Hmm... Ec101 - maybe you should have tried to stay awake during the second term
There's a term for when unrelated parties carry some or all of the costs - "Externality". For simpler examples try "public good", "tragedy of the commons" or go all out and look at "Coase's Theorem".
Everything that you say is likely correct for vapes, in general. But one specific counter example is D9/W9/UP is in CA, with a corporate tax, which must be borne by the producer in an efficient competitive market (you could argue that vaporizers aren't this, because different products aren't fungible). A competitor elsewhere could have lower costs, but this cannot be passed on or the consumer will just buy the less expensive version. (Gee, most of those of you in CA pay higher personal taxes than the corporate rate!). Remember the that the efficiency criteria that marginal cost of production equals price does NOT include any fixed costs of business (of course this doesn't hold for monopolies or oligopolies, or inefficient markets - this case may be all of these).
The best examples for most people would be what you pay for water, electricity and telephone service. Basically anytime there is a tax, fee, duty or subsidy involved - Consumers (and/or producers) may not be paying all of the costs. And when you see those line items like "tax recover fee - not a government fee", it means that your local PUC has allowed a utility to pass on a tax which your legislature "designed" to be borne by the producer instead of the consumer, but a different group of politicians decided otherwise.
Milk, corn and oil are good examples of commodities where costs are only partly related to retail (i.e. consumer's) prices. And of course, every related product is affected too - Bacon comes from pigs who are fed corn - Gasoline incorporates mandated and subsidized ethanol from corn, at least in NY and CA. Etc. Ad nauseum
Quick check of an old copy of Samuelson - Try looking up "Pigovian tax" - That should have been in any first year economics course (way before micro becomes all diffEQs and macro because all linear programming and game theory).
Again, as far as vapes, your (mostly) correct. For "any industry" you are very far from the mark. Good gear costs - absolutely, but who pays...
BTW. A Mercedes SL550 costs significantly less today than an SL500 did 16 years ago. Mercedes hasn't lowered their prices, but the luxury tax on that car has fallen by about 3/4 this century. I'd guess the Lamborghini is similar (but sorry - I've not actually priced them myself).
-NDA
for this patient's O-PHOS 
,patiently awaiting flower duty ~
or Professor G ? ~ Patience most def a 
; only question is W H E N 
can we expect delivery on this H E R C U L E S 
[ tethered ] offers voltage output up to 4.2 v 
,which will be more than ample 
; or ,oil/wax/budder via 1.5/2.4 carts ['"un"'tethered ] 
psst* ... besides offering an excellent stealth profile [ black ] 
