Front Page  »  

SLO may tack e-cigarettes onto smoking ban

March 3, 2015

E-Cig-Ban-Considered-By-NYC-Authorities-300x216San Luis Obispo staffers are asking the city council to place a ban on the use of electronic cigarettes.

At its meeting Tuesday, the council will consider a proposed ordinance that would extend the city’s existing smoking ban to the use of e-cigarettes. The proposal would also require retailers to obtain a tobacco sales license in order to sell e-cigarettes in the city.

Smoking is banned in most public places in San Luis Obispo, although enforcement of the regulation is often lax. The use of e-cigarettes, which is considered a form of vaporizing, is exempt from the smoking prohibition.

In January, the California Department of Public Health released a report stating e-cigarettes contain at least 10 chemicals that are known to cause cancer or birth defects. The report called for state lawmakers to regulate the vaporizing devices like traditional cigarettes, and health officials vowed to wage an ideological war on the use of e-cigarettes.

Prior to the release of the report, Democratic Senator Mark Leno introduced a bill that would ban the use of e-cigarettes in places where smoking is prohibited.

At the local level, more than 40 cities and counties in California have already adopted e-cigarette bans, a San Luis Obispo staff report states. Last year, the Santa Maria City Council voted to include e-cigarette use in its smoking ban.

Proponents of a ban lobbied the San Luis Obispo City Council during a February 2014 meeting. The council then directed staff to consider possible regulations for e-cigarette use.

Many e-cigarette users say that vaporizing helps them break their addiction to traditional cigarettes. Opponents of the proposed ban also say that scientific data on the effects of e-cigarettes is conflicting, and that increasing regulation has become problematic.

The council is scheduled to convene at 4 p.m. Tuesday. The e-cigarette ordinance is on the agenda for a council meeting that starts at 6 p.m.

If the council votes in favor of the ordinance Tuesday, it must do so again at an upcoming meeting for the proposal to become city policy.


Loading...
Subjects:                     
Related:


24 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

What if the e-cig smoker is one of the smelly, dirty bums downtown?

Does he get a pass? After all the SLO City council treats these vagabonds cluttering downtown as if they were the second coming, so where does yhe council come down on that scenario? If they are smoking can the police finally do something to them?

I don’t smoke, but this extreme pursuit of tobacco smokers, while endorsing marijuana smoking as “good medicine” is getting ridiculous.


0

You, in there…this is the SLO PD. We have you surrounded…come out with your butts in the air!


0

More progressive trampling of our freedom…it won’t stop until we wake up but by then it may be too late. There is a fine line between Do goodership and freedom taking.


0

Right…. Just try calling a cop to turn someone in for smoking an e cig. The regular cigarette ban is ignored and 90 % of all smokers still throw butts on the ground, also illegal. Hey council, you might try doing some real work for a change, in between negotiating you next salary raise and sex scandals.


0

Looks, here’s the game.

The Council doesn’t want to deal with real issues, like pensions, debt, etc so they throw the masses the Ecig ban to appease and distract. Hey look over there….hey look at that….hey Ecigs Ban. Hey hey hey…

What they talk about tells you what they DON’T want to talk about! Don’t fall for it folks.


0

More likely the council lobs this snowball in to get people to forget about the pension and debt problems. The don’t want to deal with them, because they only way is to finally make cuts in salaires, benefits and drop the guarenteed pension and change into a 401k or such. Not some fake two-tier system that has nothing in it to deal with the elephant that is in the room right now, not 20 years down the road. And making the changes that have to been done would make the public unions mad and the council members risk losing their seats because it is only for those unions that they get re-elected


0

It’s all about controlling peons. Which is basically what the “peasant class” has always been (according to the monarchies and governments that have the power). How did we ever decide we need a “chosen few” who dictate what we do? Are we masochists on some unconscious level? Why do we just shuffle through life-watching our constitutional rights evaporate—while we struggle for the almighty dollar? Everyone is watching their cell phone these days. They miss the moves in the “shell game” (probably the point in the first place). While our attention is diverted-laws are passed, rights are impinged upon and our freedoms vanish or get a new, shorter leash. Is humankind indeed so depraved that if we did not have a chosen few sociopaths ruling us—that we would “lose it” entirely–and be unable to function as a cohesive society? Apparently: yes. Read about the Stanford Prison Experiment. It involves undergraduate students being assigned “roles” (prison guard or prisoner). Six days later, extensive brutality (on behalf of the “prison guards”) caused the experiment to be called off for ethical reasons. Empiric research shows if you put a person in a uniform: they will play the role. Need someone who will kill? Military uniform. Need someone to help? Nurse uniform. Need to create mass genocide? Nazi uniform with specific symbols. Then later, we cry “I don’t KNOW WHY I did that!!!” Well, because you are a programmed peon: just like the rest of us. And, you don’t need to have smoking rights—or even vapor rights—so forget it.


