettes, Slis said about 90 percent of his business is selling those flavors.
"Flavors are the key to quitting smoking," Slis said. "And without the flavors, there's no hope for any of us to stay in business."
Gregg Smith, an early investor in the vaping company Juul, agrees with Slis that flavors are crucial to getting people off cigarettes.
"First off, you know I hate smoking," Smith told Varney on Friday. "I hate cigarette smoking. A lot of the decisions that are being made by some of these states are actually going to do the opposite. They're going to push smokers back into the black market, or they're going to push them onto combustible cigarettes, both of which are not going to be good."
Smith said the spate of recent mysterious lung illnesses the country has seen may be connected to black-market THC cartridges.
He believes the FDA must weigh two things when analyzing the impact of vaping on the market as a whole.
"One [is] creating a bonafide, off-ramp for combustible cigarette smokers -- giving them an off-ramp to get off of cigarettes to a product that, I believe, science and time will show is much safer for the users and has a much higher quit rate than any other pharmaceutical or nonpharmaceutical solution on the market today," Smith said. "And two, they have to weigh it against not creating an on-ramp for kids that are not users of nicotine to come onto the product."
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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel responded to the lawsuit, saying "We received the complaint late Wednesday and as with all litigation we will review with our clients before we determine our response."