FDA: Convenience Store Tobacco "Manufacturing"

So let's take a look at this video:

Here we see someone testing a device (its called, ironically, a "pusher") for a retail store that dispenses cigarettes.  This fits into a larger device like this:

No doubt you've seen these in convenience stores - like every convenience store in the USA and probably most of the world.

Cigarettes, you see, arrive from the manufacturer at the retailers store in something like this:

A large box with many cartons.

Inside a cigarette "carton" you will find individual packs of cigarettes organized much like this "carton" of coils:

Oh wait, I guess cigarettes are in cartons like this:

I wonder what the difference is?

After all both are "tobacco products", er, well, the box of coils might be a tobacco product unless it was used for vaping weed...

If the convenience store retailers takes the carton of Marlboros apart is he not "manufacturing tobacco" just like the poor SOB running a vape shop and taking a single coil out of a box?

I have to break the "seal" on the carton.

I have to take the carton out of a larger box.

Why is this magically (and I do mean magically) different for folks with a vape shop?

(Note: One could argue, I suppose, the "coils" are stuck together by packaging and hence make a single "unit" of some sort.   But then again, disassembling things is not the same as "assembling" things.  The box of coils is not sealed, like the carton of cigarettes above, its sort of like the "box" that ships from the cigarette manufacturer...)

The distinction is pure regulatory bullshit.

(See this video linked below.  Look, the guy is taking cigarettes out of the shipping box and then out of the carton and putting them into a "pusher" as above...

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/cigarettes-are-displayed-purchased-and-stocked-at-the-news-footage/452076842 )

(It's hard to find any videos of people unpacking cigarettes and putting them on retail shelves its so common and ordinary.)

And what if, in the convenience store, I take the cellophane off the cigarette pack and ask the clerk to throw it away?  Wouldn't the clerk by consorting with their employer to "manufacture" tobacco?

Or what if I have arthritis and I ask the clerk to open the pack for me?

After all, if I buy the cigarettes the clerk and the convenience store no longer own them.

I own them.

So if I ask you to do a favor for me with something I own what's the issue?

The FDA themselves in videos say its only if the retailer "does something" is it manufacturing?

Like "assemble" a collection of cigarette packs into a "machine" like a pusher?

Certainly I could purchase a "pusher" and even buy cigarettes at a store that subsequently goes out of business, and, at the going out of business sale, I could also buy the "pusher".

I got news for you FDA, retailers, at least according to your new regulations, are "manufacturing" things every day.

Come on FDA, why is my local convenience store not manufacturing???

Isn't this just "selective enforcement...?" There are 155,000 convenience stores in the US along.

Someone should go around and take videos of this stuff.