At City Hall Monday, referendum backers turned in an estimated 34,000 signatures calling for repeal, well above the 19,000 signatures the measure needed to qualify for the ballot. The city clerk has 30 days to verify signatures. If backers meet the threshold, supervisors will decide whether to repeal the law; schedule a special election; or hold an election in June 2018, the date of the next regularly scheduled vote. The latter course is most likely.

Although backed by the tobacco industry, the repeal effort focuses primarily on issues of tobacco “harm reduction.” That’s the idea that health officials ought to promote policies designed to reduce the harmful effects of tobacco and other addictions, rather than insist on a more idealistic, yet less potentially successful, abstinence-based approach. In other words, it might help people if they switch from dangerous behaviors to less-dangerous ones, even if the less-dangerous ones aren’t totally safe.

There’s no debate about the dangers of traditional cigarette smoking and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other combustible tobacco products such as cigarillos and cigars. But the wide-ranging city ban also defines electronic cigarettes as tobacco. Vaping liquids are not actually a tobacco product, but most contain nicotine. All of these liquids are flavored.

Under the new ordinance, retailers will no longer be allowed to sell vaping liquids, which will make it more difficult for cigarette smokers to switch to them. Public Health England, Great Britain’s main public-health agency, deems vaping to be 95 percent safer than smoking. For that reason, the vaping industry, well represented at a Monday news conference on the City Hall steps, depicted the city’s ban as a threat to the public’s health.

As they explain it, under the new law, cigarettes (although not menthol ones, or fruity cigars) can still be sold legally in the city. But less harmful tobacco-related products such as snus (spitless Swedish-style tobacco that is placed under one’s upper lip) and vaping will be outlawed. Those addicted to nicotine will find it easier to just grab a pack of traditional cigarettes, given that these safer alternatives will be off store shelves.

During the debate, city officials rebuffed such harm-reduction arguments. “We’re focusing on flavored products because they are widely considered to be a starter product for future smokers,” said Supervisor Malia Cohen, who introduced the unanimously passed ordinance. She argued that tobacco companies target poor, young and minority communities with flavored products to hook them on a lifetime of nicotine additions.

Ordinance backers depicted vaping as another tool in Big Tobacco’s arsenal. Yet a news story this week from San Francisco’s public-radio station KQED seemed to confirm at least some of the points the vaping supporters were making. “Electronic cigarettes may be a helpful tool for those who are looking to quit smoking, according to a recent study,” noted the report by Anna Kusmer. “This complicates the public health narrative around this new tobacco product, which have grown in popularity in the U.S. over the past decade.” Complicate, it does indeed.

And a new survey from Chris Russell and Neil McKeganey from the Centre for Substance Use Research in Glasgow, Scotland has rebutted the idea of vaping as a gateway to traditional cigarette smoking. The researchers found that: “More than 75 percent of American adult frequent (electronic vaping product, or EVP) users surveyed were cigarette smokers when they began using e-cigarettes and have now successfully quit smoking.” Yet less than “5 percent of current EVP users were non-smokers before beginning e-cigarette use.”

Referendum supporters also pointed to the economic impact of shutting down such a large portion of the city’s convenience-store industry. For instance, possession and use of menthol cigarettes and vaping products will still be legal in San Francisco, but consumers will have to travel to other localities or order the products online. The city’s Office of Small Business opposed the ban because, in part, of the ease of buying products other places.

CNN also reported on some recent data: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that tobacco use among high-school and middle-school students remained unchanged from 2011 to 2016, but that from 2015 to 2016, there were decreases in use of any tobacco product, e-cigarettes and hookahs among high school students. For middle-schoolers, rates of e-cigarette use dropped slightly as well. E-cigarette advocates say that’s evidence vaping is not becoming the teen epidemic that its proponents suggest.

However, California’s Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which oversees spending from the state’s recently enacted $2 a pack cigarette-tax increase, seems to view vaping as just another form of smoking. That’s a prevalent view among state and local health officials, who focus on vaping’s potential health concerns, rather than on the lower risks it creates in comparison to traditional cigarette smoking. They promote the use of medically approved tobacco-cessation devices instead, despite their low rates of success.

