A San Francisco lawmaker introduced legislation Monday, Jan. 26, that would enforce statewide regulations on e-cigarettes.
“No tobacco product should be exempt from California’s smoke-free laws simply because it’s sold in a modern or trendy disguise,” state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who introduced the bill, said in a statement. “Addiction is what’s really being sold.”
Under the bill, e-cigarettes would be added to the list of tobacco products in California, and would prohibit them from being smoked at hospitals, restaurants, schools and workplaces. Additionally, it would increase penalties for selling these to minors, a ban that went into place in 2010.
“Amazingly, this is now a multi-billion dollar industry wholly unregulated, untaxed operating on its own,” Leno said, according to ABC. “And we know there is great risk to public health, to individual health of these users.”
Second-hand e-cigarette smoke contains carcinogens and can put children who might be near such smoke at risk, said Kimberly Amazeen, vice president of public policy and advocacy for the American Lung Association in California, Reuters reported. In a statement, Amazeen said chemicals found from e-cigarette emissions include benzene, formaldehyde and nitrosamines.
A study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that e-cigarette users who increase the heat are exposed to greater levels of formaldehyde. But Christopher Chin, owner of Gone With The Smoke vapor lounge in San Francisco, said this is not something typical users do.
“It’s kind of like saying, you know, cars are dangerous if you drive them at 800 miles an hour around a curve when you’re eating a bagel,” he told ABC. “So yes, it’s the same thing. If they test it in a manner that it’s not supposed to, of course it’ll be dangerous.
Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, said the bill irresponsibly suggests to California’s 3.6 million adult smokers that e-cigarettes emissions are not less hazardous than cigarette smoke.
“California smokers deserve truthful information about smoke-free alternatives, not hype and conjecture designed to scare them away from attempting to quit with these innovative technology products,” Conley said in a statement.
The FDA has proposals giving it the authority to review and regulate e-cigarettes, but nothing has been finalized. John Balmes, an environmental scientist at UC Berkeley, told ABC News he is in favor of the FDA getting involved, but also thinks the devices could help traditional smokers quit.
“It’s better, I think, health wise than smoking cigarettes,” he said. “Even though it’s probably not totally safe.”
The bill, SB140, is likely to face opposition from tobacco groups that have managed to block similar legislation in California, according to the Associated Press. A bill introduced in 2013 to limit public vaping ended up as a proposal to prohibit selling e-cigarettes in vending machines, which still failed to pass the Legislature.
However, if the bill becomes law, California would become the fourth state in the country to treat e-cigarettes like regular cigarettes. New Jersey, North Dakota and Utah already restrict e-cigarette use in designated smoke-free public areas. More than 12 other states have already restricted their use in specific public places, including daycares, hospitals, prisons, schools and universities.
In California, 122 cities and counties have banned the use of e-cigarettes in certain public places.
Separately but similarly, the Bay Area Rapid Transit board is scheduled to vote Feb. 12 on a ban on e-cigarettes in trains and at stations of Northern California public transit service.
“If someone pulls out one of these devices on a crowded BART train, you’re stuck,” said Serena Chen, regional advocacy director for the American Lung Society in California, as reported by the Contra Costa Times. “It’s not harmless water vapor. They are particles of nicotine and other substances that are listed as harmful toxics.”
Conley said the measure overreaches by banning e-cigarettes on all BART property.
“As a matter of etiquette, you can see a ban on trains,” he told the Contra Costa Times. “But the proposal goes too far and it’s emblematic of the anti-cigarette groups treating electronic cigarettes the same.”
(With reports from ABC News, Associated Press, Contra Costa Times and Reuters)
