Darin Tripoli, right, owner of Sunshine Vape LLC, testifies in support of a bill that would partially reverse the state’s ban on flavored vape sales during a State House hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (Photo by Nancy Lavin/Rhode Island Current)
Nearly two months have passed since Rhode Island vape shops and convenience stores were forced to clear their shelves of flavored e-cigarettes and other nicotine products.
But the controversy over the Jan. 1 law has not evaporated — far from it. Instead, it reignited during a hearing before the House Committee on Corporations at the Rhode Island State House Tuesday night.
Legislation introduced earlier this month by Rep. William O’Brien, a North Providence Democrat, seeks to partially reverse the newly enacted state law, exempting dedicated vape shops from the state’s ban on flavored e-cigarette products and other “nicotine-delivery products.”
O’Brien called the ban, enacted as part of the state’s fiscal 2025 budget, an “injustice” pointing to the “unanticipated consequences” for small businesses and for smokers trying to wean off of cigarettes with flavored vapes. The ban does not extend to menthol or tobacco flavored vapes, which can still be sold, but are now taxed at 50 cents per milliliter for disposal vapes and 10% for wholesale products.
“We can drink over age 21, we can smoke marijuana, we can smoke cigarettes, we can gamble,” he said. “Why not vape? I personally know three people who quit five-pack-a-day habits by switching to vaping.”
O’Brien’s bill was held for further study, the customary practice for an initial bill hearing.
His proposal is not the first attempt to extinguish the state’s ban on flavored vapes. In November, two vape shops, Vaporetti LLC and Sunshine Vape LLC, filed a federal lawsuit against state health, tax and revenue administrators, arguing the ban was unconstitutional, poorly defined and “irrational.” A U.S. District Court judge in Rhode Island denied their request to block the law before January, but the case continued. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, who in keeping with customary practice represented the state agencies being sued, countered that the vape shops’ complaint failed to meet legal standards, according to court documents.
Court case dropped, for now
Both sides agreed to dismiss the case temporarily on Feb. 11, though the decision leaves open the possibility that the vape shops can refile the lawsuit. The voluntary agreement came four days after O’Brien submitted his bill.
Darin Tripoli, owner of Sunshine Vape, said the decision to drop the lawsuit was unrelated to O’Brien’s legislation.
“We want to get along with the state,” Tripoli said in an interview at the State House Tuesday. “We are on the same side. We all want a healthier Rhode Island, and to keep doing what we’ve been doing for the past 12 years of helping people quit smoking.”
While business has soared at Tripoli ’s Connecticut vape location since Jan.1, his three Rhode Island stores in Warwick, Providence and South Kingstown have suffered, with daily profits plummeting 70-90%, he said.
“It’s hard to go to work, my shelves are empty,” Tripoli told lawmakers. “I am scared I am going to lose my businesses, my home.”
Tripoli also said his customers who relied on vapes as a smoking cessation tool have returned to cigarettes.
“This is a step backwards in public health,” Tripoli said.
Public health experts and advocacy groups disagree, including the Rhode Island chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Lung Association, along with the Rhode Island Department of Health, which all wrote to lawmakers in opposition to O’Brien’s bill.
“No tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, are safe,” Dr. Jerry Larkin, state health director, wrote in a letter to lawmakers ahead of the hearing.
Protecting teens from tobacco
Larkin’s letter focused on the consequences for teenagers, whose brain development can be impaired by vaping, among other health problems.
Over 16% of high school students in Rhode Island used in e-cigarette in the last 30 days in 2023, more than double the rate two years prior, according to biennial state surveys. Among students who vape, 95% opt for flavored nicotine.
“From our perspective, flavors are a marketing weapon used by tobacco manufacturers to target youth,” Ryan Strik, government relations director for the American Cancer Society Action Network in Rhode Island, told lawmakers Tuesday. “Cherry, grape, cotton candy, gummy bear, are clearly not aimed at established tobacco users.”
O’Brien asked Strik repeatedly to prove that the state ban had lessened availability of flavored vapes among youth.
After several minutes of back and forth, Rep. Justine Caldwell, second vice chair of the House Corporations Committee, stepped in.
“That’s enough,” she told O’Brien.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued 37 warning letters and imposed 30 fines on Rhode Island retailers for selling vapes to buyers under 21 from 2022-2024, according to information cited by Richard LeClerc, director of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals. LeClerc also noted in a Feb. 25 letter to lawmakers that 11.3% of licensed tobacco retailers inspected in a 2025 state survey sold to underage consumers.
Enforcement has remained a sore spot, state officials acknowledge, given that flavored vapes were first prohibited via executive order in 2019. The new state law codified that order while also attempting to crack down on scofflaws by shifting enforcement from the state health department to its tax division.
In a rare partnership between usually estranged groups, convenience store owners have sided with public health experts in opposing the legislation — not because of the health consequences, but because they feel it’s unfair to give vape shops a pass and not other retailers that sell vapes, according to letters submitted to lawmakers.
The bill offers an exemption to any premises “dedicated to the display, sale, distribution, delivery, offering, furnishing, or marketing of nicotine-delivery system products, liquid nicotine, liquid nicotine containers or vapor products.”
However, Neena Savage, state tax administrator, wrote to lawmakers to share her concerns with the lack of clarity in definitions of affected retailers and products. Savage also noted challenges with enforcement by the state’s Division of Taxation.
O’Brien said he planned to amend his bill to incorporate the suggested changes from Savage.
Two other states, New York and New Jersey, ban sales of flavored vapes, while California and Massachusetts ban all flavored e-cigarette and tobacco products, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
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