The new law’s backers also point to studies that suggest potentially bad health effects from the use of e-cigarettes. But referendum supporters note the irony that San Francisco, a city that has long pioneered harm-reduction policies when it comes to sexual behavior and drug use (safe sex programs and needle exchanges for heroin users), is instead taking a Prohibition-oriented approach when it comes to tobacco products, especially as the state legalizes the once-prohibited marijuana.

The scientific and public-policy debates aren’t going away. But this much is certain. The coming San Francisco referendum will show whether vaping’s supporters will be able to halt the wave of flavored-tobacco bans. If they don’t succeed, there will be little to stop Bay Area and other California localities from moving forward with similar bans.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Los Angeles congressman tapped for CA attorney general

Good morning. TGIF. The wait (and inane speculation) about who would fill the upcoming attorney general vacancy ended yesterday as Gov. Jerry Brown (kinda) nominated Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra. 

Becerra, who would need to be confirmed by the Legislature, would fill a vacancy left by Kamala Harris, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last month. The nomination will not be official until Harris resigns.

The move set off a scramble to backfill Becerra’s congressional seat, with former Assembly Speaker John A. Perez announcing his candidacy around an hour later.

The pick breaks up the Bay Area’s stranglehold on statewide offices – only two of the eight statewide elective office holders are from outside the Bay Area. Becerra, from Los Angeles, will be the third.

The pick also ends months of speculation, which at times suggested Brown would pick his wife, Anne Brown Gust (Brown dismissed those rumors). Becerra’s name had not been previously mentioned, which says what about media speculation?

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• Vape tax: “The claims that e-cigarettes are just as much of a health hazard as regular cigarettes and must be heavily taxed has touched off a fight in the public health community. … The issue is coming to the fore in California because of voters’ passage of Proposition 56 last month. It will increase the state tax on a pack of cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.87 and mandates an ‘equivalent’ increase in taxes on e-cigarettes. … It’s not clear yet what ‘equivalent’ means.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Bullet stamps: “Gun manufacturers have the right to present evidence supporting their claim that technology does not exist to comply with a California law requiring new models of semi-automatic handguns to stamp identifying information on bullet casings, a state appeals court said Thursday,” reports The San Jose Mercury News. 

• Oops: “On Wednesday, [Richmond Mayor Tom Butt] boasted on his popular e-forum that a recent list of ‘Top 12 most dangerous cities in Northern California’ did not include Richmond, which has struggled with high crime for many years, although the rate is nowhere what it was a decade ago. What the mayor failed to mention in his post is that the Richmond Police Department did not even submit its crime figures to the FBI due to a glitch in the crime reporting system that wiped out about 15 months worth of data last year.” The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

• More on Becerra: “California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León on Thursday lauded the appointment of Rep. Xavier Becerra as state attorney general, while a source close to the Senate leader said he has no plans to run for Becerra’s congressional seat when it is vacated.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• Back on Monday. 

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mfleming

New follower: @HLincoln_News

The claims that e-cigarettes are just as much of a health hazard as regular cigarettes and must be heavily taxed has touched off a fight in the public health community. A faction of public health officials has sided with e-cigarette companies and their assertion that e-cigarettes are much less dangerous than cigarettes and can in fact help people break the smoking habit.

The issue is coming to the fore in California because of voters’ passage of Proposition 56 last month. It will increase the state tax on a pack of cigarettes from 87 cents to $2.87 and mandates an “equivalent” increase in taxes on e-cigarettes, which allow users to heat nicotine fluid and inhale nicotine vapor without the tars they ingest when smoking regular cigarettes.

It’s not clear yet what “equivalent” means. State officials are still formulating the levies. But the Associated Press reports e-cigarette makers and distributors believe they will face a huge increase in state taxes that will raise the cost of vaping devices and liquids by more than 60 percent. If that happens, according to the American Vaping Association, it will be cheaper to smoke regular, more dangerous cigarettes in California than to “vape” — even though state taxes on regular cigarettes are going far higher as well.

