Upstart Vaping Company Plans Pullback After Outcry Over Loophole
Puff Bars were embraced by minors thanks to a gap in the U.S. flavor ban, but now their maker says it’s halting sales.
On a sunny Friday afternoon in Los Angeles’s Skid Row, two men climbed through a gap in a half-shuttered storefront across the street from a sidewalk homeless encampment. The unassuming building on one of the city’s toughest streets is the headquarters of America’s hottest vaping company.
One of the men, who said his name is Shahid Shaikh, is chief operating officer of Cool Clouds Distribution Inc., which says it is the seller of Puff Bar disposable e-cigarettes. Sales of the devices have surged thanks to a loophole in new federal restrictions on flavored vaping products, leading critics to blame them for creating a new twist in a public-health crisis. The murky origins of Puff Bars and a legion of shadowy imitators have only added to the concerns of health officials and parents.