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PAGE 2 | APRIL 6 - 12, 2023
City’s Vape Shops Multiply With Well-Stocked Shelves
by Charlie Clark
Falls Church News-Press
COVID forced the demise of many local small businesses; a dramatic exception has been the proliferating vape and tobacco shops. The combined offerings of traditional cigars, ancient-style hookah pipes and digital delivery gadgets makes for colorful displays on opulently packed shelves. A recent visit to Tobacco King at 336 South Washington St. provided an eyeful: Bob Marley rolling papers; “Gambler” packs of 250 cigarette filter tubes; glass Hookah pipes in varying colors; Cherokee menthol green pipe tobacco; herbal magical butter; lighters and ashtrays; cinnamon apple odor “exterminator candles” and a glassed-off room for pricey cigars. The subculture of products expands to hunting knives, serving trays decorated with trucks and motorcycles, and various oils, tinctures and lotions. Another popular offering is Green Vein Kratom, a green-powdered plantbased herbal substance with pleasurable stimulant effects—currently legal but under government review. Slapped on the front door is the “You must be 21 to enter” sign. (Repeated on its website.) And products such as e-cigarette flash drives (they can resemble school supplies) under labels such as GeekVape and Sky Solo display the label: “Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.” According to Falls Church City business tax records, vape shops that opened since 2020 number at least three in Falls Church proper: another Tobacco King at 111 West Broad St. and a “Fine Cigars” Eastern Smoke Shop at 1055 West Broad St. The latter (proprietor Marwan Alkhaled) carries the stimulant CBD (legal in Virginia since 2019) and fruit-flavored Gummy Bears favored by vapers. A Paradise Smoke Shop at 800 W. Broad St. was registered by the accounting firm of Riley and Nguyen LLC before it folded. Tobacco King’s reach is the widest, registered under variations of the name Saleh Omar
Salim, with Fairfax locations on Leesburg Pike and Arlington Blvd., as well as other Virginia outlets in Arlington, Woodbridge, Sterling, Fredericksburg, Harrisonburg, Glen Allen and Blue Ridge. “It’s roughly 80-90 stores, I’ve lost count,” said “Sammy,” as the CEO asked to be called in an interview with the News-Press. He employs 200, with no investors. The reason Tobacco King shelves are well-stocked is that “product availability is really important,” he said. “You want to make sure they are ready for customers, so they can see the products about. You can’t say, Come back tomorrow,” so the risk of oversupply pays off. Sammy is confident in his chain’s employees’ ability to enforce the laws against selling vaping and tobacco products to minors. “Our stores are registered, and they can’t conduct a transaction until they confirm the buyer is 21 or over,” he said. “There’s a couple of steps, including being able to read the age on the I.D.” And to purchase, a buyer must wait for the clerk to scan and create an “MSA” (Management Science Associates) report on who made the sale. Sellers can be fined under federal law. Equipment and training for I.D. enforcement are expensive, he notes. The Food and Drug Administration last October formally cracked down on Juul’s market penetration after years of watching its growing popularity among youth (delayed by an administrative hold). There were legal complaints to settle, and fruit-flavored products were halted. The Falls Church School Board in August 2019 adopted a policy that “unequivocally prohibits the use or possession of any tobacco product or nicotine vapor product on school buses, on school property, or at on-site or off-site school-sponsored activities,” communications director John Wesley Brett told the NewsPress. “The policy aligns with the school district’s commitment to creating a safe and healthy environment for all students, staff, and visitors. While it is impossible to eliminate the possibility of vaping incidents occurring in the school district, we continue to