In the United States, public health authorities, medical doctors and academics are broadly split on e-cigarettes. Some believe that e-cigarettes are so much less harmful that their use by conventional smokers should be encouraged. Some argue that there isn’t nearly enough hard research with which to draw conclusions about the relative healthiness of vaping. And some argue that e-cigarettes’ popularity threatens to undo the huge progress that has been made in reducing nicotine consumption in America over the last 50 years and should be heavily taxed and regulated for that reason alone.

Britain sees vaping as public health tool

These divided views aren’t the norm elsewhere. In California, state health officials issued a 2015 report blasting the emergence of vaping as a common habit, especially among the young. This report may be a factor in state officials’ consideration of heavy taxes for e-cigarettes.

Conversely, in the United Kingdom, physicians have been recommending that vaping be used by cigarette smokers because a massive government study found it is 95 percent healthier and has been a valuable tool for individuals trying to break their conventional smoking habits. These conclusions were released in a 2015 report by Public Health England.

Given that millions of Americans have died of lung cancer caused by smoking cigarettes, this would seem to make the case for vaping’s utility in fighting regular smoking. But many authorities are unpersuaded. Perhaps the most prominent critic of the notion of vaping as a public health tool is Stanton Glantz, a professor of tobacco control at the University of California, San Francisco.

In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Glantz dismissed claims about vaping’s promise with a profanity. He acknowledges that e-cigarettes are healthier than regular cigarettes but sharply questions the British research. “I’ll eat my shoe if that 95 percent figure turns out to be correct five years from now,” he told the magazine.

Glantz says the big picture must not be ignored: “Are there people who have totally made the switch or quit completely because of these? Yes, I believe there are. Terrific. But most are what we call dual users — those who smoke both, often to smoke in places where they can no longer smoke cigarettes. If you’re talking about a smoker using these to inhale more dangerous chemicals, well, that has a net negative effect on public health.”

Proposition 56 takes effect on April 1. It is unclear if state officials will issue a draft proposal on how to tax e-cigarettes and seek public comment or decide rates without such input. The text of the 24-page ballot measure is silent on how the rules should be crafted.

Upsetting years of tradition and new trends alike, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law sweeping new measures that put consumers and producers of nicotine-based products on the defensive.

One bill will “raise the legal age to buy products from 18 to 21,” while another “dramatically tightens restrictions on e-cigarettes,” NPR reported. “Anyone who gives tobacco or tobacco paraphernalia to someone under 21 could be found guilty of a misdemeanor crime,” the Associated Press cautioned. “Under the new law, 18 to 20-year-olds will no longer be allowed to buy tobacco in California starting on June 9.”

So-called vapes have been incorporated into a crackdown critics said would make it harder for traditional smokers to find less harmful alternatives to tobacco. Applicable legislation now “defines e-cigarettes as tobacco products, barring their use in workplaces, schools, hospitals and on public transit,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “The bill also requires vaping devices and liquids to be sold in child-resistant packaging. They also cannot be marketed to minors.”

Nevertheless, Gov. Brown did exercise some restraint around the issue of taxing smoking. He “vetoed a bill that would have permitted cities and counties to establish their own tobacco taxes,” NPR added, based on his discomfort level with the number of other tax hikes voters might usher in. “Although California has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the nation, I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot,” said Brown in his veto message. 

Just the beginning

The new laws, Sacramento watchers noted, are themselves only the tip of the iceberg for public health-focused legislators. California State University and even community college students could soon be barred from smoking or vaping on campus. The legislation that would bar them, Assembly Bill 1594, “squeaked out of the 80-member Assembly on a 41-23 vote,” the Sacramento Bee reported, “with all but two of the votes against coming from Republicans and several Democrats not casting votes.”

Nationally, meanwhile, U.S. policymakers were poised to follow California’s lead, although the Golden State has become just the second state across the country, after Hawaii, to hike the smoking age to 21. (As the Associated Press noted, “more than 100 local jurisdictions around the country have made the change, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco.”) A new federal rule promulgated through the Food and Drug Administration will subject tobacco and classified-as-tobacco products to extraordinary new scrutiny. Going forward, “every e-cigarette on the market — and every different flavor and nicotine level — would require a separate application for federal approval,” according to USA Today. “Each application could cost $1 million or more, says Jeff Stier, an e-cigarette advocate with the National Center for Public Policy Research and industry officials.”

