The House and Senate passed a large-scale spending bill on Monday that includes a provision to restrict how electronic cigarettes can be sold online and shipped—and it could have an impact on the marijuana industry, too.
The text of the proposal uses an expansive definition of what qualifies as an “electronic nicotine delivery system” that seems to include products that don’t even contain nicotine.
The term “means any electronic device that, through an aerosolized solution, delivers nicotine, flavor, or any other substance to the user inhaling from the device,” the legislation states (with italicized emphasis added).
It’s that last component that could be more broadly interpreted to prevent cannabis vaporizers from being purchased online and mailed by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Marijuana and its components such as THC and CBD presumably constitute “other substances,” even if they are not explicitly mentioned in the legislation."
The legislation also mandates that an adult over 21 present his or her ID to the courier upon delivery and requires online retailers to comply with rigorous requirements such as registering with the U.S. attorney general, maintaining certain records for five years and presenting state tax administrators with lists of transactions with customers in their jurisdictions, according to Vaping360.
Under the bill, USPS will be required to “promulgate regulations to clarify the applicability of the prohibition on mailing of cigarettes…to electronic nicotine delivery systems” within 120 days.
Is this gonna be like the flavored vape ban? Because from my understanding you cannot legally purchase flavored disposable vapes, but I am getting them with no issues.
Seems like this only applies to USPS which sucks for people mailing test samples around the country (since most of the other carriers are a bit, unfriendly on occasion).
Usually I’m buying in bigger quantities and things are coming some kind of freight. No real reason to say this is what is being shipped - especially since it does not have nicotine in it and these proposed changes are to align with cigarettes.
I’ll still be asking for freight and courier service. Maybe it will make it nicer for local dealers? Or perhaps it will mean more FedEx accounts across the country?
For me - those requirements seem normal. This is a medical delivery device (that’s how the FDA has been treating it for nicotine and for all other drugs that are not Schedule I) and I expect that more regulations regarding combination drugs (medical device + drug product) will keep coming down the pipe.
Taxes for sales should already be being kept - if you were selling a nicotine product, you’d have to also include any extra excise taxes and things and maintain those records. But this isn’t an nicotine product - I imagine to get through the bureaucracy that it will need to look like a waiver for non-nicotine products that might be used for nicotine products. Similar to how you can get a waiver for Ethanol if you are using it for a purpose that isn’t booze and is also on the state approved list.
And not all states require online sales to be tracked in this way - so its gonna be really local.
Yeah. Or even apply for a waiver and just state its not for nicotine. That’s going to be specific for their state on the state excise tax tracking. For the US AG stuff - there is a similar process.
Just like if you wanted to sell… chicken thighs. There’s some red tape, but its mostly paperwork cause you are already running a food processor.
This is, of course, assuming that you are already using a customer management system to keep some records. Already tracking inventory and sales. And already handling tax records for things that are being sold. Most places are already doing those things (just good business practices) so this is one more step to put a license on your wall.
The whole don’t mail cigarettes thing is a specific initiative to keep people from dodging taxes AND to prevent kids from being able to buy cigarettes without showing ID.
It appears that FedEx will no longer accept shipments of vape hardware, nicotine, etc. as of March per the Vaping360 article.
“As of March 1, 2021, FedEx will begin prohibiting electronic cigarettes, vaping liquids, and other vaping products in the FedEx global network,” a spokesperson for the company told Vaping360 last Friday.
Our primary source of revenue is from ecommerce nicotine vape products so here’s my understanding of what all this means for us.
We’re using UPS. We came up with a contingency plan with them months ago in case this passed and we’ve had their reps out here quite a bit to work some things out with us.
We have to program in every single state and local vape-related tax code into our website and possibly send checks or e-checks out all over the country for each order. Previously, this has depended on whether you live in a “destination” state, making it the duty of the purchaser to pay the proper state and local taxes on their purchase. Now, they can come after one company if the taxes don’t get paid instead of hundreds of individuals the company sold to. This being said, some states and localities have no special “vape tax” so it will be business as usual there except for the UPS shipping.
Since we can export all of this data from our sales system we’re going to work hard on automating the check-writing side of things.
We don’t expect the government to process exemptions very quickly. I could be wrong, but we plan on following these guidelines for our CBD products while we wait for those to be exempted.
The loose definition of what constitutes an “ENDS” product will continue bleeding over everywhere so we plan on focusing towards vape-specific products in general since we’ll have a specialized fulfillment solution.
Everything else is already being done - our inventory and sales systems are CFR compliant so that checks a lot of boxes. We’ve been using Bluecheck (or similar) to age verify for years now. We’ve only had one complaint of underage purchase which we IP and identity banned from further purchases (they stole a parents wallet and had their social #). I think the majority of online vape vendors are being responsible here, already - it’s been shown in a few survey studies that the biggest places teens buy vape products is at drug stores and convenience shops.
If anyone is interested in using us as a sales platform for their e-commerce vape products, pending further back-breaking news, I think we’ll figure out how to handle it. We’re waiting to see if they institute some sort of centralized system to make paying all these localities easier than writing a thousand checks per month.
We’re depending on getting one figured out in the next 90 days to stay in business so I’ll update you as we make progress. This on top of the PMTAs we’re in the process of getting filed with the FDA makes me feel like a few people don’t like us so much
The solution we’ll be looking at initially is going to be CSV based, we use 3dcart since we got grandfathered into some good rates with them but I’d imagine that all we’d need to change are the headers to make things work with Woocommerce.
If you read the bill, this doesn’t just affect online sales. It classifies all vapes and vape components(batteries empty carts etc) as nicotine products.
thanks for all the samples fam