Say aloha to flavored electronic cigarettes.
Hawaii is considering a proposal to outlaw flavored e-cigarette liquids and flavored tobacco to stem the spike in teenage vaping, the Associated Press reported, as well as a separate bill that would tax e-cigarette sales in line with traditional cigarettes.
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale of flavored tobacco and flavored vaping liquids (unless they are approved by the FDA), which voters upheld in 2018, but Hawaii’s proposal would be the nation’s first statewide ban on flavored e-cigarette liquids such as Maui Mango and Cookie Monsta, as well as cloves and other flavored tobacco products. Menthol cigarettes and vaping liquids would be exempt from the ban, because a state House committee said banning that flavor would dramatically reduce the tax revenue that the state receives from menthol cigarettes, including $15 million in revenue that goes toward ambulance services statewide, and another $15 million toward a hospital trauma center.
The state Senate has passed versions of both bills. Both measures must pass the House Finance Committee by April 5 to advance to the full House.
The National Youth Tobacco Survey found youth vaping surged 78% between 2017 and 2018. And a 2017 Hawaii Health Department study found 16% of middle schoolers and 26% of high-schoolers were currently using e-cigs, and that the number of high-school students vaping jumped fourfold between 2011 and 2015.
Hawaii was also the first state to restrict tobacco and e-cigarette sales to people aged 21 and up. New York is also looking into a flavored e-cig ban.
See: Disney bans smoking and vaping in all parks
The battery-powered cigarettes have the same shape as traditional cigarettes, but heat the flavored nicotine liquids into an inhalable vapor. And while e-cigs are generally considered less harmful than cigarettes because the vapor doesn’t contain the tar and cancer-causing carcinogens that burning tobacco traditionally produces, there is also no research on the long-term effects of inhaling e-cig vapor. E-cigarettes still contain nicotine, after all, which is highly addictive, raises blood pressure and spikes adrenaline. In fact, a study published last year found that the nicotine in one JUUL pod is equivalent to a pack of cigarettes, or 200 cigarette puffs — and some teens have reported going through a whole pod in a single day.
See also: Vaping may be more harmful to teens than we thought
Research has also found that vaping is more popular among teens — teenagers are 16 times more likely to smoke Juul e-cigarettes than adults — and that middle and high-schoolers who vape are more likely to start smoking cigarettes. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association study of more than 6,000 teens, who were age 13 on average, found that one-fifth of them ended up smoking traditional cigarettes if they vaped, compared with only 4% who did so with no prior tobacco use. What’s more, the odds of a teen ever smoking a cigarette were four times higher if they experimented with an e-cigarette as their first tobacco product.
Disney is banning smoking and vaping in its Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks, water parks, ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and the Downtown Disney District in California beginning May 1. And the FDA also proposed restricting the sales of most flavored tobacco products earlier this month to stores that check the customer’s age upon entry, or that include a separate, age-restricted area for vaping products. The federal agency also wants to remove vaping products that target kids by using packaging that resembles juice boxes, candy or cookies.
See also: Makers of flavored e-cigarettes face ‘a make-or-break year’ in Washington, analyst says
“They look at cigarettes and they say, ‘Cigarettes are disgusting. Tobacco is disgusting,’” Trish La Chica, an advocate and lobbyist for the Hawaii Public Health Institute, told the AP. “So take away the cotton candy, take away the flavors that look like they belong in an ice cream shop, and they wouldn’t be attracted to start in the first place.”
In fact, Hawaiian students testified to their state lawmakers last week that their peers vape in bathrooms and post videos of themselves exhaling vapor clouds on social media. “I can’t keep on walking into the bathroom at school and get hit in the face with a vape cloud that smells like cotton candy and not be able to work the rest of the day because of a headache,” said Paige McCurdy, a sophomore at Kapolei High School near Honolulu, in testimony at the Legislature. “It is affecting students, and it just needs to stop.”
