Critics are slamming Walmart for dropping vaping products while continuing to sell cigarettes, but the company may have just avoided a regulatory nightmare
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Associated Press
Walmart will stop selling e-cigarettes.
Walmart said Friday that it plans to stop selling all vaping products amid "regulatory complexity" and "uncertainty" around e-cigarettes.
The decision has prompted praise as well as some backlash on social media, with critics questioning why Walmart would exit the e-cigarette category while continuing to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products.Let's break down Walmart's statement on the decision.
"Given the growing federal, state and local regulatory complexity and uncertainty regarding e-cigarettes, we plan to discontinue the sale of electronic nicotine delivery products at all Walmart and Sam's Club U.S. locations," the company said Friday. "We will complete our exit after selling through current inventory."Complying with all these potential new laws could be a regulatory nightmare for Walmart, which has more than 5,300 stores in the US.
Read more: San Francisco just banned e-cigarette sales, the first major US city to outlaw tobacco vapes
To top it all off, the e-cigarette market is relatively small for Walmart, a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider.In the end, Walmart likely determined that any lost sales aren't worth the potential regulatory headache associated with continuing to sell e-cigarettes.
If that's the case, then exiting the e-cigarette category was more of a business decision for Walmart than a political statement for or against the vaping industry and the health effects of its products.
The company also announced in May that it would discontinue the sale of fruit- and dessert-flavored e-cigarettes, which research shows are preferred by minors. At the same time, Walmart announced employee training programs designed to prevent the sale of tobacco products to minors.
To some critics, however, that's not enough. And now that Walmart has announced it will stop selling e-cigarettes, they are pushing the company to drop all tobacco products.
Walmart will stop selling e-cigarettes but will continue selling normal cigarettes that are deadlier.
- Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) September 20, 2019
#VapingTargetsKids. It's time we get e-cigs off the market until we find out if they're actually safe or not. Today, Walmart is stepping up and ending e-cig sales - as I urged them to do in Feb. I hope they soon remove another dangerous product from their shelves: cigarettes. https://t.co/52nLvHrzje
- Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) September 20, 2019
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