Conflicting conclusions

Scientific research on the relative benefits of vaping have been mixed. But new studies conducted in the United Kingdom have led researchers there to reach a conclusion completely at odds with the emerging expert consensus in the U.S. In a new report, the Royal College of Physicians has endorsed vaping “as part of a ‘harm reduction’ strategy that encourages smokers to move to less dangerous forms of taking nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco,” U-T San Diego recently reported. “The advice contradicts conclusions from some researchers and American government agencies. These focus on getting smokers to quit entirely, or at least to use federally approved means of nicotine replacement therapy with the goal of totally quitting nicotine use. And results in other countries may not apply in the United States, they say.”

Tellingly, California’s anti-smoking legislators preserved one big carve-out for a certain class of smokers — military personnel age 18-20. “[B]efore you scream that you can fight for your country but you can’t light up,” the LA Weekly reported, as state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, admitted, “you can light up if you’re fighting for your country.”

Triggering the sort of speculation about nationwide change California’s new regulations often inspire, legislators approved bills raising the legal age for smoking and vaping to 21.

“The California state Senate voted Thursday to raise the legal age to buy and use cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21 years old,” Slate noted. “The anti-smoking legislation had already been passed by the state Assembly and is now just the governor’s signature away from making California only the second state (along with Hawaii) to raise the age individuals can consume tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.”

Domino effect

Analysts swiftly turned attention to the likelihood of other states adopting similar rules. Already, the Associated Press reported, “dozens of cities, including New York and San Francisco, have passed similar laws of their own.” Thomas Carr, the American Lung Association’s director of national policy, told the Huffington Post he suspected “Massachusetts and New York are likely candidates” to follow suit, “since their biggest cities have raised the smoking age to 21 in recent years.” But some observers, according to the Huffington Post, have noted that cigarette use tends to plunge more as a result of higher taxes than age restrictions.

Only one loophole survived California’s new strictures. “American law and custom has long accepted that people can make adult decisions on their 18th birthday and live with the consequences,” opponents insisted, according to the AP, noting that the milestone permits Americans to “register to vote, join the military, sign legally binding contracts, consent to sex and do just about any legal activity besides buying alcohol. In response, Democrats changed the bill to allow members of the military to continue buying cigarettes at 18.”

That concession granted, the legislation advanced. “The higher age limit, part of a package of anti-tobacco bills, won approval despite intense lobbying from tobacco interests and fierce opposition from many Republicans, who said the state should butt out of people’s personal health decisions, even if they are harmful,” the AP noted.

A vape crackdown

TBEC Review / flickr

Perhaps the most significant change ushered in by the six interrelated laws making up the suite of anti-smoking legislation — assuming they receive Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature — affects electronic cigarettes, “classifying them as tobacco products. ‘Vaping’ devices are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and critics have described them as a gateway to more harmful, combustible tobacco,” the Orange County Register noted.

“The bill passed by the Legislature classifying e-cigarettes as tobacco products would subject them to the same restrictions on who can purchase them and where they can be used, meaning they would be banned from bars, workplace break rooms and hotel lobbies.”

“Among Orange County teens, the 2014 California Healthy Kids Survey found that 9 percent of 11th-graders polled had smoked cigarettes, while 20 percent reported vaping e-cigarettes,” the paper added. Vapes have been big business in California, driven by shifting preferences among consumers largely convinced that e-cigarettes offer a less hazardous product with a comparably enjoyable experience to traditional tobacco smoking.

Foregone conclusion

Although the governor’s office declined to comment on the likelihood of the bills being signed into law, overwhelming support among Sacramento Democrats has cemented the view that Brown won’t stand in their way. “An expanded ban on smoking in workplaces and permission for counties to begin introducing local taxes on tobacco sales were among the other proposals passed Thursday, almost entirely with support from Democratic lawmakers,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The only proposal to attract notable opposition from Democrats was the expanded ban on smoking in workplaces, which will remove exemptions for hotel lobbies, warehouse facilities, gaming clubs, bars and businesses with five or fewer employees.”

