The measure defines e-cigarettes as tobacco products, barring their use in workplaces, schools, hospitals and on public transit.
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While a Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled the measure substantially changed the content of the original initiative, several justices on Thursday suggested state law grants the proponents of a measure broad authority to make changes before circulating it for signatures. Governor Jerry Brown signed the pack of bills yesterday.
The governor of California has raised the legal age to buy tobacco for smoking, dipping, chewing and vaping from 18 to 21.
He also said that the tobacco business model depends on the ability to “market and sell this poison to our kids”. In October, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement strongly urging states to raise the smoking age to 21 and more heavily regulate e-cigarettes. Brown vetoed a tax hike on tobacco products, to the delight of lawmakers concerned about raising taxes on the tobacco industry.
“Although California has one of the lowest cigarette tax rates in the nation, I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot”, Brown wrote in his veto message for a bill authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica).
The bill criminalizes selling or giving tobacco to Californians who are younger than 21. There is an exemption for military personnel, The Associated Press reports, for whom the age limit would stay at 18.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that about 90 percent of tobacco users start before the age of 21. “With flavors such as bubble gum and Captain Crunch, these products are clearly targeted at our youth, and as a result, there has been a rapid increase in e-cigarette use among middle and high school-aged children”.
“California took a step backwards today by reclassifying vapor products as tobacco”, it said. The new laws help address the public health scourge of our time through what ACS CAN describes as the “three-legged stool of tobacco control” by improving smoke-free laws, regularly and significantly increasing tobacco taxes and funding tobacco prevention and cessation programs. It would need to collect 366,000 valid signatures by early August to ask voters to reject the new laws.
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California is the second state to raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products from 18 to 21.
