“I’m not an expert. I’m just a smoker who quit smoking after 41 years and started helping other people do the same.”
That is why Marc Slis, owner of 906 Vapor in Houghton, Mich. said he is speaking out on the Food and Drug Administration’s handling — or “mishandling,” in his opinion — of vaping regulations.
He is one of the many small business owners on the front lines of the debate between prohibition and risk mitigation on the issue of vaping, smoking, and tobacco use.
Amanda Wheeler is another. She owns a small, independent vaping business that began as a single 400-square-foot shop selling its homemade vaping fluids. Today, Jvapes E-Liquid has seven stores across Arizona, Colorado, and Oklahoma, as well as a manufacturing facility.
And, like Slis, she is a former smoker who used vaping to overcome her habit.
“My husband and I were both lifelong smokers — we both started in our teens — and over the years we had both tried everything to quit. We were never able to,” Wheeler said. ” I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma when I was nineteen and I had to do about a year of chemotherapy and radiation. I have clear memories of sitting outside waiting for my radiation appointment, smoking cigarettes, and the nurses coming by giving to give me pathetic looks like, ‘what are you doing?’ But I still smoked for ten more years after the cancer treatment.”
Michael Graham – InsideSources – 2022-05-12.