Walmart bans e-cigarettes, unofficially marking them mainstream "canceled"
Aisle 6 is going cold turkey... Walmart officially shut down e-cigarette sales just before the weekend as 8 people have died in connection with using them. The situation for vaping pioneers like Juul has gone from bad to badder to worst since the FDA declared teen vaping an "epidemic" in 2018 — Here's how things accelerated in just the last 3 months:
- June 25th: San Francisco bans e-cigarettes, saying they get teens hooked to nicotine.
- September 4th: Michigan becomes the 1st state to ban flavored e-cigarettes because the sound more like Starbursts.
- September 11th: President Trump says he plans to ban flavored e-cigs.
- September 18th: China removes Juul vaping products from online stores just days after they launched across the Great Wall.
- September 19th: India kicks China's moves up a notch and bans all e-cigs.
- September 20th: Walmart makes its moves.
When a unicorn falls, the rider goes down with it... Juul charged vaporized tobacco into the mainstream with its iPod-looking devices, reaching a $38B private valuation late last year. But publicly traded Altria is the old school Marlboro-owning cigarette-maker that splurged $12.5B for 35% of Juul's private shares. We don't know exactly what's happened to Juul's stock (since it's private), but Altria's is down 35% since vape-lash began.
Mission statements can be completely wrong... "Improve the lives of the world's one billion adult smokers by eliminating cigarettes." That's Juul's mission statement (they write it in all-caps), which could be completely wrong in 2 big ways:
- Underage kids are Juuling, too (1 in 5 US high schoolers vape).
- It's not totally clear vaping is healthier than smoking.