Should New York prohibit e-cigarette use in smokefree spaces?

Publication Date: 2014-06-17

The New York State legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in smokefree spaces.

Senate Bill 7841 would amend the New York State Clean Indoor Air Act to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic smoking devices in all venues that are required to be smokefree, where workers and the public will be exposed to secondhand aerosol they emit.

New York has the opportunity tojoin New Jersey, North Dakota, and Utah as states that include e-cigarettes as products prohibited for use in all venues that are required to be smokefree.  Additionally, more than 170 municipalities have taken the same action, including New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

What can you do to help?

Please contact Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate President Dean Skelos to ask them to support Senate Bill 7841. Let them know that you support prohibiting e-cigarette use in all smokefree environments in order to protect worker and patron health and safety. Personal communications from constituents are a meaningful way to influence our elected officials.

You can email the Speaker and Senate President at Speaker@assembly.state.ny.us and skelos@nysenate.gov. It’s also helpful to send your email and/or make a phone call to your own Assemblymember and Senator, who you can look up on the Assembly and Senate website.

For more information, please contact Kevin O'Flaherty with Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids at kevino@tfk.org.

Key Points to Remember:

• This is a public health issue: workers and the public should not be exposed to the secondhand aerosol from e-cigarettes.
• E-cigarettes do not just emit “harmless water vapor.” Secondhand e-cigarette aerosol contains nicotine, ultrafine particles, and low levels of toxins that are known to cause cancer.
• At least 10 chemicals identified in e-cigarette aerosol are on California’s Proposition 65 list of carcinogens and reproductive toxins.
• We do not know the long-term health effects of e-cigarette use and exposure to the aerosol, which is a new source of pollution and toxins being emitted into the environment.
• Regardless of whether e-cigarettes have helped individuals switch from tobacco cigarettes to e-cigarettes, these products should not be used in smokefree environments.
• The same tobacco industry that has fought the passage of smokefree laws for the last 40 years is now trying to bring back a kind of smoking to workplaces and public places so as to weaken the laws we have enacted and endanger the health of nonsmokers.

We hope you can speak up and tell New York legislative leadership that you support prohibiting e-cigarette use in all smokefree environments to protect worker and patron health and safety.