Brown signs sweeping anti-smoking bills
New legislation raises legal age to puff to 21, regulates e-cigarettes
SACRAMENTO — Cementing the Golden State’s reputation as a national leader in the fight against Big Tobacco, Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed a package of bills that will regulate the manufacture and sale of e-cigarettes and increase the legal smoking age from 18 to 21.
Other bills the governor signed will close loopholes in existing smoke-free workplace laws and require that all K-12 schools be tobacco-free.
Democrats, doctors and anti-smoking activists who have struggled to break the industry’s grip on the Capitol applauded the bill signings and showered the governor with praise.
Laphonza Butler, president of SEIU California, the union that represents many of the state’s health care workers, said that 2016 will go down as the year the state finally “stood up to this predatory industry.”
“Today was an enormous victory not only for this generation, but also for many generations to come who will not suffer the deadly impacts of tobacco,” said Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, who authored the measure
to boost the legal smoking age.
But Brown vetoed the piece of legislation that reportedly scared tobacco companies the most — Assembly Bill X2 10, authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica — which would have allowed counties to enact local cigarette taxes.
In his veto message, Brown wrote that endorsing new taxes on a “blanket basis” goes too far, especially as anti-tobacco activists inch closer to placing a $2-per-pack cigarette tax on the November ballot that the industry is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat.
“Although California has one of the lowest cigarette tax rates in the nation, I am reluctant to approve this measure in view of all the taxes being proposed for the 2016 ballot,” Brown wrote. An extension of most provisions of Proposition 30, which taxes the state’s top earners, is also expected to appear on the ballot.
After passing the package of legislation in March during the final days of a special session on health care funding, lawmakers waited several weeks before sending the tobacco control bills to Brown — a tactic that delayed Wednesday’s signing deadline.
Democratic leaders of the Legislature sought to extend the deadline after tobacco industry lobbyists threatened to “go scorched earth” and run a referendum campaign to repeal some of the measures if they were signed into law.
Since referendum campaigns may be launched only to block legislation that has been signed, delaying the deadline for Brown to determine the fate of the bills also forced the industry to wait before deciding whether to follow through on those threats. And the industry now has less time to seek a referendum before the bills take effect.
Most of the new laws will take effect on June 9, 90 days from the end of the special session.
“Despite threats from the Big Tobacco lobby, Gov. Brown and the Legislature sent a clear message: We will do everything possible to save lives,” Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist who is backing the campaign for a $2-per-pack cigarette tax, said in a statement.
Spokesmen for tobacco industry giants Altria and Reynolds American could not be reached for comment on the bill signing and one Brown veto.
Hooking tobacco users at a young age has always been one of the industry’s best strategies for turning occasional buyers into lifetime customers. Proponents of the new law upping the smoking age to 21 — as Santa Clara County and Hawaii have already done — say it will discourage the use of cigarettes among youths and over time will reduce deaths.
Active duty members of the military, however, are exempt from California’s new smoking age.
While California already limits sales of e-cigarettes to adults, a report released last year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that ecigarette use among middle and high school students tripled from 4.5 percent in 2013 to 13.4 percent in 2014.
That makes e-cigarettes the most popular nicotine product among teens, who can choose from hundreds of flavors, including “gummy bear.” Regulating their manufacture and sale as tobacco products should help reverse this trend, supporters of the new e-cigarette law say.
“The e-cigarette is nothing more than a new delivery system for toxic and addictive nicotine,” said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who authored the bill to regulate the manufacture and sale of the devices.
Steve Larson, a doctor who serves as president of the California Medical Association, said the e-cig law “updates our approach to tobacco.”
“There has been an alarming rise in the use of ecigarettes by teens, putting them at risk for lifelong addiction,” Larson said. “If you unmask the lobbyists who have been trying to stop regulations to keep these products out of our children’s hands, you will find Big Tobacco pulling the strings.”
E-cigarettes mimic smoking by heating a nicotine-infused liquid to produce a vapor that users can inhale.
Eight other states — Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming — already treat e-cigarettes as tobacco products.
While they were disappointed by Brown’s decision to sign the bill regulating e-cigarettes, advocates for “vaping” were thrilled to see the governor veto the measure that would have allowed counties to levy their own cigarette taxes.
“Putting the opportunity to tax these products in the hands of the voters at the county level would have been absolutely destructive,” said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association. “I can’t complain too much tonight.”