Where were all the vapers?

Yesterday I again made the trek out to Sacramento attend the California State Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing on AB 1500.

I was originally going to write about the actual hearing, and I may still do that later, but right now I keep getting distracted by a frustration… where the heck was everybody?
A number of businesses came out: CultiVapors, Grand Vapor Station, Luxe Liquid Vapor, Tasty Vapor, and The Vapor Spot, as well as representatives from VMR Products (V2 Cigs) and NJoy.
Jim Root from California Vapor Association was present
And 4 individuals… 2 vapers and 2 spouses of vapers.

Only 2 vapers.

Yes, the number of vaping business that showed up to oppose AB 1500 was disappointingly small when compared to the total number of such businesses in California (and let us all remember to send our business, and money, to those that did participate), but we, the consumers outnumber the businesses by a very wide margin. so where were we?

How many of us are there in California? There does not seem to be any reliable statistic available, so I’m going to fudge it a little to come up with an estimate… according to the CDC over 3,839,000 individual adults smoke in California, and as of 2011, one in five of those had tried electronic cigarettes or roughly 767,800 adults. We can safely assume that many more have tried electronic cigarettes since then, but we can also assume that not everyone that ‘tries’ becomes a regular consumer, so we’ll stick with 767,800 as a reasonable estimate for now. 2 out of 767,800… That gives us a whopping .0002% of California vapers showing up to the hearing. Shameful

It’s true that , as of now, AB 1500 has failed passage. It’s true that there is currently no indication that the legislation will be proposed again anytime soon. It’s also true that we, as a community, can’t sit on our butts and hope that these things work out. If we care about the continued viability of the vaping industry, if we care about the continued availability of vaping products for our own continued use, and for use by others that may switch from smoking to vaping in the future, then we need to stand up against restrictive legislation.

California is a big place, and Sacramento certainly isn't geographically accessible to everyone in the state. Travel time, travel cost, and the need to maintain other aspects of our lives (like jobs) mean that we can’t expect some arbitrary percentage of California vapers to show up to these things, but there are enough of us that we should be able to make a better showing than just two people. Next time, and inevitably there will be a next time as some bill or other attempts to squash e-cigs, next time we should aspire to fill the hearing room to capacity with vapers.