Gov. Kate Brown on Friday ordered a six-month ban on sales of all flavored vaping products with nicotine or THC amid an escalating vaping-related lung illness epidemic.

It’s unclear exactly when the ban will start. The governor told state agencies to “immediately” pass emergency rules to ban the products.

“My first priority is to safeguard the health of all Oregonians,” Brown said in a statement announcing her executive order. “By keeping potentially unsafe products off of store shelves and out of the hands of Oregon’s children and youth, we prevent exposing more people to potentially dangerous chemical compounds.”

Sales of unflavored vaping products would continue. But if in the coming weeks or months investigators connect ingredients in those products to lung injuries, the state will have to immediately ban them, too, the governor’s order says.

The governor also asked for legislative proposals to permanently ban flavored vape products and generally strengthen e-cigarette regulation.

Brown wants the state to have more power to protect people when any product puts public health at risk, wants to force e-cigarette companies to disclose all ingredients and in general wants the state to have more authority to oversee vaping products.

Neither state nor federal officials know precisely what’s triggering the vaping-illness outbreak, although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said most victims reported using oils containing THC, the chemical in marijuana that induces a high. Some people reported using nicotine only, the CDC said.

More than 1,000 people in the country have been struck with lung illnesses connected to vaping and at least 18 have died. In Oregon, eight people have fallen ill and two have died. At least five of the Oregon victims had used marijuana products, health officials confirmed.

Oregon’s health care providers came out in force in support of the ban. Three major medical associations said in a statement that they had concerns for some time about flavored vaping products and their potential to hook young people on nicotine. Health care providers across the state “are united” on the temporary ban, the association said, particularly in light of the recent epidemic.

“Given the increasing vaping-related illnesses and deaths over the last several months, urgent action is critical,” said the statement, penned by the Oregon Medical Association, Oregon Nurses Association and the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.

Legacy Health, whose doctors treated an Oregon lung illness survivor, also pronounced support for Brown’s action “to protect our children and our community.”

The man treated by the hospital system’s doctors, Justin Wilson, said he vaped primarily nicotine e-cigarettes purchased at the Gresham vape shop where he worked. He preferred Juul, the extremely popular vape brand that has been accused at federal and state levels of intentionally marketing its products to young people. Wilson, 25, said he often also used non-Juul nicotine cartridges that fit into a Juul device. The flavors included mango, menthol watermelon and pink lemonade, Wilson said.

Oregon’s flavored vaping products ban now joins efforts across the country to tackle the health fallout from vape products. Washington issued a temporary ban a week ago. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans last month to ban non-tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., announced last month his intent to file a bill to ban flavored vaping products nationally.

E-cigarettes with nicotine have flooded the retail market in recent years and have been linked to a rise in youth use of the products. Nicotine liquids come in a wide variety of flavors, such as mango, vanilla and blueberry, and can contain concentrations of nicotine that far exceed conventional cigarettes.

The key components to e-cigarettes are a heating element and “e-juice,” the liquid that contains the active ingredients nicotine or THC, flavorings and compounds that affect how the vapor feels when inhaled. The device’s heating element activates and turns the liquid into a vapor, which then delivers the chemicals into the person’s lungs.

The governor’s flavored vaping products ban came a week after the Oregon Health Authority proposed a temporary ban on all vape products. The health authority said in a statement Friday that Brown’s action will “help us protect the health of all Oregonians.” The agency said it will launch a statewide education campaign to help implement the governor’s order.

Portland vape shops said they were confounded by the pending ban.

“It’s pretty scary,” said Marcus Nettles, who opened Rose City Vapors in Northeast Portland five years ago. “The scariest part is the uncertainty of not knowing when I’ll stop selling my product.”

Rose City sells nicotine vaping products and Nettles said upwards of 80% of his sales come from flavored material. He said it would be impossible to keep his shop open for six months while a flavored vaping ban is in effect.

And with the timing of the ban in flux, Nettles said he’s not sure whether to try to unload his inventory with a flash sale or to stock more in anticipation of a possible shortage as the ban approaches.

Paul Bates, owner of Division Vapor, called the governor’s action “utter foolishness.” He said he isn’t changing anything about his nicotine vaping shop because he anticipates any ban would be overturned in court.

“There’s not a ban yet,” Bates said. “There’s no enforcement date. There’s no rules written yet, what’s covered and what’s uncovered.”

