I recently helped pass legislation to include electronic cigarettes under the Clean Indoor Air Act to help protect New Yorkers, particularly young people, from the dangers they pose (A.516).
Although we’re being told e-cigarettes are a healthier alternative to traditional tobacco products, that’s simply not true. They pose significant health risks to both users and to those around them, and alarmingly, e-cigarette use by young people is skyrocketing. Each and every New Yorker has a right to clean air, and if e-cigarettes could threaten that in any way, then they need to be regulated and kept away from our children.
E-cigarettes are electronic devices that deliver nicotine to the user. Like traditional cigarettes, they are highly addictive, and although they don’t emit smoke, they can expose others to dangerous secondhand emissions. Studies have shown that emissions can contain carcinogens, including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, unfairly exposing those around e-cigarette users to harmful toxins. And although e-cigarette manufacturers have been marketing their products as tools to help smokers quit, e-cigarettes have not been approved as a safe or effective method of quitting. In fact, nearly 60 percent of e-cigarette users also used regular cigarettes in 2015.
Even more startling, though, is the rate at which young people are using e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use among high school students rose by 900 percent between 2011 and 2015, and during that time, the number of calls to poison control centers regarding e-cigarettes also rose dramatically. Nicotine exposure during adolescence can have far-reaching, long-term effects, threatening brain development and damaging the respiratory system. Although New York state banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors under the age of 18 in 2012, a loophole in current law allows retailers to sell e-cigarettes without getting a tobacco registration from the state Department of Taxation and Finance. This has left the state health department with no means by which to ensure e-cigarettes aren’t being unlawfully sold to youth.
E-cigarettes are dangerous, plain and simple. They’re being marketed to our kids and give off secondhand emissions that no innocent bystander should have to inhale. This legislation will help keep our families as safe and healthy as possible.