monitor and address any vaping incidents that may arise.” Sammy, who was raised in Bakersfield, Calif., takes a philosophical view on addiction, based on personal experience. “Cigarettes and tobacco have been in the world for the longest time, the 1700s, 1800s, since the Stone Age. It’s the same as yesterday’s product, so you can’t say it’s a new harmful product,” he specifies. “But morality-wise, it’s definitely something my wife does not support” — to the point where at first she refused to marry him. “I used to smoke cigarettes, and then in 2014 when Juul came out, I chose to vape,” Sammy says. “I started sleeping better and could run a mile, but when I was smoking a pack a day, I couldn’t do a two-minute run. My mucus was thick and black for the first six months after I quit smoking. Juul helped me quit.” But Sammy notes that “everyone has an opinion, and I respect the opinions.” He “understands our business is not loved by many, but a lot of people are using it” in lobbying. Some of those politicians, he says, citing stores’ facial recognition software, come in to buy cigars. “Part of those fighting the movement are in it,” he says. “They’re against it, I understand, but it’s an adult choice.” Asked for his reaction should the Virginia government permit sale of cannabis, Sammy said it would “not be a problem, and will kill the black market, which is a big plus.” Years ago, when marijuana was sold on the street, “You didn’t know what was in it,” as he heard first-hand from customers. Street dope could be half impurities. If he did sell cannabis, Sammy added, he “would need to scale up” and enhance property security. Is the Falls Church market anything special? “Businesswise, it’s not different compared with other counties or cities,” he says. “Since the vape industry started, we’ve sold more vapor than tobacco,” Beginning July 1, 2020, liquid nicotine (“vape juice”) became subject to Virginia’s tobacco products tax at a rate of 6.6¢ per milliliter. “If I were a tobacco company,” Sammy says, “I would be afraid of vape.”
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Fa l l s C h u r c h
NEWS BRIEFS Council Unhappy With Plan for Relocated Polling Places At Monday’s Falls Church City Council work session, most on the Council expressed concern or outright opposition to the Voter Registrar David Bjerke’s plan to relocate two of the City’s three polling stations. The proposal is to move the Ward 2 location out of that ward from the longstanding Falls Green location to the Community Center and to move the Ward 3 location out of the Community Center to Meridian High School, leaving Ward 1 at its current Oak Street Elementary location. It also involved reconfiguring the wards to make sure they are more balanced in terms of population numbers and that none have more than 4,000 registered voters, which if so would require an additional ward.
Local Signals Won’t Be Fixed for 15-20 Weeks The traffic signals at the intersection of Lincoln and Great Falls in F.C. that are currently flashing and out of service won’t get repaired for 15 to 20 weeks, the F.C. City Council was told at its work session this Monday. The problem seems to require the need for a cabinet replacement, Public Works officials reported.
Lawrence Webb Seeks Fairfax School Board Slot It’s been just over two years since Lawrence Webb resigned his Falls Church School Board post to move to Fairfax County, after serving on the City Council and School Board in F.C. for 12 of the 15 years he lived here. Now living in Springfield, Webb announced this week for one of three at-large seats on the Fairfax County School Board to be decided in a June primary and November general election. On his website, Webb touts himself as “the first openly gay African American elected official in the
Commonwealth of Virginia,” being “a leader on statewide issues in education and justice, among other things having served on the board of Equality Virginia, working to secure rights for members of Virginia’s LGBTQ community.”
13 Slots to Fill in Fairfax County in 2023 Election There are no less than 13 elected posts that voters in Fairfax County will be asked to fill in 2023, beginning with a primary on June 20 through the general election on November 7. The positions include the following: Member of the Virginia House of Delegates — 2-year term; Member of the Virginia Senate — 4-year term; Commonwealth’s Attorney — 4-year term; Clerk of the Circuit Court — 8-year term; Sheriff — 4-year term; Chairman of the Board of Supervisors — 4-year term; District Member of the Board of Supervisors — 4-year term; At-Large Members (vote for 3) of the School Board — 4-year term; District Member of the School Board — 4-year term; Directors (vote for 3) of the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District — 4-year term.
Sen. Saslaw’s $9 Million For F.C. Stormwater Pending An initiative by State Sen. Dick Saslaw to provide $9 million in state funds to help address the City’s stormwater management needs, is being held up in Richmond as the legislature has yet to hammer out the final parameters of the annual budget. Meanwhile, the City has been asked by U.S. Congressman Don Beyer and U.S. Senator Mark Warner to submit requests for $3 million from each for pressing F.C. infrastructure needs.