E-cigarette bill flames out
A bill banning flavored tobacco was pulled by its author.
Legislation to curb e-cigarettes favored by teenagers died Thursday after a Senate committee agreed to industry-backed amendments that all but gutted the measure.
- CALmatters’ Elizabeth Aguilera delved into the intense lobbying by tobacco and e-cigarette companies over the measure earlier this week.
Democratic Sen Jerry Hill of San Mateo pulled his Senate Bill 38 from consideration after the measure’s main backers—the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association in California and the American Heart Association—withdrew their support.
- The bill would have banned flavored tobaccoand e-cigarette products.
- Amendments included one that would have permitted flavored hookah tobacco at hookah lounges, something hookah aficionados contended was important culturally .
Hill said in a statement: “I find it hard to believe that use of gummy bear and bubble gum-flavored tobacco in any form is a cultural tradition.”
Aguilera writes: “Never doubt the power of the tobacco lobby in California.”