Victoria Castellon

GUEST COLUMNIST

I have not smoked an entire cigarette in almost three years now. This statement, in of itself, is a complete miracle for me. I couldn’t go 30 minutes without lighting a cigarette to smoke it. I smelled awful all of the time and felt miserable because my lung capacity was that of a toddler. I was in my late twenties, early thirties and couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

I couldn’t sit through an entire movie in a theater, so I’d just wait until it came out onto DVD to be able to pause it whenever I needed a cigarette. I never smoked in front of children because I was terrified that if they saw me and thought to themselves, wow, she looks cool, that they would be tied to these God-forsaken things that had brought me such misery for the rest of their lives like I had been.

Not to mention the financial aspect of cigarette addiction weighing me down as well. Nearly three-quarters of my monthly budget went straight to cigarettes. I needed them so there was no way I could cut back to save money. My entire life was driven by needing a cigarette.

That is, until I started working at a locally owned vape shop chain here in Asheville. My lung capacity got better, I smelled better overall, my hands weren’t yellow-tinted, and I could go to public places without fear of having to figure out how to get my nicotine fix. By vaping, my need for nicotine decreased substantially so I could go an entire movie without the need to leave to go outside for a cigarette break. My finances improved because vaping isn’t as expensive as smoking cigarettes. Yes, the initial purchases was around $60-$80, but after that, the needed products last longer than a few days from me.

Black market THC products are causing those widely-reported health issues

I want to set the record straight, for everyone out there about the death-related articles around e-cigarettes in the news lately. That is not what I do or use. The vape shop I worked for here in Asheville did not sell the products that those individuals that were hospitalized over, nor do most vapers use those products. Those were THC-based products, but more importantly and what is not being talked about enough is black market products.

Both the FDA and CDC have stated these are the linked sources that those who have been hospitalized had used. These products are not FDA regulated. As an employee of a locally owned vape shop chain here in Asheville starting in the summer of 2016, it was very obvious to me that this industry is absolutely vigorously regulated by the FDA. And underage selling was non-existed within this company.

Ban on e-cigs:Poll: 50 percent of NC voters support ban on e-cigs, vape products

Vaping deaths:Vaping-related lung injury cases surge to 1,080; deaths rise to 18

How to do I know this for sure? Because it was explained to me that it was my personal responsibility as an employee to make sure that this rule was strictly followed. And I was reminded time and time again that it was not something that should be taken lightly.

I was not always comfortable in my previous service industry positions with carding people for alcohol consumption, but when I worked at this vape store here Asheville, the importance was pressed upon me strongly and I regularly. The consequences of not carding were not simply going to fall onto the store but I would be held responsible as well.

After knowing this, I never was uncomfortable carding anyone. My coworkers and I did not play around with this because we knew how serious the consequences of not doing so would be for us.

Vaping is 95% safer than smoking, physicians say

What gets me so upset around any type of banning topics, flavor or not, is that the reality of the lengths that these vaping companies are going to make sure that their products are not causing harm to people and abiding the laws firmly regulated by the FDA is being completely ignored by the media.

To me, this is all fear propaganda yet again put into place by this administration. No one is talking about vaping in a positive light today because they do not know that those health conditions coming out in the news outlets are from black market THC products, and not the products that local vaping stores, such as my former employer, sell.

Here are some facts that the media seems to be forgetting; the Royal College of Physicians says vaping is 95% safer than smoking. In addition, in the UK, they are opening vape shops in their hospitals to encourage people to quit smoking.

North Carolina, please do not let those of us that having put down the cigarettes and found help through vaping suffer by taking away the things that helped us so much. Because honestly, what’s going to happen if flavor banning or any other banning on our vaping industry happens is that we now have to find our needs to be met in the black market, which as you can see is where people start getting hurt.

Please do not do that to me.

Victoria Castellon is a former employee of a vaporizer store and former smoker of a pack and a half of regular/combustible cigarettes for more than 10 years.