0

E-cigs are the drug of choice of the peasants? What a hoot. Ideology over all. Facts be damned. Hey, e-cigs are the drug of choice among the latte set, not peasants.


0

I am so lucky to be living in the land of the free………..NOT


0

Not if demoncrats have their uber-controllin way.


0

What’s the difference? SLO police do not enforce ban as you can see lots of smokers at the Farmers’ Market and the homeless on the street smoke ad lib.


0

The City Council should use brains, not libtardism, and allow this alternative life choice behavior to operate unrestricted. It seems to not harm others despite wild eyed claims of the few who want to dictate to us all.


(BTW, don’t smoke or vape, never have, but have concern for freedoms of others.)


0

So that last comment means you also have concern for the right of others NOT to be poisoned by having to breathe the ‘freedoms’ of others, right?


0

Easy there, professor. You’re being “poisoned” every day of your life; you eat pesticides, breath toxic fumes, and drink poisons of various sorts. Why aren’t you dead already?


Because the DOSE makes the poison!


“For all byproducts measured, electronic cigarettes produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes. The study indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions based on the compounds analyzed.”


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23033998


This is from a study on INDOOR air quality. Outdoor would be even less effect.


Are we (Americans) becoming such a bunch of hysterical whiners that we really want a law to address every aspect of human behavior? We come a long way, baby.


“Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them.” -Demonax, 150 AD


0

Thanks for the link — it goes a lot farther than people repeating claims without KNOWING whether they are true or not.


I continued on to other articles from your link and found that most of them conclude that there is not enough evidence either way to make a firm conclusion about the toxicity of vaping. Beyond that, one noted that the output varied greatly between brands whether due to ingredients or quality control. While I can change my mind about banning them based on their toxicity with such evidence, I will reserve the right to change back pending further research. (Actually, I am still opposed to ANY additions to more air pollutants except when, as in this case, it comes largely from a reduction in more serious pollution via cigarettes.)


0

Well, you will still have the freedom to wear your oxygen mask.


0

Interesting that you are concerned about the freedom to pollute the air with toxic chemicals but go into a rage about people who pollute the air with obnoxious sounds.


0

Haha those darn motorcycles, when will someone DO SOMETHING!? Please, think of the children!


0

What SLO Staffers Want…Staffer Get.

Who runs this town the STAFF of the Voters?


Why all the Hate towards Vapors? You can’t smell it…it’s not hurting you…ah…you you HATE tobacco.

You love Pot and want to make it Legal…but hate Big Tobacco.

What happens when Big Pot emerges….will you then Hate Big Pot?


0

I’m glad you pointed that out, Rich.


It was the city STAFF who brought up this proposal. Much like in Paso and other cities, it is the city STAFF (headed by a city manager) who often calls the shots.


Elected city council members are in for 2,4, maybe 6 years but city staffers can be in power for decades. They don’t answer to the public; they work behind the scenes, pushing their agendas forward via the council.


0

Nuttin’ better to do than obsess over inconsequentials, and avoid the real issues!


0

I won’t debate the issue of SLO City Staff running the city but the rest of your post has some issues to which I must object. Just because you can’t smell vapors doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you. I know of a fumigant that is highly toxic and colorless and odorless as well. CO2 is slightly less toxic but also odorless. If there is sound evidence to back your claim, let’s put it out there.


The comments about hating tobacco are both correct and disingenuous. I do hate tobacco both for the harmful effects and the stench. I don’t really care if others smoke it — particularly if it kills them before they reach Medicare age — but I don’t want to have to go out of my way to avoid the fumes for both health and aesthetic reasons. I also dislike pot — even though it is less offensive in both aspects — and would expect that legalization would include the same restrictions as tobacco. Your assumption that anti-smoking people are pro-pot is half-wrong at least and nothing more than a strawman argument.


0

The issue is not really tobacco smoke though, it is people being inconsiderate and littering. The actual negative behavior of people is what these laws seem to miss. Avoiding dealing with the actual behavior and targeting single issues results in hype, stigma, curtailment of rights, selective enforcement, and the passage of laws for the purpose of restricting competition.

I remember getting into an argument with a lady downtown when I was smoking well away from where it would bother anyone, about how I was breaking the law. I told her that if it was bothering her all she had to do was say that and I would be respectful, but she really felt like I was a terrible person because I was *breaking the law.* At that time, I mostly got around by bicycle and so I asked her if she had driven her car that day. She said yes, to which I responded that I was being subjected to the fumes of her car. Her response.. “yeah but those fumes don’t cause cancer!”


0

Oops. I meant to DOWNVOTE OCD you.


0