For many years we packaged in glass bottles. We would still today if regulations allowed it. Unfortunately, recent regulatory changes have forced us to discontinue packaging in glass bottles.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has suddenly and without warning decided to reinterpret the Child Nicotine Poisoning Prevention Act of 2015 to include the requirement that all e-juice bottles come with flow restrictors that limit the amount of e-liquid that can be dispensed at a time to 2 mL or less.
The reasoning behind this change is an increase in calls to poison control centers after babies or young children accidentally drank or were exposed to nicotine from vape juice.
It should be pointed out that all vape juice already comes with child resistant packaging. However, the key word here is "resistant." Child resistant packaging is not child proof. In fact, child resistant by definition in a regulatory sense means that babies and small children are only unable to open the packaging in 80 to 85% of trials. That means that 15 to 20% of the time, small children are able to successfully open a child resistant bottle.
In fact, the FDA has reported that between 2012 and early 2017, there were 8,269 calls to Poison Control or emergency services after children under six years of age were exposed to nicotine from vape juice.
To put that in perspective, there were 14,000 such calls for laundry detergent pods in 2016 alone. That same year, there were also 20,000 calls for hand sanitizer, 17,000 for toothpaste, 16,000 for deodorant and 13,000 for mouthwash. So vape juice is hardly the most deadly thing in your average household yet we don't see anyone calling for Tide pods to come packaged in lockable boxes or to make them look less colorful and edible. (Check out our in depth guide to keeping your child and yourself safe from nicotine poisoning for a deeper dive on this topic.)
Some customers point out that there are still manufacturers packaging in glass. This is true, however, these companies are either unaware of the regulatory changes or are hoping to fly under the radar. The consequences of doing so are likely to be severe and, in some cases, could shut these companies down permanently due to the cost of penalties for violating this regulation.
In fact, a number of companies have already received Notices of Violation from The Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Commission has charged them with selling "misbranded hazardous substances pursuant to section 2(p) of the Federal Hazardous Substances Act." Being caught violating the Act can result in a recall of all products shipped going back to the date of the original reinterpretation of the regulation as well as destruction of all inventory on hand, a potentially catastrophic penalty for many businesses. We also know of several vape shops that have had their inventory yanked from the shelves for selling vape juice packaged in glass.
As our customers know, we don't play it fast and loose with government regulations. We have worked hard to build a company that is founded on the principles of honesty, purity and transparency as well as respect and genuine care for our customers.
We scoured the internet and the globe in the desperate hope that we could find glass bottles that would meet the new requirement. Unfortunately, no such bottles exist. We even tried to figure out a way to design our own but, due to the technical requirements and the limitation of glass being completely rigid, we came up empty handed. We realized we had no choice but to transition to plastic bottles.
We did extensive research on various types of plastic and finally settled on what we believe is the safest, highest quality plastic available. We have chosen to package in PET resin plastic which is completely BPA free and recyclable. Our bottles are also food grade which means they meet the same standards of safety as the packaging you find on the grocery store shelves. While we dearly miss our glass bottles, at least the new plastic bottles come with a handy needle dispensing tip which makes it much easier and less messy to refill e-cig tanks that have small filling ports.
We hope our customers will understand the need for this change and continue to support us as we navigate the intense pressures of staying in business in the current regulatory climate.
Should you live in a home that does not include any children and you would prefer glass bottles, we still make empty glass bottles available for your use.
Try our premium organic vape juice today!
Happy vaping!