To Bates, the governor’s pending ban seems wildly misdirected by not focusing on just the THC market, where he says most of the health issues appear to originate. He said the ban will simply move vaping into an unregulated market.

“The bad outcome from that is irresponsible actions on the black market,” he said. “You only increase the dangers.”

Enacting the order will involve two vastly different state systems.

Oregon is one of few states that doesn’t have a centralized tobacco and nicotine e-cigarette retailer oversight system, leaving most regulation of tobacco sales to the cities and counties that decide independently to regulate them.

Absent such a system, Oregon officials have an incomplete picture of how many stores sell nicotine products, who owns them or where they are. The health authority gathers data every year from the Department of Revenue, which tracks retailers for tax purposes, and from local governments that regulate stores independently. The state estimates Oregon has about 3,000 stores, according to reports produced for the federal government.

A health official in Clackamas County, which doesn’t independently oversee tobacco retailers, said before the governor’s announcement that a ban would be hard, if not impossible, to enforce.

“The governor can put the ban into place, but we don’t have any way to ensure that people are not going to sell them,” said Jamie Zentner, a Clackamas County tobacco prevention official.

State agencies have the legal authority to protect the public from health hazards, a spokesman for the governor said in an email, and they will enforce a ban on flavored vaping products. How that enforcement will work, precisely, will be determined during the emergency rule-making process enacting the ban, spokesman Charles Boyle said.

“Today’s executive order is the beginning of the process,” Boyle said.

Compared to tobacco retailers, marijuana businesses are highly regulated. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission tracks and regulates retail marijuana products, including THC vaping products. Every business in the marijuana production chain has to be licensed with the agency, which can pull those licenses if businesses violate state rules.

At least five of Oregon’s victims fell ill after vaping THC oils that they bought at legal marijuana retail stores, the Oregon Health Authority has said. State officials have been wary of issuing a blanket ban on THC vape products in part because the precise cause of the lung illnesses isn’t yet known.

The governor’s ban will cover cannabis products with any flavor that is not extracted from marijuana plants, the liquor control commission said in a statement after the governor’s announcement. The commission will meet next week to act on Brown’s order, the statement said.

The limited ban on marijuana products was a relief to the industry, said Michael Getlin, director of the marijuana lobbying group Oregon Industry Progress Association. Getlin said that most cannabis vape oils contain only natural marijuana flavors. That’s because people actually enjoy the taste of marijuana, he said. But THC vape oils that taste like apple, grape and bubble gum do exist, he said.

Getlin had previously predicted dire consequences if the governor had followed through on the health authority’s suggestion last week to ban all vape products.

But even this ban will lead to financial losses and “dislocation,” Getlin said. The precise scope of that dislocation will hinge on how the state defines non-marijuana flavors.

Marijuana’s distinctive taste comes from its terpenes, a type of organic chemical that gives many plants their recognizable smell. To give marijuana oils a natural taste, producers extract those terpenes from marijuana then reintroduce them to vape oils.

But terpene varieties in some marijuana strains can be extracted from other plants that aren’t as expensive to process. Marijuana strains that have a citrus taste, for example, contain the same kind of terpene as lemons, Getlin said. It’s common – and cheaper – for producers to extract that terpene from the citrus fruit to flavor the vape oil, as opposed to extracting it from marijuana.

If the state’s ban will cover chemicals that are native to marijuana but extracted from a different plant, the industry would likely take a harder hit, he said.

Cura Cannabis, Oregon’s biggest recreational marijuana company, has been buffeted by the vaping health crisis. Shares in Curaleaf, the Massachusetts company buying Cura, plunged over the last few weeks as the vaping crisis intensified. Shares recovered somewhat this week, though, and Cura issued a statement Friday endorsing the governor’s ban.

“We thank and commend Gov. Brown for taking swift and thoughtful action for the health and safety of all Oregonians,” Cameron Forni, Cura’s CEO, said in a written statement. He blamed the health issue around the “illicit market,” a claim health authorities haven’t substantiated.

Mason Walker, CEO of East Fork Cultivars, called Brown’s order “a prudent, measured action that we at East Fork (and many of our friends in the industry) encouraged and are now cheering.”

The hardest hit marijuana companies will be those who focus on flavored cartridge lines, Walker wrote in an email.

“It will also lead to a lot of scrambling amongst large cartridge companies that rely on flavorings to pivot to new formulations, which will prop up the cartridge companies that have never added anything to their oils,” Walker said.

Staff writer Mike Rogoway contributed to this report.

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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