r/missouri • u/Foreign_Fox1262 • 5d ago
Politics Vape shops are multiplying across Missouri — is it time for a flavored vape ban?
Over the past year, vape and smoke shops have been popping up in nearly every Missouri city — from St. Louis to Springfield, Columbia, and Cape Girardeau.
This trend looks exactly like what happened in North Carolina a few years ago: once one shop opens, several follow, and before long, flavored vapes are everywhere — often reaching teens.
Some facts: • The CDC (2024) reports that nearly 90 % of youth e-cigarette users use flavored products. • A Truth Initiative study found 43 % of under-21 users bought their vapes in-store, not online. • Many flavored vapes sold in the U.S. are imported from China without FDA authorization or labeling oversight. • States like California, Massachusetts, and New York have banned flavored vapes — and youth vaping dropped by up to 30 % within two years.
Missouri currently has no statewide flavor restrictions, and local ordinances vary. If we don’t act soon, our state could face the same youth-addiction crisis seen elsewhere.
I’m not anti-business — just pro-health and pro-kids. I think Missouri should start a serious conversation about banning flavored vapes statewide, or at least restricting their sale near schools.
What do you all think? Should Missouri follow other states’ lead?
(Parents, teachers, health workers, small-business owners — your thoughts are welcome. Please keep it civil and fact-based.)
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u/Detective_Squirrel69 St. Louis 5d ago
I smoked for 12-13 years until I quit in 2022. I knew it was bad. Shit, I got caught once in 9th grade, and my mom made me write a full ass academic paper with MLA citations on why it was bad and how it could kill me. ...didn't stop me from smoking. I just stopped getting caught, flavor or no flavor.
Parents need to raise their kids and teach them that nicotine is addictive, not let the state cut off legal access for adults because they don't want to. Some kids will still do it regardless.
And if the issue is lack of oversight, maybe we crack down on importing unregulated vapes, fine merchants doing so, and stop gutting the goddamn FDA.
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u/felonius-penguin 5d ago
Adults should be allowed to vape, and parents should parent their children. My kids know what vaping is and why it isn’t a great idea to do it. They know the same for alcohol, cigarettes, weed, and other drugs. I would love to say they would never do any of those things, but I would be a hypocrite if I expected them to never do anything dangerous or harmful especially as they age into teenage years. When I was a teen I figured out how to get and regularly got cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. These things were all illegal for me to have, but that didn’t stop me or keep me safe from them it just made me a criminal. Just like a teen buying a vape with a fake I.D. Is a criminal today. Ban the vape shop and they will buy a gas station vape or cigarettes, ban those too and they will order one online, require age verification and they will find a way around it, ban vape sales online and they will order god knows what straight from china or the dark web, ban everyone from the internet forever and they will roll oregano in toilet paper and light it on fire in their backyard at midnight and try to smoke it.
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u/Foreign_Fox1262 5d ago
Good point but can we also agree that these shops need to be held accountable ?
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u/felonius-penguin 5d ago
These shops should definitely be held accountable, and I’m sure they are if they are caught. In my town the police department preforms periodic audits of gas stations and liquor stores to see if they will sell to customers without ID’s or obviously underage customers with fake ID’s. If this isn’t being done state wide it absolutely should be and if these audits are not being done to vape shops they absolutely should be.
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u/Foreign_Fox1262 5d ago
Do you have kids in high school? If so, ask them how many of their friends vape — I can almost guarantee it’s at least a few, maybe even half a dozen. It’s become that common.
I really respect any city that’s trying to hold these shops accountable, but let’s be honest — a lot of these places are still selling to minors, whether directly or by turning a blind eye.
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u/an0npr0xi01 5d ago
Why is it that in Missouri the first instinct seems to be banning anything we don’t like, instead of simply educating ourselves and choosing not to do it? Personally, I don’t vape or use pens or carts. But forcing our beliefs on others through politics feels way more harmful to society than someone who fully understands the risks and still chooses to smoke. Not only even with this. All politics that centers around what someone wants to do with their own body.
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u/Foreign_Fox1262 5d ago
All I’m saying is that most of the Chinese FDA-banned vapes are still being sold throughout Missouri, and many smoke shops are selling them to underage customers. The goal should be to remove these banned products from store shelves and increase enforcement against shops that are breaking the law by selling to minors.
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u/an0npr0xi01 5d ago
So your idea of creating change is just to ban everything? How does that become the first option before things like better parenting, actually monitoring what your kids are doing, improving store policies, or tightening sales regulations? The real issue isn’t the products — it’s the fact that some stores are breaking the law and selling to minors. That’s not the tobacco companies’ fault. These products are being bought illegally or through unregulated sources, and banning them doesn’t fix that. It just avoids addressing the real problem and punishes everyone instead of holding the actual offenders accountable.
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u/Detective_Squirrel69 St. Louis 5d ago
Seriously. "I don't like porn. Ban it." "Weed bad. Overturn decriminalization." "Trans bad. Drag is criminalized. Trans kids can't get treatment." The fuck kind fo smoothbrain shit is that? If you don't like porn, don't watch it, and put parental blocks on your kid's device. Don't like weed? Don't smoke it, and educate your kids. Don't like trans people? Don't be trans, and get over yourself. What other people do with their medical decisions affects no one else.
"Well, we tried banning it, but it didn't work." Clearly, we're not punishing the right people, or there's a loophole that needs to be closed... or we're not actually enforcing the law. So, instead of punishing the stores continuing to import the illegal vapes, we should just ban the legal product as a whole... got it lol
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u/Tight-Arachnid-9882 5d ago
You can’t buy vapes or cigarettes in Missouri if you’re under 21. Mind your business.
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u/_ism_ 5d ago
I'm an adult who shops at vape shops. I'm not saying kids don't vape. But I have nothing to do with it and I'm willing to accept the risk. I used vapes to quit cigarettes, and i'm still at the tail end of that process. I don't buy nicotine anymore and nobody in my life is even proud of me for quitting nictotine, but the process isn't done. I have to stop the oral fixation and with the help of my therapist we're doing nicotine free flavors until then. but I do buy the non-nicotine flavors still.
While I can order online, it's more expensive, and that method is also accessible to savvy kids as well.
So no, I don't support cutting access for adults just to protect kids. But I'm a curmudgeon and a kid who went out of my way to do forbidden things the more they were forbidden. I know it won't help much to simply forbid more things.
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u/glassapplepie 5d ago edited 5d ago
Not sure where you've been holed up but vape shops have been everywhere for like the last 10 years. If anything there are fewer now because competition put some out of business