A Prospective Ban on Smoke and Single-Use Vape Sales
Alas, until smoking is banned on our city’s County-managed beaches, those of us who pick up tobacco refuse on those otherwise lovely plots of surf and sand may have to content ourselves with trying to secure a prohibition on the sale of some tobacco—including single use vape—products in Laguna Beach. Currently, the California Assembly is considering a statewide ban (AB 1690) on the sale of single-use filtered cigarettes, which contain microplastics and toxic chemicals that get into marine and other ecosystems, endangering various life forms. The bill also would disallow the sale of single-use vape products, whose batteries and fluids harm the environment. Laguna’s own Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine) cosponsors the bill.
For readers who may think vaping, whether utilizing single or multiple-use paraphernalia, is not a health hazard, I would urge consulting Dr. Michael J. Blaha’s “Five Vaping Facts You Need to Know” at hopkinsmedicine.org. Dr. Blaha said research data links vaping to chronic lung disease and asthma. Moreover, by vaping “you’re exposing yourself to all kinds of chemicals that we don’t yet understand and that are probably not safe.”
Also, contrary to tobacco lobby disinformation, scientists and the U.S. Surgeon General have concluded that filtered smokes are more dangerous than unfiltered ones.
Not surprisingly, cigarette and vaping litter on our beaches endangers marine life. Amid the clash of opinions in town over development, historic structures, views, parking, traffic, and more, in my 47 years of residency here I have to say that positive regard for the ocean and its health is in our town’s DNA. Virtually all Lagunans seem to agree on that. At our most recent coastal clean-up at Aliso Beach, so many people showed up that the Laguna Ocean Foundation ran out of bags for volunteers. Filtered cigarette butts and other tobacco refuse, as usual, constituted perhaps 30% of the trash we (the Laguna chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby) gathered on that September beach clean-up morning last year.
So, with the state legislature attune to the harmful health and environmental impacts of tobacco sales, and since municipalities will likely be charged with the responsibility of implementing some sort of tobacco/vape sales ban if Sacramento lawmakers pass such a statute, our city should at least be looking into this matter. Indeed, according to KRON4 News, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose are among some 100 California municipalities that have either enacted sales bans on flavored tobaccos and vapes or are in the process of doing so.
Councilmember George Weiss, I’ve recently learned, has been tracking this matter in the state legislature and among California’s cities. Last year an agenda bill he sponsored that would have proscribed sales of all cigarette and vaping products went down in defeat by a Council vote of 3-2. Apparently, he’s written an updated version of that agenda bill that would align our city with what other leading municipalities in the state are doing to address tobacco-vape sales. I’ve not seen the particulars, which could involve compromises and language adjustments, but nevertheless commend him for moving City Hall in the right direction on a matter that effects human and environmental health.
Of course, until a statewide ban goes into effect on the sale of single-use filtered cigarettes, Laguna’s out-of-town beachgoers will likely buy their smokes in other cities and bring them here for use on our County-managed beaches (smoking is prohibited on our City-run beaches). Ugh. Still, when Weiss’s agenda bill passes in one form or another, tobacco-vape sales in town will plummet and fewer filtered cigarette butts will be whisked by the wind or washed down our streets into the ocean. “By George!” that’s what I would call forward movement in the public interest.
Tom is writing a book-length history of California’s environmental leadership and co-leads with his wife, Ginger, the Laguna chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Email: [email protected].
