Local smoke shop speaks out after FDA ruling

Following an FDA ruling that removed over 5 million E-Cigarette products from shelves, one local owner is frustrated with the decision - Luis Lopez reports

YUMA, Ariz. (KYMA,KECY) - The manager of Red Star Vapor in Yuma says a recent ruling from the Food and Drug administration (FDA) has the local shop up in smoke.

The ruling has removed over 5 million E-Cigarette products nationwide and forced Red Star to pull some popular products off the shelves.

Among those popular items are ‘do it yourself’ products, which let customers choose their flavor and nicotine levels.

Manager Alexis Robles says that the DIY removal was a big hit to business.

"The reason we had to get rid of that was because the FDA didn’t want us selling something to the customer that wasn’t already made to where they had to mix it themselves, so that took off probably like more than 50 percent of our juice products that we had here," Robles said.

Having to remove best-sellers isn’t something that Robles was ready for, saying that it’s forced him to improvise as a manager.

"I wasn’t preparing for it at all, it kind of just hit us as a right hook, we kind of just had to make the decisions on the spot."

While many products were removed, other big name products like Juul pods, haven’t been removed by the FDA.

Donnie Zimmerman, a Red Star assistant manager who used the DIY product, says that he was upset as a consumer and an employee.

"I was really upset we were getting rid of something that was a very good seller for Red Star, we had a lot of customers that were really disappointed with it, I was disappointed with it, it was just kind of hard but it was something we had to do," Zimmerman said.

As for why the decision was made, the FDA says that the risks of vaping outweigh the benefits.