TBEC Review / flickr

A surprise switch to a bill that would tightly regulate vaping has caused its sponsor to repudiate the legislation.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, had advanced SB140 confidently, riding a wave of anti-smoking activism that sought to treat vapes, or e-cigs, the same way as traditional tobacco cigarettes in the eyes of the law. But Leno had to renounce his own bill after it transformed in committee. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee ensured its language “no longer treated the vapor devices as tobacco products that would face the same restrictions.”

“The proposal would have banned electronic cigarettes in workplaces, restaurants and other public places where smoking is prohibited. It would also have allowed sting operations against businesses that sell the vaping devices to minors. Leno said removing the designation of e-cigarettes as tobacco products allows manufacturers of vaping devices to continue marketing their products to minors.”

Tempers flare

It was a shocking defeat for anti-smoking advocates, who had not anticipated that the vape industry would be able to secure the amended language it sought. “No committee member moved to take up the modified bill, which was then held in the committee,” the Associated Press reported.

Leno’s public remarks reflected his frustration. “We all walk away. It is no longer our bill,” AP quoted him as saying.

“Leno angrily told the committee that he and the bill’s co-sponsors, which include the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association, would not take part in advancing the diluted bill.”

“I no longer believe in it. I disassociate myself from it. It’s a very dangerous bill now,” said Leno, according to Business Insider. According to Leno, because nicotine comes from tobacco, and e-cigs utilize a liquid that contains nicotine, they ought to be classified as tobacco products. “It’s no small difference of opinion whether these are tobacco products or not,” he argued, according to the Sacramento Bee, “because if they’re not tobacco products, Big Tobacco can continue to market their ‘non-tobacco product’ to our children.” Although nicotine is traditionally taken from the tobacco plant, it is also naturally found in trace amounts within the tomato, potato and eggplant.

Cascade effect

The about-face on SB140 appeared to augur a broader defeat for the anti-smoking lobby, which had helped build momentum for another sweeping and high-profile piece of legislation. SB151, introduced by state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Azusa, was also pulled by its own sponsor.

That bill, which would raise the statewide legal age for purchasing tobacco products to 21, was shelved by Hernandez before a planned hearing, as the Bee reported. “Big Tobacco is following their usual playbook and trying to kill this bill quietly in a committee,” he said, according to the Bee, “though his office said he planned to continue pursuing the measure.”

Federal hurdles

Although the tobacco industry has favored federal over state-by-state rules on the availability of their products, the vape industry has had bigger concerns than the state of play in Sacramento. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the federal Food and Drug Administration has been expected this summer “to complete rules that would require federal approval for nearly all flavored liquid nicotine juices and e-cig devices sold in vape shops,” imposing potentially prohibitive costs on nervous businesses.

“The approval process could cost anywhere from $2 million to $10 million to collect data and put forward an application for each item, according to the regulatory consulting company SciLucent LLC.”

That alone could put a substantial dent in the Golden State’s smaller vape companies — with the much larger tobacco companies moving in instead. Rodney Jerabek, CEO of the California-based liquid nicotine business Five Pawns, told the Journal the expenses were daunting. “This could mean the end for a lot of small companies,” he said.

On Wednesday, legislation that would classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products was amended and held in the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee.

Senate Bill 140 author Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, dropped his support for the bill after committee amendments struck out portions of the legislation that would have redefined tobacco products and smoking to include electronic devices and vapors emitted from those devices.

Sen. Leno said during the hearing that, by federal definition, products that contain nicotine are technically derived from tobacco. Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella, also mentioned during the hearing that the FDA “is moving in the direction of classifying” e-cigarettes and similar products as tobacco products.

‘Tobacco products’

Existing law, under the Stop Tobacco Access to Kids Enforcement Act, prohibits selling or furnishing tobacco products to minors, as well as selling without a state license. California’s Smoke Free Act also prohibits smoking in any “enclosed space at a place of employment” – which includes schools, offices, daycares, bars, restaurants and many other venues.

Since the definition of tobacco products and smoking, under SB140’s original text, would expand to include electronic devices and vapors emitted from those devices, the bill would subject e-cigarettes to the same regulations under California’s STAKE Act and Smoke Free Act.

