AG seeks to regulate e-cigarettes

Attorney General Maura Healey on March 17 announced that her office intends to update state regulations governing tobacco product sales to ensure that electronic cigarettes are treated in the same manner.
 
“Over the last two decades, we have made tremendous strides in reducing youth smoking, but we’re fighting the war against youth smoking on a new front today,” Healey said in a statement. “These regulations make clear that in Massachusetts an e-cigarette is a cigarette, when it comes to protecting our kids.”
 
Massachusetts is not yet among the 42 states that ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. More than 150 Massachusetts cities and towns, however, representing nearly two-thirds of the state’s population, have enacted local measures to do so.
 
The revised state regulations would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, restrict their sales by vending machines or self-service displays to adult-only retailers, and prohibit promotional items such as t-shirts.
 
E-cigarettes are devices that rely on a battery to vaporize a nicotine solution, usually flavored. Users inhale the vapor when they draw on the device, similar to traditional smoking.
 
A significant public health concern is that e-cigarettes are a new route to nicotine addiction for youth. And unlike traditional cigarettes, it is very difficult to calculate nicotine dosage delivered by e-cigarettes, presenting the possibility that e-cigarette users become even more nicotine-dependent, not less.
 
Healey’s proposed regulations would require that bottles of nicotine solution be sold only in child-resistant packaging, in response to a national spike in children being poisoned by accidental ingestion or skin absorption of high doses of nicotine, which resulted in a toddler’s death in upstate New York recently.
 
Healey noted that the wide variety of flavors and colorful packaging reveals that e-cigarette manufacturers have taken “a page out of the playbook of big tobacco companies from years ago” in their efforts to market their products to youths. The surge of new flavors has contributed to a doubling of youth e-cigarette usage in just two years in Massachusetts, from 5 percent of high school students in 2011 to 10.7 percent in 2013.
 
Healey conceded that online enforcement is difficult, but said Internet vendors of e-cigarette products must ensure that their customers are of legal age.
 
Sen. Harriet Chandler of Worcester and Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez of Boston were among several supportive legislators in attendance at Healey’s announcement, with Sanchez noting that action is required before “we find ourselves in the same situation where we’re playing catch-up games with the tobacco companies.”
 
The proposed regulations are limited to the sale of e-cigarettes and not their use. Boston and 82 additional cities and towns in Massachusetts – accounting for one-third of the state’s population – prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in locations where smoking is banned by state law or a local measure.
 
Healey’s proposed regulations were filed with the secretary of state’s office on March 13. Comments are being accepted until April 24 at AGOregulations@state.ma.us, and a public hearing will be held on April 23.
 
Healey said her office expects to file final regulations with the secretary of state in the spring.