Category: Vaping News

“Tobacco legislation and regulation is constantly under review at the local, state and federal levels. In this monthly roundup, Convenience Store News highlights the latest proposals and approved changes happening across the United States.”

ARTICLE LINK: December 2020 Legislative & Regulatory Roundup

“Vaping is an excellent and reduced harm choice for smokers who have tried everything and cannot quit. But for it to work, it has to be readily accessible and treated as a consumer product. We need regulation to ensure safety of vaping devices and ingredients and ensure that vaping is taxed proportionately as a much safer consumer item. But where the government is now, vaping is essentially unregulated, allowing people to import their nicotine liquid from anywhere while vapers are forced to find a doctor to write their prescription, just so they can make the less harmful decision to get off cigarettes. On December 21, the TGA announced that from October 1, 2021, vapers would require a doctor’s prescription to obtain vaping devices and certain other nicotine products. We are the only Western country in the world that requires a prescription for a much less harmful alternative and allows its citizens to buy the deadly product on every corner. In recent years, countless stories have emerged of people smoking packs of cigarettes a day for decades stopping overnight by switching to vaping. It is the right public health decision to make. It is the right moral and business decision to make.”

ARTICLE LINK:   Vaping is safer than smoking but needs to be regulated

“The state is taking a more assertive approach to the regulation of tobacco sales by requiring licenses for the sale, distribution or manufacture of all tobacco products under a law signed in the spring of 2020. On July 1, New Mexico increased the minimum age limit to 21 for the purchase of all tobacco products including vaping products. Repeated infractions can lead to fines of up to $10,000 and license revocation.”

ARTICLE LINK:   New year brings new oversight of vaping

“Smokers can expect to pay more for tobacco products in 2021 as Oregon raises the tax on cigarettes – and imposes a tax on electronic cigarettes for the first time. Inhalant delivery systems, such as vaping and e-cigarette products, will be taxed at a rate of 65% of the wholesale purchase price.”

ARTICLE LINK:   Oregon cigarette tax goes up $2 per pack on January 1; e-cigs taxed for first time

“Come 2021 the residents of Concord, California, have something exciting to look forward to: not being allowed to vape on their own balconies. On January 1, the small Bay Area city’s ban on smoking in multi-unit properties takes effect. Once it does, anyone living on a property with two or more units—which would include apartment buildings, duplexes, mobile home parks, and residential care facilities—won’t be allowed to smoke or vape inside their residence. Stepping out onto the porch isn’t an option either, as the new policy prohibits smoking in “exclusive-use unenclosed areas” like decks and balconies. Apartment dwellers who violate that lease condition could be subject to civil lawsuits from their landlord or any of their neighbors. San Francisco explicitly barred tenants from being evicted if they violated the city’s smoking ban. Concord’s policy has no such provision.”

ARTICLE LINK:
This California City Will Let the Neighbors Sue You for Vaping on Your Own Balcony

“One of the most common reasons why 18650 batteries catch fire or explode is because they’re not being transported in a safe manner. Never carry loose 18650 batteries in your pocket because the probability that the batteries will touch other metals objects such as keys, coins or other batteries is too high. A lithium-ion battery can react violently in the event of a short circuit, and a short circuit can happen if a metal object touches the battery’s positive pole – and any other metal part of the battery – simultaneously. Even a sudden discharge of static electricity – which can happen, for example, if you’re wearing synthetic pants – can be a dangerous situation if you’re carrying a lithium-ion battery in your pocket. The only safe way to transport an 18650 battery is in a hard carrier that protects the battery and prevents it from touching other metal objects.”

ARTICLE LINK:   How to use, charge and transport 18650 batteries safely

“Reducing nicotine levels won’t stop kids from vaping, a tobacco company insists. Under the proposed regulations, the government would impose a ban on the sale of vaping products that contain nicotine levels greater than 20 mg/ml. The regulations are fashioned after vaping rules in the European Union. Imperial Tobacco says the Canadian vaping and cigarette market is very different from the EU market as Canadian cigarettes have a higher nicotine level than European smokes. “Capping nicotine levels at 20 mg/ml will mean that smokers will not be able to find a product that satisfies them, and many former smokers who now vape will go back to smoking,” the company said in a release. “The proposed 20 mg/ml is too low and will not satisfy a portion of current Canadian vapers nor smokers seeking a less harmful alternative,” said Gagnon. “It is hard to understand why the government would enact a policy measure knowing full well it will drive up the number of smokers in Canada”.”

ARTICLE LINK:   Tobacco lobby objects to proposed plan to lower nicotine vaping levels

“The U.K. Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) is calling on the government to reconsider classifying vape shops as essential retail, as parts of the U.K. enter restrictions under tier 4 and with potential lockdowns following in the new year. Dunne said that vape retail stores are well equipped to be COVID compliant. “Our stores do not deal with the high volumes of traffic like other outlets and are easily able to control the number of customers in a store at any one time,” he said. “We want to make sure that smokers who might be aiming to quit in the New Year, and those who already vape, can continue to gain access to vape devices, e-liquids, and specialist advice that our members can offer.””

ARTICLE LINK:   UKVIA Asks Britain to Label Vape Shops as Essential

“California state officials have agreed to delay the effective date of what state lawmakers intended as a Jan. 1 ban on flavored tobacco products, after opponents led by tobacco companies said they filed enough signatures to put the new law to a statewide vote. The secretary of state and attorney general’s offices won’t enforce the pending law until county clerks have enough time to verify that there are at least 623,000 valid signatures. Inyo County’s top elections official, Kammi Foote, this week said she was referring the petition there to the county district attorney because her office found a high level of signatures that do not match county records. What supporters called one of the nation’s strongest such laws would not make it a crime for people to possess flavored tobacco products, but bans retailers from selling them.”

ARTICLE LINK:   Effective date delayed for California’s flavored tobacco ban

“Buried in the enormous spending/COVID-19 relief package that Congress approved this week is a bill that imposes new restrictions on the distribution of all vaping equipment, parts, and supplies, including a ban on mailing them. The provision illustrates not only how utterly irrelevant legislation can be slipped into unread, must-pass bills but also how Congress warps reality through legal fictions and uses save-the-children rhetoric to justify restricting adults’ choices. Title VI of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which appears on page 5,136 of the 5,593-page bill. The Feinstein bill further expands the Jenkins Act, redefining cigarette to include “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” which are not cigarettes. It also counterintuitively defines electronic nicotine delivery system to include products that do not deliver nicotine: “any electronic device that, through an aerosolized solution, delivers nicotine, flavor, or any other substance to the user inhaling from the device” (emphasis added). That category includes e-cigarettes, e-hookahs, e-cigars, electronic pipes, vape pens, and refillable vaporizers, plus “any component, liquid, part, or accessory” used with those devices, whether shipped together with them or sold separately. In other words, every product related to vaping, whether of nicotine, THC, CBD, lavender, or anything else, will now be subject to the Jenkins Act’s burdensome requirements.”

ARTICLE LINK:

To Protect ‘Children’ From E-Cigarettes, Congress Imposes New Restrictions on Everything Related to Vaping of Any Kind