“A growing number of Californians are becoming increasingly concerned about the public’s exposure to e-cigarettes, as is evidenced by the fact that nearly 180 cities and counties have already passed ordinances that restrict e-cigarette smoking,” Sen. Leno said in a prepared statement. “These tobacco products are addicting a new generation of smokers to toxic nicotine, which we already know is highly addictive and contains harmful chemicals. SB140 puts common sense regulations into place statewide in order to protect young people, non-smokers and smokers alike.”

“Recent studies show that e-cigarettes pose potentially serious health risks to users and those who inhale their secondhand emissions. In 2009, the Food and Drug Administration found cancer-causing chemicals, including an ingredient used in antifreeze, in two leading brands of e-cigarettes. The same study also discovered that e-cigarettes labeled as “nicotine-free” had traceable levels of nicotine. In addition, a 2015 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found high levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, in e-cigarette emissions.”

Opposition to the bill

But Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, says these measures are mere “hype and conjecture designed to scare” people away from “switching to a potentially lifesaving product.”

“Vapor products are not tobacco products and it makes no sense to regulate them as such. These products do not create harmful secondhand smoke and have been repeatedly shown to be effective in helping smokers kick the habit. California’s 3.6 million adult smokers deserve truthful information about the risks of these smoke-free products. …

 

“The vapor industry does not oppose sensible regulations designed to prevent youth access to these adult products, including beefing up California’s existing ban on sales to minors. However, SB140 goes far beyond what is necessary to achieve this goal. If this bill is passed, over 1,400 California businesses will be left to deal with the unintended consequences of this rushed regulatory plan.”

Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco have already enacted bans on e-cigarette use in public places. “The e-cigarette industry is almost completely unregulated, and statewide laws are essential to providing uniform protections for the health and wellbeing of all California children and our communities,” said San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar.

But proponents of the electronic smoking devices say that this kind of fear-mongering propaganda ultimately protects cigarettes and threatens the lives of vapers and smokers. Bill Goodshall, executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania, said of a similar Pennsylvania bill to ban e-cigs, “Public health benefits every time a smoker vapes instead of smoking a cigarette. The proposed vaping ban … would deceive the public to inaccurately believe that vaping is just as hazardous as cigarette smoking.”

In the Senate, the legislation passed on a 25-12 vote. But once the Assembly Governance Committee approved amendments that would no longer classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products, Sen. Leno immediately dropped his support of the bill, stating it would be “dead on arrival in the Senate” and that he could no longer “associate [himself] with it.”

Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova, also said he would “not support the bill in this form.” He addressed the “rising cost of health care” and how it was the task of policymakers to “cut down discrete sources of costs” — such as potential health problems acquired through vaping. “To deal with costs in the health-care system,” he said, “we have to look at where the cost drivers are and chase them down.”

After passage of the amendments, the bill was held in committee.

Photo credit: www.vaping360.com

By the numbers

According to the bill’s supporters, the ban would be instrumental in dramatically reducing not only teen smoking but smoking in general. “Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, said he introduced the bill, SB151, out of concern that an estimated 90 percent of tobacco users start before age 21,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

That statistic emerged from a recent Institute of Medicine study making the rounds in policy circles. Researchers suggested that “teen smoking could be curbed by 12 percent if the age limit was raised to 21,” as LAist noted, “making it harder for minors to find somebody to buy cigarettes for them.” In real numbers, the study concluded, the age-21 limit would ensure “more than 200,000 fewer premature deaths nationally for those born between 2000 and 2019.”

Although critics have pointed out that people older than 18 are adults eligible to be drafted and bound to signed contracts, the Times observed, momentum has gathered to raise the legal smoking age for reasons unrelated to consistency in the treatment of individual rights and responsibilities.

Tobacco-related illness has long represented a significant chunk of aggregate health care costs. For policymakers, that problem grows more serious the more those costs are shifted onto government and taxpayers. “Tobacco-related disease killed 34,000 Californians in 2009 and cost the state $18.1 billion in medical expenses, according to studies by UC San Francisco,” according to the Times.

