By Paul Bates

Imagine a world in which you were not allowed to tell the truth, make art, or use descriptive words for a legal product that can save lives. By law.

Couldn’t happen here—not in Oregon, right?

But it has.

That’s effectively what the state of Oregon is doing to small business owners like me. I am the owner of a 21-and-over vape shop in Portland, and most of my customers are people just like me: people who have used e-cigarettes to kick a cigarette habit. E-cigarettes are currently the most popular and effective method of quitting smoking.

You’ve probably heard this kind of quip from a former smoker: “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve quit hundreds of times.” And so it was for me. I started smoking in the 1980s to fit in with my co-workers, but when I tried to quit, it would be temporary. I tried everything from nicotine patches to medications to cold turkey, but nothing seemed to stick. This would work for a day, a week, maybe months or a year. But with vaping I quit— for good. In one day.

This has been true for many former smokers. The last five years have seen some of the greatest declines in smoking rates in recent decades in the United States. These declines, in youth and adults, coincide with a rise in vaping, as studies have shown. Vaping is really a delivery system for flavor: It’s not about the device, but about a taste. And these tastes—which have taken years of experimentation to fine-tune and get right—are particularly effective at helping people quit smoking. The vape shop, carrying a multitude of flavors and devices that can be tailored to an individual’s taste and needs, is indispensable. They’re home to the experts that can help novice vapers, making the transition from combustible tobacco smoother, easier, and permanent.

Yet the state of Oregon won’t let me share truthful information about my products with the customers who come into my store. Under Oregon Health Authority rules, I cannot display any products with labels that are “likely to appeal to minors.”

Vaping liquids come in many flavors—from tobacco to fruit to mint. At the back of my shop, I have a metal rack packed with these liquids that are set aside to be censored before I can stock them in the front of the store. My employees spend hours every week covering up labels that come from our suppliers—time they could be using to help people quit and stay off cigarettes—to cover any images or words that the Oregon Health Authority might say violate its rules.

Fruit flavors are a good example: If a label has, say, the drawing of a peach or even the word “peach” on it, we will have to cover it up. Oregon has some of the strongest individual and commercial free-speech protections in the country, but its anti-speech regulations on vaping have kept us from selling an e-cigarette liquid that had an octopus on the label.

Oregon may say they want to protect children in enacting these regulations, but only adults 21 or older are permitted to enter my shop. When I sell my products, I’m only communicating with adults. Yet if I don’t comply with the state’s regulations, I open myself up to hefty daily fines and even possible criminal penalties.

Oregon’s regulations show little to no understanding of the detrimental effect their policy will have on the health of smokers. Even Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has said that “if we could switch every adult smoker to an e-cigarette, it would have a profound public health impact.” But these regulations go further: They keep small business owners like me from telling my adult customers about legal products. Can you imagine how difficult it is to sell products when you have to cover up information on the labels about what those products are?

Last week, I filed a lawsuit to challenge these regulations for what they are: an attempt to steal my right to communicate what my products are to my customers. Oregon’s insistence that I must self-censor my products violates my free-speech rights. My ability to communicate with my customers shouldn’t be taken away.

Paul Bates is the owner of Division Vapor in Portland. His lawsuit against the Oregon Health Authority and its director was filed by the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based free-market public policy thinktank.