Ethan Apparies
Staff Writer
Over the course of the past few years vaping has become a major industry, boosting America’s economy. The article, Trump's vaping crackdown could help Juul by ending the decade's biggest small-business success story, written by Andrew Van Dam talks about how the government's crackdown on vaping is hurting small businesses and allowing Big Tobacco companies to monopolize the market. The article begins by explaining that the vaping industry today is primarily dominated by small independent vape shops. Dam explains these shops are good for local economy and beneficial to the communities they reside in through the taxes they generate.
Nonetheless, the Federal Government continues to move ahead on putting a ban, or significantly increasing regulations, on vape products. Dam goes on to explain that “a government ban on flavored vapes and increased regulation could wipe them (small, independent vape shops) out and leave an opening for Big Tobacco and big tech to dominate the fast-growing industry.” Essentially what Dam is saying is that these government regulations will extremely diminish the amount of businesses, especially small ones, in the vaping industry because government prices could make it infeasible for these small businesses to continue production. It will be too expensive for everyone aside from the major players like Juul, which will eventually allow them to form a monopoly as the smaller players in the industry will be gone. After Dam makes this point he compares vaping to the alcohol industry.
After prohibition ended and the twenty first amendment was passed, expensive regulations killed many small brewers in America and allowed for a few larger brewing companies to monopolize the market. Dam explains that “A few enormous corporations still sell six out of every seven U.S. beers, leaving about 7,447 craft brewers to split the remaining 14 percent of the market.” (Dam 2). Looking at history, it is too easy to envision a future in which the vaping industry, like the alcohol industry, will be a monopoly. A monopoly, in part, established by the government.
