Santa Monica Council May Regulate E-Cigarettes

The use of electronic cigarettes in public places has ignited a firestorm of controversy across the nation. Next week, Santa Monica will likely join Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Long Beach in regulating the smoking trend.

On Tuesday, the City Council will introduce legislation that would apply Santa Monica’s anti-smoking laws to electronic smoking devices throughout the city, with the exception of two grandfathered smoking lounges.

E-Cigarettes – or “vaping machines” as they are commonly referred to – are battery-powered nicotine vaporizers that operate without smoke and are often marketed as an easy way to quit smoking.

Supporters claim the devices help individuals to quit smoking, while opponents claim that they are as bad as cigarettes.

If passed, the proposed ordinance would prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in all locations where cigarette smoking is currently banned and require businesses that sell the devices to comply with the City’s Tobacco Retailer Licensing law.

The ordinance would amend the City’s current anti-smoking ordinance to include electronic smoking devices, including “electronic cigarettes, electronic cigars, electronic cigarillos, electronic pipes, electronic hookahs or any other similar product.”

The City of Los Angeles passed a similar ordinance in March, but it exempted “vaping” lounges from the indoor workplace ban on smoking.

Similar to LA’s law, the proposed ordinance would exempt two “vaping” lounges that have proper licenses to do so.

Under the proposed law, City staff wrote, “electronic smoking devices may be used at the two such businesses that were locally licensed as such lounges in Santa Monica as of June 24, 2014; provided there is appropriate ventilation so as not to interfere with neighboring occupants and provided no minors are allowed in the businesses.”

The exempted businesses are Fix Vapor at 2909 Main Street and Vapor Delight at 1855 Lincoln Boulevard. Any successor businesses at those addresses would not be exempted from the law, according to the ordinance.

“It was necessary to add vaping lounges as a restricted location because California state law permits smoking in tobacco shops and lounges by exempting them from the statewide ban on smoking at indoor workplaces,” Deputy City Attorney Adam Radinsky writes in the staff report.

The cities of Long Beach and Beverly Hills have passed ordinances regulating “vaping.”  However, those ordinances do not have a “vaping” lounge exemption.

After the three cities passed the ban, the Santa Monica City Council commissioned a study to look into the consequences of “vaping,” which was presented at the June 24 council meeting by Radinsky, who heads the City’s Consumer Protection Unit.

City staff’s main source of information is an analysis of scientific studies on e-cigarettes called “E-Cigarettes: A Scientific Review.”

Authored by researchers at the University of California San Francisco and published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation, the study is “the first comprehensive assessment of peer-reviewed published research on the subject.”

Taking into account 84 scientific studies, the analysis questions the claim that “vaping” helps smokers quit.

The review also found that the devices themselves might pose a health risk and are being marketed to children using such flavors as cotton candy and gummy bears.

In addition, the report claims that “vaping” in public places gives the impression that smoking is allowed in non-smoking areas and makes it difficult for law enforcement to distinguish e-cigarettes and actual cigarettes.