Ron Marshall goes off

The Hamilton Republican, who resigned from the Legislature on Monday, explains his abrupt departure and the vape industry drama that sparked it.

Welcome to Big Sky Chat House—a newsletter about arts, culture and politics in Montana.

If you found this email in your Promotions folder, please move it to your Primary inbox! That will make it easier to find down the road, and teach Gmail to send it to other subscribers’ Primary inboxes as well.

---

On Monday morning, then-state Representative Ron Marshall posted a surprising message on X. “I will be resigning from my position as representative for Montana House District 87, effective at 12 noon today,” he wrote. “The corruption is more than I can stand. Lobbyists run this country. [The] people have no voice.”

Marshall, a third-term Republican lawmaker, made his decision following moves by the Legislature to regulate—and, arguably, handicap—the vape industry, in which he is directly invested: Marshall owns two vape shops in Montana.

Most significantly, in late February, the House Taxation Committee advanced HB 525. The bill was endorsed by tobacco powerhouses Altria and RJ Reynolds, and cleared the committee unanimously despite broad opposition from vape shop owners and employees across the state. The bill intends to limit unregulated products; it would only permit products approved by the FDA and registered by the Montana Attorney General. Currently, only 34 products meet the FDA qualification.

Yet Marshall argues that his decision to resign was about more than policy. Read on as he digs into the bills that impact the vape industry, as well as the accusations of corruption that he cited in his announcement and claims of personal attacks that he says compelled him to leave the Legislature.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

---

Max: Can you tell me about how you got into the vape industry?

Ron Marshall: It started in 2013. My wife had a respiratory infection. Both of us had been smoking for 30 years plus. As any former smoker can tell you, when you can't have a cigarette, they call it jonesing. Finally somebody told her, hey, you might want to try one of these electric cigarettes. They were pretty new to the market back then. After 13 days, everything was cleared up and she tried to light a cigarette and was like, yuck.

I was still smoking at the time. I drove for an oilfield outfit in Billings. I'm like, if it worked for her, maybe it'll work for me. So I started using one. It took me about ten days, and then I was done [with cigarettes]. I’d tried patches and gum and all that garbage, and it never worked.

We were sitting around talking one night, and I told her, why don't you just open up a shop? You couldn't get anything here then; everything was online and you weren't sure [about the products you would] buy online…buyer beware. We scraped together some money and opened up a little storefront down in Belgrade.

It took a couple years. We built it up, and we opened a second location, and it just took off. It got busy enough that I came off the road and started doing it full time.

What impact do you think the new bill, HB 525, could have on the industry?

I was in the room [during the hearing]. I didn't testify, but I listened. What the shop owners were saying, that's the absolute truth. It would close down every vape store in Montana. If the only products left are that of Big Tobacco, well, people are gonna have two choices. You either use their product or you go back to smoking. And most people that have gone to vaping did that to get away from smoking. By wiping all that out, the state is opening itself up to a regulatory takings lawsuit, which is already happening in other states where they passed this bill, by the way.

It's a bill written by Big Tobacco for Big Tobacco. [Before the hearing], I did approach one of the members on the committee, and I said, ‘Hey, just do an amendment to ban all disposables. The legitimate vape shops will be happier than heck with that.

That bill is an industry killer.

The bill would only allow FDA-approved products, right?

There are 34 approved products, and guess who owns them all?

Literally every last one?

Yeah.

If the bill moves forward, why not just carry the FDA approved products and stay open?

Well, those FDA approved products are all available in every gas station, convenience store, grocery store. To be a specialty retailer…I mean, good luck.

[Big Tobacco’s products are] not that good. Most people in the vaping industry do not like them.

I remember that coming up in the hearing.

Once they got their foot in the door, they've been working behind the scenes to stifle anything that impacts them. How do you corner the market? You use the government to take out your competition, and that's exactly what they're doing.

After you made your announcement that you were going to resign, did you receive any reactions that surprised you?

I heard from a couple of commissioners and agency directors that were very supportive. The Attorney General's office is probably still dancing in the street for me leaving. Some other people up there are probably happy I left. I've gotten some pretty good messages from former colleagues. But then again, I've gotten a big quiet shoulder from most of them. I expect nothing different. The dynamics of this session up there are just wild. I don't even know how to describe it. It's crazy.

