Last week a proposal was introduced that would give Washington State the toughest e-cigarette laws in the country. If passed, House Bill 1645 would significantly raise the taxes on e-cigarettes, ban the sale of flavored vaping liquids, ban online sales to Washington residents and require producers to list ingredients on labels. And while opponents of the bill argue that e-cigarettes are “healthier” than tobacco, there’s no denying the dangers of having such a highly addictive substance in arm’s reach to children and teens in an unregulated manner. Washington isn’t the only state taking action. This week California released a campaign calling out marketers of e-cigs for targeting teens. Teens are using e-cigs more and more with 1 in 5 high school sophomores here reporting having used them in the last month. E-cigarettes and e-hookahs may carry an illusion of safety they don’t warrant.
What House Bill 1645 Proposes
- Instill a 95% tax on vaping products similar to tobacco product taxes
- Right now only North Carolina and Minnesota have imposed taxes on E-cigarettes
- Make it illegal to sell flavored liquid nicotine or other vaping fluids
- Ban internet sales to Washington residents
- Require ingredients list on all labels
Curbing An Urge To Smoke: An App For That
Supporters of e-cigarettes and those fighting against regulation often claim the devices are helpful in helping tobacco users quit, so-called harm reduction. I certainly won’t and can’t argue with anecdotes that this is useful for those wanting to quit. While this concept hasn’t been entirely disproved or entirely proven, there is still a lot we don’t know about vaping and the effects of liquid nicotine. If you or someone you know wants to quit tobacco, there are some new digital resources available to help you kick the habit. The good news is we can be hopeful that dual-pronged approaches may help those wanting to quit earnestly succeed. Download this app?
Image courtesy: Washington Department of Health
Washington State residents have access, for a limited time, to a free app called SmartQuit. Sponsored by the Department of Health, the app is a tobacco cessation program that proved three times more effective than trying to quit on your own, according to a recent study from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. SmartQuit users create a personal plan to become aware of their urges to smoke, they then learn new ways of thinking about those urges to suppress the desire to smoke. The Washington Department of Health is offering the app for free to a limited number of users. Because the funding is limited, please don’t download unless you’re serious about using the app as the number of free downloads will run out. Consider it? If you or someone you know does, report back on your opinions?
Dangers of Liquid Nicotine
It bears repeating that we don’t know how much affect liquid nicotine has on our health. We do know that it’s a highly-toxic, highly-addictive substance. Less than a teaspoon can be fatal for a child and one toddler has already died from exposure to liquid nicotine. With no regulations currently in place to protect children who bear vulnerabilities adults do not, the gamble being taken with liquid nicotine as a “safe” alternative to tobacco is a big one. It seems like the public is starting to catch on, with the number of smokers who believe e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco dropping in 2013, but there are still thousands of teens unaware of the consequences. With one in five Washington 10th graders stating they’ve used e-cigarettes in the past month and more than 250,000 teens who never smoked a cigarette before tried an e-cig in 2013, we have to be careful of the addictions we’re facilitating without careful regulation.
Jonathan Lopez says
A nice start for WA state, but I don’t think requiring the ingredients list on the label goes far enough. Do we even know all of the ingredients? What happens to those ingredients when they are heated? What is the effect of vaping those ingredients on carefully studied lab animals? Has any of this been studied?
Without ability to quantify harm (like we have done with cigarettes) or benefit (e.g. in helping quit smoking), the fact that these remain unregulated is incredible.