NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — This week, a new ordinance was passed in North Little Rock, limiting where new vape stores can open.
But it's not lights out for the ones already in business, as a new vape shop is set to open this month in the Park Hill neighborhood, leaving some residents asking for more to be done.
North Little Rock Mayor Terry Hartwick said this comes as an update to a decade-old ordinance regarding tobacco sales.
Hartwick added that the city attorney explained on Monday that vape shops fall under a different category than tobacco shops and can't be removed from where they are now, but they can be regulated moving forward.
David Larson owns Angry Dave's Bicycles, a Park Hill business located near where the new vape shop is opening.
Larson isn't happy, to say the least.
"The lighting on it is hideous," Larson said. "The clientele is not anything that would be interested in coming over here."
VIP Smoke Shop is opening this month, and after some pushback from residents like Larson, the city put restrictions on new vape shops coming to town.
"We came up with an overlay plan and kind of had a vision of where we wanted to see Park Hill go," Larson said. "That is exactly the type of store we did not want here."
The new ordinance keeps vape shops away from residential areas unless given special permission. Newly-built vape shops must also be 1,500 feet from schools and places of worship.
"Regulation covers e-cigarettes, tobacco, cigars, whatever because it covers the whole gamut," Hartwick said. "Anybody else coming up there? It's not going to be allowed."
Because vape and tobacco shops are classified differently, Hartwick said the original tobacco restrictions from about a decade ago, won't apply to vape shops already open.
"It's going to be allowed right now," Hartwick said. "Just because more or less when [the city] did that... say 10 years ago, [people] didn't even know what those things were."
However, under these restrictions, vape shops will have to sell less than 50% of tobacco products to stay.
"When you monitor it, you got to look at how the taxes are on cigarettes, vaping and cigars," Hartwick said. "They all have a different tax, so we'll try to monitor that way to see what's lawful."
As for the ones sticking around, Larson is still pushing for more restrictions.
"We're not done by any stretch of imagination," Larson said. "I don't know what we can do about this one, but we have stopped anymore from coming in."
We visited the VIP Smoke Shop, and while employees declined to interview on camera, some said they view themselves as a community store like any other local shop.