State legislators are looking for ways to regulate popular electronic smoking devices by treating them like the product they were modeled after: cigarettes.
But avid supporters of electronic smoking devices oppose that approach. Not only do electronic cigarettes not contain tobacco; they were created to be an alternative to cigarettes and have since garnered a nearly cultlike following of people who consider their use a hobby, supporters say.
"For us to be treated as if there was such harmful ingredients inside as if it was tobacco — it’s just not fair," Karen Deborja, co-founder of a company that manufactures flavored juices for the battery-operated devices, told the Senate Health and Commerce and Consumer Protection committees Friday.
In a case that pitted the Food and Drug Administration against an importer and distributor of electronic cigarettes, however, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in 2010 that the FDA should regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products under the Tobacco Act because the nicotine in them comes from tobacco plants.
And it’s the addictive nature of nicotine that worries legislators.
"From a health perspective I see the case that people are making against traditional cigarettes and in favor of nicotine," Sen. Josh Green (D, Naalehu-Kailua-Kona), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said at the end of the hearing. "But I also have to be candid: Nicotine is a challenge … and I don’t know where the net public health benefit lies."
Green scheduled decision-making on the bill for Monday.
According to Senate Bill 2495, the nation’s e-cigarette sales have doubled annually since 2008, with sales in 2013 projected to reach $1.7 billion. Additionally, the National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 1.8 million middle and high school students had tried these products in 2012, according to the bill.
The Legislature last year passed a law to ban sales of electronic smoking devices to minors.
Many users, producers, retailers and fans of electronic smoking devices, more commonly known as electronic cigarettes or e-cigs, packed a hearing room at the state Capitol on Friday morning to speak out against an e-cig restriction bill. It proposed restricting the sale of electronic smoking devices to stores that hold a retail tobacco permit, prohibiting electronic smoking devices in all workplaces and public areas, and requiring that wholesalers, dealers and retailers of electronic smoking devices obtain separate licenses from the Department of Health, among other provisions.
"We’re not here to cause any trouble or corrupt our youth; we’re not a dark industry," said Dustin Miyakawa, who works with VPR Hawaii — an up-and-coming lifestyle magazine for people who enjoy "vaping," or inhaling vapors. "We’re here to provide a safe alternative."
The devices, which can be customized and tailored to a person’s preferences, heat up a flavored liquid, which can contain various levels of pharmaceutical-grade nicotine or no nicotine at all, and release a vapor that’s breathed in and exhaled by the user. Many users take pride in their e-cigarettes and enjoy tinkering with them and showing them off just as someone would display a souped-up car or wear nice clothes as a mode of self-expression, Miyakawa said after the hearing.
"It doesn’t just speak to the addiction, the physical or the biological addiction (to nicotine)," he said. "It speaks to our need for interaction, social interaction, and it speaks to our need for expressing our own individual tastes, things that express our character."
Electronic cigarette user Eddie Brewer, who has diabetes, said he uses electronic cigarettes without nicotine to appeal to his sweet tooth. "I actually use all these flavors that I like — right? — that I can’t really eat to actuallyvape," he testified.
The committees also heard testimony regarding a bill that proposes an additional excise tax on wholesalers of electronic smoking devices, but Green deferred the measure.
E-cig supporters told lawmakers that taxing the device, which is typically sold in several components, could get extremely costly for consumers and complicated for the industry. Testifiers suggested that if the Legislature wants to go after the product because of its potential nicotine element, it should tax wholesalers of the nicotine liquid.
Only taxing the vials of liquid that contain nicotine would not work, they said, because users would then buy the non-nicotine juices from retailers and obtain cheaper nicotine liquid on their own.
Sean Anderson, owner of Black Lava Vape on Hawaii island, said taxing a high percentage of the wholesale price of each device — 85 percent, as proposed by the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawaii — would put him, his seven employees and three potential new stores out of business.
"No studies have actually been done proving that they’re bad," he told lawmakers. "As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of studies that are now coming in — which I provided some and I have more — that are showing a lot of positive effects."
Sen. Rosalyn H. Baker (D, West Maui-South Maui), who introduced the bill and who is chairwoman of the Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee, expressed caution regarding current studies.
"It’s curious that the studies that you cite really remind me very much of what big tobacco said early on," she told Anderson, "because a lot of their products do have nicotine, and nicotine is clearly very addictive and is a gateway to other kinds of things."
