In Duluth, people puffing on ecigs may experience the exact same limitations as those smoking their classic, tobacco counterparts.
“Generation after generation” helped harmful cigarettes to go unregulated, said Jennifer Julsrud, the ordinances were introduced by a City Council member who. “Why maybe not do the proper way to it this time around with e-cigarettes and applied realistic, common-sense restrictions?”
One City Council member got e-mails from so far as England.
Supporters of “vaping,” the equivalent to lighting-up, say it’s a healthier alternative to smoking that’s helping lots of people quit. One memo to the Town Council called e-cigarettes “one of the most significant public health improvements of the past half-century.” But while health authorities admit that the possible lack of second-hand smoke is really a plus, they argue that far more research is required on whether e-cigarettes offer an effective and safe way to prevent smoking.
That new information, introduced Thursday by the Centers of Disease Get a handle on and Prevention, frightened public-health officials who worry that adverts directed at teenagers are undoing decades of work to keep children from smoking.
The Minnesota Department of Health supported Duluth’s laws and is discussing whether Minnesota need to manage e-cigarettes at a statewide level, said Doctor. E Ehlinger, health commissioner. State-law currently prohibits their sale to minors.
“There are a great number of unanswered questions that I’d rather take a preventative approach,” Ehlinger said. But “we’re not exactly there yet” to the details of such a method, he added.
Some cities have restricted the sale of e-cigarettes, just like conventional ones. Paul City Council considered heading more — forbidding e-cigarettes in indoor public places — but later dropped the idea. Minneapolis has not floated this kind of offer, Council Member Elizabeth Glidden said Tuesday.
“But [there’s] no whisper of this yet in Minneapolis.”
E-cigarettes are not restricted under the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act, but restaurants, companies and companies have adopted their own principles. City Transit recently barred e-cigarettes from light-rail cars, buses and its home, a spokesman said. Hennepin County limits their use on county home.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is discussing whether to prohibit them in places maybe not booked by air companies or other organizations, which established their own rules.
Target Field tweaked its “no smoking” policy this year to add e-cigarettes. Twins President Dave St. Peter said that “our staff discovered they created confusion and customer support challenges in the sense that it had been very difficult to distinguish … between old-fashioned cigarettes and e-cigarettes.”
An e-juice bar
Three to 10 clients came by daily, once the Uptown Vapor Shoppe in Minneapolis opened in April. Today, the Minneapolis store earnings 50-plus consumers on weekdays and “even more on weekends,” mentioned owner Sina War.
The bright, art-covered house features a “juice bar” where consumers sample “e-juice,” the liquid solution that’s heated to create a steam mist, in flavors including menthol to root beer.
Her mother and Megan Spence, Loni, who ended by Tuesday afternoon, want to end their cigarette habit. Most consumers — from 20-somethings to grandmas — are seeking to stop, said War, whose company idea began with her own transition to electronic.
“Someone will be and say, ‘I haven’t had an actual smoke in 10 days,’ and we’ll give him a large high-five,” she said. “They tell us tales about how it’s changed their lives.”
The Customer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association details to reports that show e-cigarettes might help people quit. Another, published in the record Tobacco Control, concluded like a harm reduction approach among smokers reluctant to quit that “e-cigarettes, warrants further study.”
Gregory Conley, legislative director for the group, flew in from New Jersey to testify contrary to the new ordinances, saying they “discourage smokers from switching to lower-risk alternatives.”
Studies demonstrate “conflicting” effects, said Ehlinger. One recent study, by which e-cigarettes were demonstrated to help people quit, was highly supervised. He worries that somebody getting an e-cigarette and just going out, without understanding how to manage the quantities of nicotine, is “really problematic.”
But even if they’re helping smokers stop, there’s increasing fear they may be encouraging nonsmokers to start out. Ehlinger wish to see studies on whether e-cigarettes act as an entrance to other tobacco products. “We have countless students nation-wide using something that delivers an addictive product,” he said.
When the medical community later comes to the agreement that e-cigarettes don’t cause damage and help people quit, Duluth may reverse its limitations, explained Julsrud, the council member.