Local vape shops, of which there are as many as 20, are looking at the beginning of the end as new rules issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday aim to bring e-cigarettes and vaporizers under the federal government's regulatory power.

The ruling will require manufacturers of e-cigarettes, cigars, as well as pipe and hookah tobacco to go through a pre-

market authorization process before they can be sold.

"If this goes through, we won't be here. No (vape shop) in Amarillo will be here," said Chris Goodwin, owner of 806vapes and Southern Clouds, an e-juice maker. "It's just me and three other guys and I have 21 flavors here. If every single product needs to be approved, then we won't be able to stay in business."

The rule will exempt products that were on the market prior to Feb. 15, 2007, which will let some cigar manufacturers off the hook, but would require all electronic cigarette manufacturers to begin a lengthy and costly process, according to the FDA itself.

The FDA estimated up-front costs to range from $390,000 to $759,000 with the average cost then ranging between $450,000 to $541,000 after the first year, according to a 2014 economic analysis from the agency.

The FDA predicted that "considerable product consolidation and exit would occur; much of it among low-volume products and driven by a reduction in the number of product variants, as opposed to complete brand exit. Consumers would choose from the remaining products. A reduction in product variation does not necessarily imply reduction in total sales volume."

The FDA estimated that each application would take a total of 5,016 hours to complete.

Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association believe the costs for each product could range upward of $1 million and the regulations would effectively put 99 percent of the industry out of business.

"It's a huge blow to the industry for a couple reasons. First it has the potential to put around 10,000 shops in the U.S. out of business," said Frank Blankenship, owner of Lucky Ruckus Vape Shop and founding member of the Texas chapter of the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association.

"Small business can't afford it and there's not one shop in the U.S. that will be able to afford to go through the process. Even if they could, there's no guarantee that the FDA will approve it."

Blankenship said that there are upwards of 20 vape stores in Amarillo and that all would go out of business. He said that he has been in business since 2013 and was involved in advocacy for the industry since that time.

"We have a product that has the potential to save lives and a lot of people have jumped in the game and saw an opportunity to make a dollar," Blankenship said. "If you participate in industry trade organizations, you follow good manufacturing process practices to manufacture e-liquid. They didn't follow proper business practices and align with trade industry groups and now the entire industry is in threat of being shut down."

Blankenship pointed to a statement from the United Kingdom's Royal College of Physicians on Apr. 28 that promoted the use of e-cigarettes in the interests of public health.

The statement listed that "the hazard to health arising from long-term vapor inhalation from the e-cigarettes available today is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco," and that the tobacco industry would become involved in the market and "can be expected to try to exploit these products to market tobacco cigarettes and to undermine wider tobacco control work."

The Royal College of Physicians didn't recommend that e-cigarettes not be regulated, but argued for proportionate regulation to maximize overall public health.

Dr. Yala Manchili, a pulmonologist at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, agreed that e-cigarettes "would not even come close" to the toll on human life that cigarettes currently do, but questioned the unknown factors in studying an unregulated industry.

"Whether or not it is directly harmful depends on what they're putting in it. If all you were getting was water vapor and nicotine by itself, the odds that you will have a problem from it are very limited," Manchili said. "We're not sure what's going in them. It's just a Wild West of what's put in there."

Manchili argued that all unregulated products that are inhaled into the lungs should be taken off the market and only brought back under regulation, and he compared e-cigarettes to beer. However, he suspected that if the whole American populace switched from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, people would be safer.

E-cigarette dealers and vape shops are not the only industry affected by the FDA's new regulation. The inclusion of hookah and pipe tobacco along with cigars will impact certain smaller dealers. Cigar makers that made new blends after February of 2007 will have to submit their products for FDA testing.

"Absolutely, it will bring up the price and it will come to (having less variety)," said Danny Jones, owner of Jones Cowan Pipe and Tobacco shop. "I think there will probably be quite a few little cigar companies that close."

Goodwin said that he started his vape shop to help people quit cigarettes after vaporizers helped him quit.

"I knew I was going to die if I kept smoking ... Now I started this business to get people to quit smoking," Goodwin said. "The regulation will allow big tobacco to take over the industry and there will be four or five flavors. A large percentage of people are vaping because of the options and they will turn back to smoking."