Bills seek to douse electronic cigarettes

Consumers must prove that they are 18 years old before purchasing tobacco products, but no such restriction exists in Arkansas for the sale of imitation cigarettes that vaporize liquid nicotine instead of burning tobacco.

Lawmakers are considering bills to ban the sale of such products to minors.

On Friday, the House voted 76-8 to approve House Bill 1398 by Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, which would make it a crime for employees of an Arkansas Retail Cigarette and Tobacco Permit holder to sell electronic cigarette products to minors. Offenders could be fined up to $100.

The bill also allows law-enforcement officers to confiscate and destroy a youth’s electronic cigarettes.

“If you’ve got to be 18 to buy a normal cigarette, you should have to be 18 to buy an e-cigarette. I get that you don’t have tobacco there, but it’s still a nicotine delivery system, it’s still addictive,” Leding told reporters before the vote. “For teens, just the act of smoking, the physical having the cigarette there regardless of whether it’s a real cigarette, is still a powerful gateway to actual smoking.”


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A similar piece of legislation, Senate Bill 1087 by Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Beebe, was approved unanimously in the Senate on March 18.

“I felt like it was something we should address this session,” Dismang said. “Since these items are new, we didn’t have anything in our code to allow us to [regulate them] without some additional legislation.”

On March 20, the Senate Education Committee approved Senate Bill 953 by Sen. David Johnson, D-Little Rock, which would prohibit the use of electronic cigarettes on public school property.

“It’s something we don’t want in school, and something we definitely don’t want to see,” Johnson said.

An electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette, simulates a normal cigarette with a battery-powered heating element that creates a nicotine vapor. The user can choose how much nicotine is vaporized. Non-nicotine options are also available.

Available flavors for the nicotine and non-nicotine vapor include mint, peach and cherry.

Also known as personal vaporizers, the devices and accessories can be bought online or can be found in tobacco shops, convenience stores and mall kiosks. They are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, though the FDA has announced that it plans to start regulating them under Chapter IX of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

Leding’s bill regulates only people who hold tobacco permits, leaving out mall kiosks or other places that don’t sell tobacco.

“So the only ones that are going to be looked upon, stings being done, are the ones that hold tobacco permits,” Ann Hines, executive vice president of the Arkansas Oil Marketers Association, told the House Rules Committee on Wednesday.

She questioned how the Tobacco Control Board will enforce the ban if those who sell electronic cigarettes don’t have to register with the state.

“No one knows where they are at. How’s [the] Tobacco Control Board going to enforce this if they don’t know who’s selling the e-cigarettes?” she said.

The bill encourages self-regulation at places that don’t sell tobacco but does not require it.

Rep. John Baine, D-El Dorado, said he voted against Leding’s bill Friday because of the enforcement standards.

“I just want to make sure all the rules are equal and fair, whether it’s a convenience store or whether it’s in a mall,” Baine said. “There would be a certain presumption that the convenience stores were being held to a higher standard. My attitude is, if it’s good for one, it’s good for another.”

The FDA questions the safety of e-cigarettes, saying that because the nicotine delivery system hasn’t been fully studied, consumers have no way of knowing whether the products are safe.

“If the FDA does not know whether or not these are harmful, how can we start passing laws in Arkansas regulating them?” Hines said.

Hines said convenience stores recognize that the state will regulate the sale of electronic cigarettes at some point, but she asked the Legislature to wait until the FDA sets regulations.

“If you pass any of the bills you have in here, you are putting the regulated community at risk,” Hines told the committee. “If the FDA comes in and they regulate them, we have to change all of our training programs and go back and train all those 20,000 clerks again. We just want one regulation to deal with. We would prefer that you wait.”

Dismang said he doesn’t think a delay is necessary.

“I’m not personally a fan of waiting for the federal government to do something we should be doing on our own,” he said.

The FDA has also expressed concerns that e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other nicotine products, including conventional cigarettes.

According to 2011 data from the Arkansas Department of Health, 18.2 percent of students in grades 9-12 reported having smoked cigarettes on one or more days in the past 30 days. The national rate that year was 18.1 percent of high school students.

Of people over age 18, 22.9 percent of Arkansans were smokers in 2011, according to the data. Nationwide, 17.3 percent of adult Americans were smokers that year, according to the report.

About 100 high school aged students with the Arkansas Youth Leadership Initiative attended various legislative committees last week. Several testified in favor of the electronic cigarette restrictions.

“It’s obviously targeted toward the younger audience,” Morgan Smith, a college student with the Initiative, told the House Rules Committee while holding up an e-cigarette advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine. “I don’t know if anybody in this room would read this magazine besides a younger person.”

She spoke about encountering electronic cigarette salesmen at mall kiosks.

“I’ve been approached numerous times, my little cousins have been approached who are so much younger, they are freshmen and sophomores in high school, obviously minors that are approached by these people selling these e-cigarettes, and it’s a big problem because nicotine is obviously addictive,” Smith said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/25/2013

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