A developing trend

Some evidence of the policy’s likely impact has accumulated in states where the smoking age was previously hiked. “Although most states set the minimum age at 18, Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah set it at 19, and some localities have set it at 21,” according to The Washington Post. “Higher age limits seem to correspond with lower smoke rates in these states; Utah and New Jersey also have among the lowest smoking rates in the country, No. 1 and No. 5, per Gallup, while Alaska has the most improved, and Alabama is somewhat of an outlier in the South, as it’s not among the states with the highest smoking rates, like its neighbors Mississippi and Louisiana.”

California could be the first state to deny tobacco to under-21s. But other western states could swiftly follow suit. According to KPPC, “Legislatures in Oregon and Washington are considering similar bills and lawmakers in Hawaii have passed a bill and sent it to the governor.” Among the localities setting the legal age at 21, Hawaii County has been joined by New York City.

Next, vaping

Traditional tobacco products were not the only ones on the state Senate’s chopping block. SB140, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, also passed handily, on a 24-12 vote.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, that bill “would include e-cigarettes in the definition of tobacco products in order to prohibit the devices from being used at workplaces, schools and public places, just as tobacco products are under the state’s Smoke Free Act. SB140 would also make it a misdemeanor to provide e-cigarettes to minors.”

The tandem advance of the state Senate’s anti-smoking and anti-vaping bills raised the prospect that the two approaches would converge in the near future, raising the vaping age to 21. “California bans the sale of e-cigarettes to anyone under 18,” the Chronicle observed, “but Leno said young teens still have access to them and they are becoming increasingly popular among middle and high school students.” If Hernandez’s bill were to pass before Leno’s, vaping would automatically be restricted in the same manner as traditional cigarette smoking.

In a statement explaining the campaign, CDPH described two new TV ads emphasizing “the e-cigarette industry’s use of candy flavored ‘e-juice'” and “exposing the fact that big tobacco companies are in the e-cigarette business.”

The move bolstered momentum for broad crackdowns on vapes, which have been targeted by policymakers and activists who see them as just as bad as tobacco cigarettes — if not worse.

Playing politics

Political considerations have played into CDPH’s adverse judgment against vapes. New data recently showed that, last year, the use of e-cigs outpaced the use of tobacco cigarettes among teenagers and young adults.

Defenders of the freedom to vape argued this is good news. Vaping companies have claimed e-cigs help smokers abandon far more dangerous tobacco products, especially those, like traditional cigarettes, that emit high numbers of carcinogens.

But for prohibitionists, e-cigs presented a special hazard because of their accessibility and appeal to children. As the Los Angeles Daily News detailed, those drawbacks appeared to be the product of unregulated marketing, a more pleasurable use experience and apparent carelessness among adult consumers with children:

“Most startling to health officials was the spike in calls to California Poison Control centers related to exposures to accidental e-cigarette poisonings, including drinking the liquid inside. There were seven calls in 2012 to poison control. In 2014, those calls jumped to 243. More than 60 percent of all those e-cigarette related calls involved children 5 years and under.”

As NBC News reported, “bottles and cartridges that contain the liquid for e-cigs have been known to leak and tend not to be equipped with child-resistant caps, creating a potential source of poisoning through ingestion or just through skin contact.”

Although legislation and regulation could be tailored narrowly to focus on the threat of poisoning, public health officials issued a broad warning that comports with the prevailing view among prohibitionists.

Dr. Ron Chapman, State Health Officer and director of the California Department of Public Health, said that “many people do not know that they pose many of the same health risks as traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products.” In January, he called for a “bold public education campaign” to roll back e-cig gains in market share. Anti-smoking advocates working in the policy arena have been all but unanimous in treating e-cigs like an integral part of the same problem as tobacco products.

Safety over freedom

Despite the unfolding research concerning the differences between e-cig effects and those of tobacco cigarettes, prohibitionists in the political arena have used heightened rhetoric of their own to advance vape bans.

Earlier this year, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, underscored how far many officials have been willing to go in departing from the scientific record. In January, he introduced Senate Bill 140, a bill that would ban e-cigs at hospitals, restaurants, schools and workplaces.

