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NY Attorney General Cracks Down on Vape Retailers Violating Local Rules

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, has issued 47 cease and desist letters to vape retailers who are violating local e-cig regulations, such as selling banned flavours or ignoring tobacco age limits.

Diane Caruana

December 21, 2020

A total of 108 retailers were investigated and 47 of them were violating the law, some in more ways than one

James’s office has investigated a total of 108 retailers, as a result of which it found that 47 of them were violating the law, some in more ways than one. The violators found across the state in Albany, Buffalo, Elmira, Hamilton, Nassau, Rochester, Saratoga County, Syracuse, Warren County, Watertown, and the New York City area, were ordered to immediately stop selling vaping products.

“New York banned flavored vaping products and raised the age to buy tobacco products because teens were getting addicted to the dangerous habit of smoking,” said James. “These businesses skirted the law, jeopardizing the health of young New Yorkers. We will remain vigilant in holding anyone accountable who endangers our children by circumventing our laws.”

In New York, it is illegal to sell nicotine products to anyone younger than 21, sales of flavoured nicotine products has been banned as of last May and it is also forbidden to sell vaping products online and through mail order to New York consumers.

Many vape retailers moving to Native American Reservations

Meanwhile, to escape these regulations, other New York vape shops are moving to Native American Reservations where members of the tribe can conduct business on sovereign land, without the New York State legislations, including the local flavour ban, applying.

In fact, there are plenty of rumors that several vape shop owners around the Buffalo and Niagara Falls area, revealed off-the-record that rivals had packed up and moved onto neighboring native land. “The best way to describe it,” said a vape business owner who insisted on remaining anonymous, “is that a manufacturer in New York State helped a Native American set up a new business to sell [the manufacturer’s] flavored e-liquid on sovereign land.”

It was just a matter of time

Andrew Osborne, the vice president of the New York Vapor Association, said that this was less a question of whether it would happen, and more of when. “The reservations are certainly part of that gray market and will keep being so,” Osborne told Filter.

“In the immediate days after the flavour ban, people were either calling or coming to my store, and telling me that reservations still had flavors available,” continued. “If I didn’t have a business partner, I’d have more seriously considered moving to the reservation myself somehow.”

Read Further: Niagara Frontier Publications