DeLauro Seeks Nationwide Age Limit On E-Cigs

A “distressing loophole in federal law” allows youth to purchase the newest addition to the cigarette market without verifying their age.

So said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. She has introduced legislation, announced Monday, to change that. 

At the Boys and Girls Club on Columbus Avenue, DeLauro called for limiting minors’ access to e-cigarettes, backed by medical professionals who highlighted the dangers of the product.

Currently, there is no federal regulation on e-cigarettes, allowing users to order the e-cigarettes online or over the phone. DeLauro’s new bill: “Stop Tobacco Sales to Youth Act of 2015” is co-sponsored by fellow Connecticut U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty. Should it pass, it would require every state to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and require proof of age at purchase and delivery for all online or telephone sales.

A study in North Carolina, said DeLauro (pictured), asked 98 youth aged 14-17 to purchase e-cigarettes online. Only 5 of the orders were rejected based on the consumer’s age. Some of these orders came from other states and even other countries, as not every state prevents purchase of e-cigarettes by a minor. Easy access to the product has allowed 17 percent of middle and high school students to access and use the product, according to research cited by DeLauro. In Connecticut, the statistic rises to 25 percent.

Stephanie Barnes, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club, said the new legislation would align itself well to a program her agency runs: Be Smart, Don’t Start. She explained that many smokers begin smoking in youth and then find it increasingly difficult to later kick the habit.

“The issue of e-cigarettes … is very important to us here,” she said.

E-cigarettes entered the global market in 2004. They rely on a battery-powered vaporizer to create the stimulation of smoking without containing tobacco. DeLauro and her colleagues argued that the product contains nicotine so that can lead to eventual use of tobacco cigarettes. Connecticut surveys revealed that 75 percent of middle and high school students who were using e-cigarettes eventually went on to use tobacco.

Esty said the progression from e-cigarettes to tobacco is evidence that the cigarette markets are manipulating young users, getting them addicted to nicotine thus encouraging them to transition to other forms of cigarette.

It is not just the sales of e-cigarettes to minors that is driving this legislation. DeLauro and Esty both spoke about the marketing of the product, as well as the unknown side effects.

DeLauro and Esty’s research showed that e-cigarette companies were branding themselves with the youth market seemingly in mind. Flavors such as “gummy bears” or “cotton candy” appear to have a younger market in mind, Esty said, and using cartoon characters and bright colors in the packaging does not appeal to the supposed adult audience looking to quit smoking.

“Children are not using e-cigarettes to stop their tobacco intake,” she said. “They are a gateway to tobacco.”

Esty’s and DeLauro’s concerns were echoed at Monday’s event by medical professionals, who spoke of the unknown side effects to e-cigarettes and the addictive nature of the nicotine in the product. In December 2014, an 18-month old boy died after inhaling the liquid nicotine found in e-cigarettes, and a US News and World report showed increasing numbers of adverse reactions to e-cigarettes.

Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, described e-cigarettes as a “whole other challenge.” Youth have been attracted to the innovative nature of the product and the targeted marketing, she said, and it is leading them to the more harmful drugs found in tobacco cigarettes. She said it is imperative the product is regulated.

Gregg Haifley, director of federal relations for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said in a press release that youth use of e-cigarettes and cigars has “skyrocketed” over the past three years, with the internet providing a cheap and easy way for young people to purchase them.

“Rep. DeLauro’s bill to restrict internet sales of these products to youth would go a long way towards protecting them from the lure of provocative online marketing tactics used by an unscrupulous industry, as well as lifelong addiction to products with disease and death consequences,” his statement read.

Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at the Yale Cancer Center and Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital, added that the only way to combat lung cancer is through prevention. When e-cigarettes have proven to lead to tobacco, regulating e-cigarettes has to be the next step, he said.

“I am proud that my city and my state are leading this effort,” he said.

This legislation comes days after DeLauro called for the legislature to institute a policy that would prohibit use of tanning beds by minors. President of the Connecticut State Medical Society Robert Russo, who was present in discussions of the tanning beds legislation, expressed his support for the regulation of e-cigarettes. He explained that, as with tanning beds, when something is found to have harmful effects on adolescents, some companies find a “go-around” option to keep their product in the youth market. E-cigarettes are the “go around product” for tobacco cigarettes, he said.

The two bills together, DeLauro said, are part of a wider mission to help protecty oung people. So, turning to the youth from the Boys and Girls Club in New Haven, she asked them what they thought. Z’hane Ellisom took the podium to enthusiastically support the legislation. Her peers continued to ask questions of the two Congresswomen about the dangers of e-cigarettes and the science behind the legislation. DeLauro told them scientific research supporting the bill means it’s a “no brainer” it will pass.

“We have the science to back it up,” DeLauro said. “This is the intersection between science and public policy.”

In a previous interview, spokesman Thomas Kiklas of the Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association said his group supports the ban on selling e-nicotine products to kids. He told the Independent that he could see objections if manufacturers included flavors like “bubblegum” to their products, but not fruit flavors, which he said adults enjoy in other products, as well, like liquor.

DeLauro Seeks Nationwide Age Limit On E-Cigs