
San Francisco voted Tuesday to ban the sale of e-cigarettes that do not have FDA approval, a legislative first for a major U.S. city. The FDA specification is effectively moot, observes The Verge, as no e-cigarettes (which are touted as tobacco cigarette alternatives) currently bear FDA approval.
Though pending executive signature, Mayor London Breed’s public statements voicing concern over the rise of teen vaping suggest she will put the bill into law. (Beverly Hills votedto ban the sale of cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and e-cigarettes earlier this month, leaving hotels as the only legal sellers of cigarettes in the city.) San Francisco is also the site of the country’s leading e-cigarette producer, Juul Labs.
Juul spoke out against the legislation, arguing that criminalizing e-cigarettes would “create a thriving black market” and encourage a return to “deadly cigarettes,” as reported by the Washington Post. Cigarette sales are still legal in San Francisco.
City leaders, for their part, remain unfazed by Juul’s admonitions and have even been openly hostile toward the company. As board of supervisors member Shamann Walton told the New York Times, “I would not lose any sleep at all if Juul left. I would help them pack up.”
Sales of Juul products jumped more than 600 percent within one year, says a 2018 letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing an increase of 2.2 million products sold in 2016 to 16.2 million sold in 2017. In December, the privately held company, then valued at $38 billion, sold 35 percent of its stake to Marlboro manufacturer Altria, allegedly seeking overseas investment to boot. In June, Juul bought a 29-floor skyscraper at 123 Mission Street in a record-breaking deal, effectively making Juul the only San Francisco company not in real estate to make such a massive real estate purchase to date. The building is estimated at $400 million. Juul told Business Insider a month earlier that its staff had ballooned from 200 to 2,000 employees within the past year. Most of Juul’s employees work in San Francisco. …