The ways in which the world’s governments have regulated the vaping industry have evolved rapidly over the years – and just when things appear to be more or less set in stone, everything changes again.
Nowhere has that been truer than in the United States. Currently the world’s biggest market for vaping products, the US has seen a sharp decline in the growth of its vaping industry as regulations have become stricter and stricter. Legal regulations in the US make it extremely difficult to start a new vaping brand there. Many would-be vaping entrepreneurs have decided not to bother and have chosen other industries instead.
That’s created an enormous opening for e-liquid companies here in the UK. We are the world’s second-biggest vaping market, and there are several good reasons why our nation is extremely likely to narrow the gap and become the world’s new biggest vaping market over the next year or two. Harsh vaping regulations in the US have changed everything about the global vaping industry. Meanwhile, our government’s attitude toward vaping has favoured the harm reduction aspect, and that has encouraged people to quit smoking and make the switch to vaping in massive numbers.
Very soon, the UK could be the world’s most important market for vaping. That means our nation’s e-liquid brands will gain new importance on the worldwide stage, and it also means that our nation will soon be recognised as a true world leader in harm reduction. Here’s why it could happen.
How US Vaping Regulations Have Impacted the World Vaping Industry
As mentioned above, the US is currently the world’s biggest market for vaping products. To understand why that’s likely to change, you must first understand how that nation regulates the vaping industry.
- To market a new vaping product, a company must first submit a costly application to the US Food & Drug Administration. An application may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to compile, and there is no guarantee that it’ll be accepted.
- The requirement for premarket applications didn’t fully take effect until September 2020, and the FDA is not processing applications quickly. At the time of writing, the FDA has received more than 318,000 premarket applications and has not processed any of them.
E-liquid companies can make vape juice in the US without going through the premarket application process if those products are intended only for export, but that’s not a very profitable way of doing business. So, until the FDA streamlines the application process, new e-liquids aren’t being legally released in the US. Meanwhile, UK e-liquid makers like V2 Cigs have continued to innovate and release new products. American vape juice brands are being left behind.
The UK Could Soon Become the World’s Leading E-Liquid Supplier
For the US e-liquid brands that did submit premarket applications for their products by the September 2020 deadline, the trials and tribulations were only just beginning. That’s because the FDA allowed e-liquids that were on the market already in 2016 – the year in which the FDA announced its vaping regulations – to remain on the market for another year after the September 2020 premarket application deadline as long as the makers of those e-liquids submitted their applications on time.
At the time of writing, the one-year grace period ends in less than three months – and the FDA hasn’t processed a single premarket application out of the more than 318,000 the agency has received. The FDA hasn’t announced an extension for the grace period, so it’s entirely possible that the makers of those 318,000 products will have to pull the products from the market in September while their premarket applications await processing.
Even if the grace period is extended, there is no way to know how many applications the FDA will ultimately approve – or even whether any applications will be approved at all. It’s unlikely that every application will be approved. Even in the best-case scenario, it’s likely that many products will end up being removed from an already shrinking market. That’s a bad thing for American vapers, and it affects us as well because much of our imported e-liquid comes from the US. UK-based e-liquid makers will have to pick up the slack.
Manufacturers of Vaping Hardware May Tailor Their Products for UK E-Liquids
US vaping regulations also affect the manufacturers of vaping hardware in China – and this is yet another case in which events are likely to work out in favour of the UK vape juice brands. The premarket application process in the US doesn’t just apply to e-liquids; it also applies to vaping hardware. A manufacturer of vaping products can’t legally sell its new devices and tanks in the US without first going through the application process.
Many of the manufacturers operate on extremely tight profit margins, and they may release many new products each year. It’s very cost prohibitive for those companies to compile premarket applications for each new product – and considering the slowness with which the FDA is processing applications, today’s new products will likely be obsolete by the time their applications are approved.
With that in mind, manufacturers are largely turning their attention to the UK instead. You can see that just by looking at the promotional websites for new vaping products; the devices pictured are almost always the UK/EU versions of those products rather than the American versions, which typically feature larger tanks.
Since the manufacturers of vaping products are now marketing those products primarily to UK vapers, it’s only logical that the manufacturers would do everything possible to ensure that their products are designed to suit the needs of the UK vaping community. Specifically, that’s going to include making optimisations to those devices to ensure that they deliver the best possible performance with the style of e-liquid – typically lower in vegetable glycerine and with slightly different flavour profiles – that’s popular here. Positioning our country’s e-liquids in the best possible light will only make UK e-liquid shine more brightly within the worldwide vaping community, further cementing the UK’s reputation as the world’s top vape juice producer.
