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Your average small storefront brings about a half million dollars into a local community in the form of sales, taxes, payroll, rent, and more. Empty storefronts are unsightly wounds on a local community’s economy. But that doesn’t keep locals from raising alarms and starting fights when someone brave enough comes along to put a vape shop in at one of these locations.

There remains a problem with the United States economy — one that may never get fixed. It is nearly impossible for most traditional (i.e. non-offensive) small store businesses to make enough money to survive. This includes hardware, toy, stationary, and specialty grocery stores. But less traditional (i.e. more viable) businesses are fought by locals when they want to move into an otherwise vacant space. This includes massage parlors, tattoo shops, and recreational (bars, dispensaries, etc) outlets.

People really don’t buy stuff in small stores anymore. Superstores like Walmart, K-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and more have made small outlets nearly obsolete. What they haven’t put out of business, online options have. All in all, there’s very few ways to make a storefront profitable these days. This is an old argument, but it’s flaring up again in light of the new opportunity vape stores now offer.

The need to fill a vacant store front and the benefit of a new business to a local economy doesn’t keep locals from complaining if the new business isn’t to their liking. That’s exactly what’s going on in San Fransisco where a young couple if fighting for their right to open an electronic cigarette shop and hookah lounge. Locals are fighting to keep this business from opening in an area that already possesses (according to one local) a shady massage parlor, a cannabis dispensary, a billiards joint, and a tattoo parlor.

Another argues that the corridor is in jeopardy because we are not attracting neighborhood services that we need — hardware stores, stationary stores, toy stores, specialty grocery stores and many more. Notice anything about what is there versus what they claim they want there. What’s there is what’s still profitable and can’t (or won’t) be replaced by big stores or online sales. What they want there are businesses that almost certainly can’t survive and — more than likely — aren’t at all necessary.

So on one side, you’re arguing for an amoral business front and profits before the health of locals (if you know nothing about e-cigs, that is). On the other side, you are anti-business and would rather a storefront be empty forever than allow a promising new product be sold in your area because you’re too close-minded to see the opportunity. This is the problem with everything needing to be 100% one way or the other. Like everything else, can’t we offer the freedom of consumers to choose, but then the controls that require only a certain age buy the product and the known risks be openly stated? That’s what we do with tattoos, alcohol, and driving a car.

But that’s what would-be vape shop owners are fighting against — locals that would rather a vacant shop stay vacant than a vape shop move in. These kind of scorched earth tactics help no one and only slightly de-ruffle the feathers of people who love to have ruffled feathers.