­­­GREATER SPRINGFIELD – One month after Gov. Charlie Baker enacted a temporary ban on the sale of vaping products and devices vape shops across the state are struggling.

Baker announced the ban on Sept. 24, calling it an “epidemic” among the youth of Massachusetts. The four-month ban was put into place so that health officials could “better understand the dangers of vaping both tobacco and marijuana.”

According to State House News Service (SHNS), the vaping outbreak across the country has led to 34 deaths across 24 states, including one in the Commonwealth. State House News reporter, Matt Murphy, reported as of Oct. 22 1,604 cases of “lung injury resulting from e-cigarettes, or vaping product use” had been reported to the CDC. Of the reported cases, 47 of them occurred in Massachusetts.

The ban stopped all shops across the state from selling any product or device associated with vaping. This, for some shops, meant the future of their business was uncertain.

Owner of JimBuddy’s?Vape Shop in Chicopee, James Robinson told Reminder Publishing the ban has resulted in a significant loss of business for the shop.  

“This ban has adversely affected our business. We’ve lost about 80 percent of our in store business. We will have to lay off employees to ride out this ban if it lasts the full four months.”

Joel Illouz and Nick Friscia own Voltage Vape Shop and have locations in both Agawam and Enfield, Conn.

Once the ban was announced Illouz said they closed their Agawam location, which he described as a “thriving business.” He said, “There was no product that we had that we could sell to maintain payroll and all the costs associated.” However, he said business at the Enfield location has been “pretty stable.”

This led to a number of vape shops joining together and filing a lawsuit against Baker’s vaping ban. Owner of JimBuddy’s?Vape Shop in Chicopee, James Robinson, said, “I don’t agree with the governor’s actions at all” and he was hopeful that “the courts will ultimately agree with us, the business owners.”

However, that was not the case. SHNS reported Appeals Court Judge Kenneth Desmond, upheld the ban on Oct. 23. However, he also ruled the administration “had likely exceeded its executive authority by using the declaration of a public health emergency to issue a four-month ban on the sale of all vaping products.”

Desmond gave the Baker administration until Oct. 28 to reissue the ban as an emergency regulation, or the ban would be lifted immediately. The reissuing of the ban under emergency regulations would, according to SHNS, “shorten its duration to three months and open the ban up to a process allowing for public testimony and an examination of its impact on small business owners.”

While Baker said he and Attorney General, Maura Healey, were working “to make sure the first-in-the-nation ban survives” past Oct. 28, at time of press it was unknown whether he had succeeded in keeping the ban alive.

However, the order would only apply to nicotine vaping products. Vaping products and devices that use marijuana would continue to be banned under an emergency by the Department of Public Health while the legal proceedings continue, according to SHNS.

Both Robinson and Illouz said that it is not the products being sold by their stores that are the problem, but instead it is illegal vaping products that have not been regulated by the FDA and are being sold that are causing the illnesses. Robinson believes denying people access to products that have been regulated by the FDA will only drive them to use more of the non-regulated products, potentially causing more vape-related illnesses.

“I think it is black market THC cartridges that are the root of the problem. But the governor took access to state made and regulated THC cart[ridge]s off the market, which will in-turn send people back to the black market to get the products that are likely harming people.”

Illouz agreed. “All these illnesses are due to black market THC carts. Vaping products are water soluble, meaning that the lungs can process it and it gets released through epidural. THC carts, a lot of them are now filled with oil.” He continued, “So what happens is companies came out with these additives that will stretch distillate and make it look the same as it should, however it’s oil based.”

He said he’s had “hundreds of people” stop smoking “with non-flavored tobacco products.” Illouz said, “Flavored vaping products help people quit smoking, because they don’t assimilate the taste of tobacco or menthol and go back to combustible cigarettes.”

“I think a lot of consumers are now scared to vape because of false information that the government is putting out,” he said.

He expressed frustration and said, “If the states really cared about our health they would ban cigarettes, the wouldn’t ban vaping. How come you can still buy cigarettes in Massachusetts? How come you can still buy menthol cigarettes in Massachusetts? They don’t care about the health of people they care about the money.”