The management of C.B. Perkins Tobacconist in Hyannis has a
rule about the sale of electronic cigarettes.
Only legal adults are allowed to purchase the
nicotine-releasing devices, which emit a vapor instead of smoke.
“We’ll only sell to 18-plus,” store manager Ricky Patel
said. “You’re going to watch some 14-year-old kid smoking? I don’t want to see
that.”
The store management came up with this rule because the town
of Barnstable does not precisely regulate e-cigarettes, which arrived on the
scene just a few years ago.
While marketers call e-cigarettes a healthier – and cheaper
– alternative to regular cigarettes, public health officials say they are
undoing years of anti-smoking education and creating a new generation of
nicotine addicts.
A study released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control shows youthful use of e-cigarettes is climbing.
The report says the number of students in grades 6-12 who
have ever used an e-cigarette more than doubled from 3.3 percent to 6.8 percent
from 2011 to 2012.
The percentage of those in grades 6-12 who recently used an
e-cigarette jumped from 1.1 to 2.1 percent.
But while more children are getting their nicotine fix
through the battery-powered devices, the e-cigarette phenomenon is largely
flying under the regulatory radar.
Only a few states and towns – including a handful on the
Cape – explicitly prohibit their sales to minors.
That may change soon.
Calling the CDC report “alarming” and “troubling,” the
American Lung Association is calling for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
to regulate e-cigarettes and other tobacco products making inroads with
children and teens, including hookahs and pipe tobacco.
“This is a generation that said, ‘I’ll never smoke,’ but now
they’re trying e-cigarettes,”said Cynthia Hallett, executive director of
Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.
“This is a product that is delivering nicotine, which is
addictive,”she said.
The FDA indicated it would issue guidelines later this year.
In the meantime, State Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, D-Jamaica Plain,
has filed legislation at the Statehouse to prohibit sales of e-cigarettes to
minors.
And the Cape Cod Tobacco Control Project is encouraging
local towns to spell out prohibitions on the sale and use of e-cigarettes in
their tobacco control and anti-smoking regulations.
“It’s just to keep everything honest,” said Robert Collett,
director of Cape Cod Tobacco Control.“They are really becoming big business.”
Often marketed as a device to help smokers kick the habit,
electronic cigarettes have a heating element that produces vapor rather than
smoke while delivering nicotine.
They come in a variety of flavors that critics say appeal to
children, including black cherry, cotton candy and bubble gum.
While marketers say the nicotine is odorless and cannot be detected,
Collett said the health risks are still not known.
“The problem is they haven’t been evaluated by the FDA as to
the chemical content of the vapors,”he said.
Proponents of e-cigarettes point to studies that it helps
people quit smoking and doesn’t involve the smoker ingesting tar and myriad of
other carcinogens.
“You’re not breathing in any smoke, just a little bit of
water vapor,”Patel said. While the scientifi c jury is still out on the full
list of chemicals contained in the devices, Patel said companies such as Fuma
use natural processes to extract the nicotine from tobacco.
Regardless, he said the tobacco shop he manages checks IDs
and does not sell to teenagers under 18, although technically they can because
the town board of health regulations don’t prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to
minors.
“Technically, a 12 or 14-yearold could walk into any store
where these are not regulated and purchase them,”Collett said.
He said Bourne, Brewster, Falmouth, Mashpee, Harwich and
Orleans all have some regulations explicitly governing the sale of e-cigarettes
to minors or their use in public places.
“Any nicotine derived device shouldn’t be given to a minor,”
said Bourne Health Inspector Zack Seabury. He said the use of e-cigarettes also
is forbidden in areas where smoking is prohibited.
“If you were sitting in the back of a bar and had an
e-cigarette, a person at the other end of the bar wouldn’t know,” Seabury said.
In September 2012 Brewster used a model regulation developed
by the Cape Cod Tobacco Control Program to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes
where smoking is prohibited by Massachusetts law and town regulations, Brewster
Health Director Nancy Ellis Ice said.
A few months before that, in July 2012, the town passed a
regulation saying people under age 18 cannot purchase e-cigarettes, Ice said.
In March of this year, theYarmouth Board of Health included e-cigarettes in
regulations prohibiting the sale of tobacco in pharmacies, said Bruce Murphy,
the town’s health director.
ButYarmouth doesn’t explicitly prohibit the sale or
e-cigarettes to minors or their use in no-smoking zones, Murphy said. He said
municipal officials figure e-cigarettes already are covered by existing health
regulations.
“It still has a tobacco by-product so it would not be
allowed inside a public place,”such as a restaurant, store or public meeting
room, he said.
Nor should e-cigarettes be sold to minors, Murphy said.
“That’s how we’re looking at the regulations right now.”
Barnstable doesn’t specially ban e-cigarettes in non-smoking
areas, but patrons at Trader Ed’s Restaurant and Bar in Hyannis are directed to
the outdoor smoking area to use the devices.
“They usually understand,” manager and bartender Paul
Gayewski said.
But not including specific language about e-cigarettes
leaves local regulations open to legal challenges or debatable interpretations
of prohibitions on tobacco use, Hallett said.
Collett said he is working with towns to include language
not only on e-cigarettes but also on “nicotine delivery products” in their regulations,
to keep up with new developments such as nicotine gels and tablets.
Hallett said 87 localities in the U.S. currently restrict
the use and sale of e-cigarettes via town regulations and state laws.
E-cigarettes entice former smokers as well as young people
who have gone through years of education on the hazards of smoking, she said.
Hallett said they look at the flavorful devices and think, “That’s great and
they’re safer!”
But a physician associated with the public policy research
firm R Street says e-cigarettes do not recruit new nicotine addicts as much as
they help smokers get healthier.
Studies in the United States and United Kingdom show
“non-smokers are not taking up e-cigarettes,” Dr. Joel Nitzkin said.
Non-smokers may try one out of curiosity, he said, but the
main users are smokers seeking a less toxic alternative to regular cigarettes.
“It’s people who are already smoking, including the
teenagers,” Nitzkin said.
He said the smokers are benefi tting from the switch,
improving their lung power and ability to compete in athletic events as well as
regaining their sense of taste.
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