“No tobacco product should be exempt from California’s smoke-free laws simply because it’s sold in a modern or trendy disguise,” he warned. Yet, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum observed, e-cigs neither emit smoke nor burn tobacco. Instead, they heat a device which allows the user to exhale a vapor.

SB140 will go into committee hearings this spring, behind a full-steam-ahead approach to cracking down on vapes. As CalWatchdog.com reported previously, the so-called “precautionary principle” — better safe than sorry — has inspired a spate of municipal regulations that treat e-cigs the same way as tobacco cigarettes, despite widespread ignorance and uncertainty as to how the products differ.

A new wave of anti-smoking legislation is wafting through the halls of the state Capitol. And it’s been more than four years since former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger folded his cigar “smoking tent” on the Capitol grounds.

First out of the pack is a bill that would boost the smoking age statewide to 21 years from the current 18. Tapping into longstanding fears concerning children and public health, legislators have teed up a stronger political conflict around health care costs and personal responsibility.

State Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, is the author of Senate Bill 151, an expansion of the so-called Stop Tobacco Access to Kids Enforcement Act, or STAKE.

Existing law prohibits the furnishing of tobacco products to, and the purchase of tobacco products by, a person under 18 years of age. According to the new bill’s language:

“A person is prohibited from making various promotional or advertising offers of smokeless tobacco products without taking actions to ensure that the product is not available to persons under 18 years of age. Existing law also requires the State Department of Public Health to conduct random, onsite sting inspections of tobacco product retailers with the assistance of persons under 18 years of age.”

SB151 revises those provisions such that Californians under 21 years of age are covered. And it authorizes random compliance inspections of retailers by the State Department of Public Health.

In a statement, Hernandez cast his bill as essential to preventing children from becoming addicted to cigarettes. “We can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines while big tobacco markets to our kids and gets another generation of young people hooked on a product that will ultimately kill them,” he said.

Defining children upward

But the Sacramento Bee reported something about SB151 on Hernandez’ own website. The site quotes the California branch of the American Lung Association saying 90 percent of smokers begin before they turn 19.

Critics of raising the smoking age also point out that people age 18 can vote, join the military and get a driver’s license without parental permission. And although the drinking age in California is 21, that’s because drunkenness can cause immediate harm to others, especially through car accidents.

Although the numbers does not make a strong case for Hernandez’s level of concern, the numbers likely don’t matter to his legislation’s fortunes. According to the Los Angeles Times, SB151 already counts the support of the American Cancer Society, the California Medical Association and, importantly, the American Lung Association.

The Times reports, “Smoking contributes to the deaths of more than 40,000 Californians each year, according to Kimberly Amazeen, vice president for the American Lung Association in California. She said 21,300 California kids start smoking each year.”

Targeting e-cigarettes

As the Washington Times notes, legislation similar to SB151 has failed elsewhere across the country, including in Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey and Utah. California, however, boasts a stronger anti-smoking constituency and a more effective anti-smoking lobby than those states.

In yet another demonstration of many Californians’ preference for prohibition, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, has introduced an anti-smoking bill of his own. SB140 would restrict “vaping” e-cigarettes to the same extent that smoking traditional cigarettes is restricted.

As the Bee reports, Leno’s rhetoric focuses on the addictive qualities of smoking in the same manner as Hernandez’s. Leno said in a statement:

“No tobacco product should be exempt from California’s smoke-free laws simply because it’s sold in a modern or trendy disguise. Addiction is what’s really being sold. Like traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes deliver nicotine in a cloud of other toxic chemicals, and their use should be restricted equally under state law in order to protect public health.”

Although e-cigarettes are demonstrably safer than traditional cigarettes to smokers and bystanders, the science is secondary to the cultural politics that surround vaping.

As the San Francisco Chronicle observes, “California bans the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, but other efforts to legislate them have failed. State Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, originally proposed stronger restrictions in 2013, but the language in her proposed bill was watered down to ban e-cigarette sales in vending machines and was defeated in an Assembly committee last year.”

E-cigarettes are widely seen as both a popular substitute for traditional cigarettes and as a more tempting option for people who would not consider taking up traditional smoking. That tension helps account for the push for increased regulation and for the failure of recent legislation to meet its mark.