I read comments online from supporters of yours who basically asked, if it’s so bad, why not stay and fight? What’s your response to them?

Some of the things that had already happened to me and my family up there were harassment: going out to dinner and being harassed by lobbyists, being harassed behind the scenes, having people say things that I did or didn't do, which I could disprove because I either had witnesses or it was on the record in the hearing room.

[HB 525 passed 21-0 in committee], and I'm sitting there looking at leadership and some other solid conservative Republicans on that committee. And I'm like, how the heck can you vote for attacks like that? And the only way that could have happened is if leadership gave the okay. I'd been told by leadership not to worry about it. ‘We'll take care of it. It won't pass.’ And it goes into a committee and comes out worse [via an amendment to add a 50% wholesale tax].

Those bills are decided long before the hearings are even scheduled. That's what I'm trying to tell people. Your voice up there is basically smoke and mirrors. You go to that hearing thinking you might be able to say something to sway the legislators. No. The only reason they do that is because it's in the law. They have to do that public comment.

I see these poor people come in there, the regular everyday citizen, to testify in these committees, you know? And I'm sitting there thinking, my gosh, it's supposed to be the people's house. But you're outgunned.

There's 700 registered lobbyists in the state of Montana for 150 legislators?¹ We have a problem.

Some of the young freshman legislators have no idea. They go out to dinner with the lobbyists, or they do this or do that. You don't understand—you do that now, there's strings attached to this stuff.

By Sunday, I had pretty much made my decision. And I went to clean up my desk and get all my stuff. The Speaker [Representative Brandon Ler] came in to talk to me, and he had mentioned something about one of the lobbyists saying he had five different Representatives that wanted to file an ethics complaint against me.

And I asked him, well, who was it? And he says, well, I don't know. He says, I've asked around, I can't find anybody. And I'm like, huh, that's a pretty sharp hint.

Then he asked me to stay until Friday, because they may need my vote on the floor for transmittal. It's just like, I'm gonna do you a favor, buddy? I don't think so.

What are your thoughts on how to reform that dynamic?

First of all, you get rid of all the lobbying up there. The lobbying is just out of control. They sponsor fundraisers and dinners and all this other garbage. You see it every day in the Capitol. In the first half of the session, somebody's got something set up in the rotunda, and it's just not there for entertainment, or education, as they call it. They're gonna talk to you. They're gonna lobby you.

Obviously lobbying is not something new in 2025. Beyond the fact that you’re invested in the vape industry, what else made this moment a tipping point for you?

Just going out to have dinner with a friend, getting up to leave and getting harassed. At what point does policy become personal attacks? And to have it continue and then to get “wink, wink, nod, nod” threats; it just started escalating.

In light of the experience you've had, do you have any particular feelings about Citizens United and how money impacts political campaigns?

I believe everybody should have a voice. And as a business owner, I should be able to support a candidate that's gonna be friendly to business. But at what point do you say, okay, that's too much money?

You look at the millions and billions of dollars spent in the election cycle, and people are still whining about, well, we need money for this, and we need money for that. Well, most of it went in the landfill.

Big Pharma spends [billions of dollars] a year on advertising. That money could be going to better, useful things like, I don't know, lower drug prices. It's almost criminal; you can advertise that, but you can't advertise marijuana in Montana.

What's next for you? Are you gonna team up with Bernie Sanders or something?

No (laughs). No, definitely not. I'm not teaming up with Bernie.

We'll continue to track some of this stuff and see what goes on. In the meantime, I'm going to take care of some family business. We've got our shops and everything. We're just gonna think about, do we even want to stay in the state? Do we want to downsize and actually retire?

I was able to do some good work up there, I think. I tried to run a bunch of bills that would've helped the people and put the screws to some of this government waste and overspending and wrap a few ropes around some of these bureaucrats. Sometimes you can get a little win here and a little win there. I gave it my best shot. But yeah, this is just too much. It becomes personal.

1. That figure includes both lobbyists and principals.