SB County Considers E-Cig Ban in Public Places

Santa Barbara County is considering expanding its tobacco ordinance to include e-cigarettes and other electronic smoking devices.

County Supervisors are being asked to consider a ban on what’s known as “vaping” in most public places of county jurisdiction.

The prime motivation behind the proposed policy change is an alarming increase in underage kids caught up in e-cigarette use or vaping.

Vaping shops like one on Main Street in Santa Maria are becoming more and more popular.

“Business is great”, says shop attendant Joseph Valenzuela, “we get a lot of people who come in everyday that want to quit smoking.”

Valenzuela says his shop, like many others in the area, is strictly for ages 18 and over.

“If you don’t look over 30 then we ask for ID”, Valenzuela says.

Santa Barbara County is considering banning e-cigarette and electronic smoking devices in areas where it has jurisdiction like county facilities, public events and public places like county parks and playgrounds.

“The problem with e-cigarettes is they are marketing them to children, so they have flavors like bubble gum, pink cotton candy, chocolate, caramel”, says Edwin Weaver, Executive Director of Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley which is on the front lines of protecting underage youth from tobacco, alcohol and drugs, “if you ask a kid today, would you smoke a cigarette? They would say no, its awful. But would you vape? Sure, there’s no problem with vaping, so there’s this mixed-message.”

“What big tobacco has done is they have gone around the efforts of all us to get kids to stop smoking and created this new device that’s very sexy”, Weaver says, “and we know there’s a problem with e-cigarettes, there’s toxins in it, there’s 12 different chemicals in the state of California known to cause cancer, we also know that it leads to smoking, 80 percent of people who vape still continue using cigarettes.”

Weaver says recent statistics show an alarming increase in underage kids vaping.

“We’ve got kids in 7th grade, two percent only trying a cigarette, 13 percent trying an e-cigarette”, Weaver says, “can you imagine, that is 11 year old kids out there smoking these products.”

“If we have adults using them in public spaces, kids will see it and they’ll say its okay”, Weaver says, “so we need to say no as a society and say we can no longer tolerate use of this toxic product in our community.”

Joseph Valenzuela agrees with keeping kids away from vaping and says its smoke shops that sell the e-cigs to underage kids that’s bad for business.

“They sell to underage kids that don’t check their ID’s and then they’ll come to us asking if we can set them up with some juice”, Valenzuela says, “and we check their ID’s and they don’t have them and then we have to ask them to leave.”

Valenzuela says he believes its a matter of common courtesy on knowing where and when to vape in public.

“People just need to know where to do it”, Valenzuela says, “its just like smoking a cigarette pretty much, that’s how other people would see it as.”

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will consider the e-cigarette and electronic smoking device policy change at its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday in Santa Barbara.