The unrelenting assault on vaping is taking a toll
Smokers find it harder to get e-cigarettes, which can save lives.
Kim “Skip” Murray smoked for 46 years. “I tried to quit so many times that I quit trying to quit,” she says. Only after her son, Tom, a former smoker who had suffered a heart attack, gave her an e-cigarette did she break her two-pack-a-day habit. Murray now owns a vape shop in Brainerd, MN, where she helps smokers give up combustible cigarettes for vapes, which are safer than smoking.
“My mom died from smoking. My uncle died from smoking. My grandparents died from smoking. I hate smoking,” she tells me. “Being involved with this technology has been a privilege.”
It is no longer: Her vape shop, Lakes Vape and Rec Supply, will close at the end of the year. Sales have fallen by more than half for a number of reasons, including campaigns against vaping that spread unwarranted fears, Covid-mandated shutdowns and FDA bans on vaping products.
Murray is not alone. Surveys by the Vapor Technology Association, a trade group, indicate that about one in four independent vape shops in the U.S. — perhaps as many as 3,500 — have closed since 2018. The vaping industry has lost 32,400 jobs and its unit sales are down by about 11.6 percent, the group says.
