If you are an adult and wish to vape, well, you are an adult and your bad decisions are your own. Go ahead, have your nicotine.
But if you are a child, none of that applies to you. As a matter of your future health, and of public health in general, the adults in your world can keep you from buying your own vaping paraphernalia. And if you still get your hands on some, it doesn’t have to taste good.
No more flavors that are available now: bubblegum, POG, Apple Peach Sour, Maui Mango, Molokai Hot Bread …
Two bills moving through the Legislature — Senate Bill 3118 and House Bill 1570 — would ban the sale of all such flavored products within the state. Proponents of the legislation say these sweet, fruity flavors entice children into a habit that leads to nicotine addiction, with all the associated health hazards.
Health agencies, school officials and law enforcement lined up in support when this worthy legislation was first presented. But a funny thing happened on the way to passage.
On the House side, the Committee on Health, Human Services and Homelessness, chaired by Rep. Ryan Yamane, added a raft of amendments that Yamane said provided a more comprehensive approach to curbing youth vaping.
The additions place a number of requirements on the state Department of Health regarding the Tobacco Enforcement Special Fund, Hawaii Tobacco Settlement Special Fund and Hawaii Tobacco Prevention and Control Trust Fund: monthly online reports on deposits and expenditures, as well as annual reports to the Legislature.
Especially onerous is a call for the agency to establish a testing process to detect the presence of flavoring in all tobacco and synthetic nicotine products.
The attorney general would be charged with monitoring online sales of all tobacco and e-smoking products and posting monthly online updates on how many have entered the state and how many have been confiscated.
Further requirements would be placed on the Department of Education, along with the health department, to meet with students about vaping and destroy any contraband they turn in.
In a second round of testimony on the House bill, the health department and the AG’s office both turned on the amendments. While still supporting the original intent, the health department’s laser-focused eight-line response concludes, “The multiple amendments … are unreasonable and make the current version untenable.”
The attorney general filed five pages of testimony, stating that neither its office nor the health department has the resources or the authority to carry out the requirements of the amendments, and that they stray so far from the title of the bill — “Relating to the Youth Vaping Epidemic” — that the legislation could draw a constitutional challenge.
The bills’ original purpose, to ban flavored products, had already drawn opposition from retailers and other groups that say vaping helps wean adults off of “combustible” cigarettes — the regular, nicotine-loaded, smoke-producing kind — and keeps kids from picking up that dangerous habit. Flavored goods simply add to what makes them a more palatable alternative. If government is to be involved, they say, it should be in educating kids of the dangers of smoking, not banning safer alternatives.
Still, both House and Senate bills have crossed over, meaning differences between the two will have to be resolved or the legislation will fail, at least for this session. Let these discussions center on the core issue — products that lure children into a dangerous addiction. Burdensome requirements on government agencies are likely to dilute the effectiveness of any new law, and we’ll just be back where we started.
