DC Vapor founders Barry Vuong (left) and Toan Nguyen (right) and marketing director Peter Bui (center) plan to bring an e-cigarette and vapor accessory store and cafe to Campus Village shopping center in College Park.
This spring, two university alumni will open an electronic cigarette and vapor accessory store a few blocks from the campus.
Vape Exchange in the Campus Village shopping center is expected to open in the next two months, said Barry Vuong, one of the shop’s founders. Vuong founded DC Vapor in Wheaton with Toan Nguyen in 2013, and the duo has decided to expand to a second location.
In addition to a retail section, Vape Exchange will include a small cafe and lounge area intended to foster a community among e-cigarette smokers, Vuong said.
“If they want to enjoy vaping, we don’t want them to have to go to another spot where they’re exposed to secondhand smoke if they don’t want to,” Vuong said. “We want it to be as inviting as possible.”
E-cigarettes are smokeless, battery-powered devices that convert liquid nicotine into a vapor the user inhales. DC Vapor’s owners moved to College Park because they saw an opportunity to introduce an alternative way of smoking to faculty and students.
“The main reason we want to come to a college town is to promote students to be healthier,” said DC Vapor marketing Director Peter Bui. “The whole health thing is a trend right now, and this is a lot healthier than cigarettes and cigars.”
Brayton Metzger, a junior education and history major, said he smoked cigarettes for seven years before switching to e-cigarettes eight months ago. E-cigarettes have made him feel healthier, saved him more than $600 since he began using them and rid him of the cigarette smell, he said.
“I’m addicted to nicotine, but it’s more than that. It’s the habit of smoking I enjoy,” Metzger said. “It’s about being able to come out here after class and just chill for a few minutes and smoke, but not have all the smell or nearly as bad health effects.”
DC Vapor sells a starter kit that costs $34.99 online. E-liquid refills start at $5, Vuong said. The DC Vapor store in Wheaton sells more than 100 flavors of cartridges, the most popular being tobacco and menthol because they taste similar to traditional cigarettes, Nguyen said.
College Park Economic Development Coordinator Michael Stiefvater said the store will provide a unique service that will attract more consumers to the city.
“It’s nice to diversify our stores a little bit,” Stiefvater said. “Especially by bringing a nonrestaurant, those that visit the store will support the restaurants around it.”
A bill in the state’s General Assembly presents a potential obstacle for the store by redefining “smoking” under the Clean Indoor Air Act to include electronic smoking devices. If passed, House Bill 1291, sponsored by Del. Aruna Miller (D-Montgomery), would ban the use of e-cigarettes in bars and restaurants.
A 2012 study published in science journal Inhalation Toxicology found that e-cigarettes “produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes.” The study concluded there was “no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions.”
Though scientists are still studying the potential dangers of e-cigarettes to smokers and people around them, e-cigarettes could help smokers quit, Vuong said, because they provide nicotine to feed a smoker’s addiction while leaving out other chemicals found in traditional cigarettes.
“A lot of people kind of generalize smoking and vaping as the same thing. But smoking requires combustion, something to light it. With vaping, there’s no combustion. It’s just electricity that runs through wire and heats up the wick to create vape,” Vuong said. “There’s no tar, there’s no arsenic, there are no carcinogens.”
