E-Cig Bans Coming Soon

Posted: April 24, 2014 | tobacco | ban, e-cigs, electronic cigarettes, tobacco | 0 Comments

Seems like big tobacco just cant catch a break. With smoking becoming an increasingly taboo endeavor, technology, convenience and (until recently for some cities) accessibility have paved the way for E-cigs to pick up steam – no pun intended in terms of sales.

Being that E-cigs are still, on the whole, a new and relatively untested product, concerns have arisen over not only the safety of using the product but what ramifications E-cigs may have secondhand. The two chief concerns about public E-cig usage are what, if any, amounts of secondhand vapor non-users may be exposed to and what effects that could have and the availability of E-cigs to underage users. The latter concern has become a bigger issue lately because E-cigs are more widely available to kids than traditional cigarettes and could very well serve as a gateway to taking up traditional smoking by exposing them to higher amounts of nicotine that come in E-cigs.

As a result of the potential threats that E-cigs pose, cities are starting to ban the use of them much like regular cigarettes. That is to say that where someone could previously pull out their E-cig (indoors) and puff away, it will now be as illegal as lighting up an actual smoke. E-cig users will now be required to go outside to use their devices in sanctioned smoking areas.

The cities of Richmond, CA and Carlsbad, CA are among the first cities to voluntarily undertake the banning of E-cigs but aren’t likely to be alone in the near future. It’s safe to assume that cities across the nation will begin implementing similar bans and, in time, these bans could even become mandated on a statewide basis.