Los Angeles Legal professional Mike Feuer on Thursday referred to as on town council to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco, together with the hookah, in lieu of the present draft ordinance that bans the hookah.
The Los Angeles Metropolis Council directed the Metropolis Legal professional on June 16 to subject an ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco and menthol cigarettes within the metropolis, however excluding shisha tobacco merchandise in current smoking lounges.
“A complete ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco merchandise, together with flavored shisha, within the metropolis of Los Angeles has the potential to be life-saving,” mentioned Feuer. He mentioned 3.6 million kids nationwide vape and use e-cigarettes, which he referred to as the “gateway” to common cigarettes.
“Youngster-friendly flavors are fueling this vapor epidemic amongst youngsters. Shisha additionally is available in quite a lot of candy flavors to draw kids, and I urge town council to incorporate the sale of flavored shishas on this proposed ban sufficient to guard public well being, “he mentioned.
Fireplace’s workplace cited the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, which reported that shisha smoke comprises a few of the similar dangerous chemical substances as cigarettes, together with nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide. He discovered that in a one-hour shisha session, individuals inhale 100 to 200 instances the smoke from a single cigarette.
“Tobacco use causes almost a 3rd of all most cancers deaths in California,” mentioned Primo Castro, director of presidency relations for the American Most cancers Society’s Most cancers Motion Community, on Thursday from Fireplace Apart. He referred to as the ordinance “a place to begin” however urged councilors to “shortly approve and move a complete ordinance ending gross sales of all flavored tobacco merchandise, together with e-cigarettes, cigars, menthol cigarettes and flavored shisha merchandise”.
Los Angeles County’s Board of Administrators unanimously voted to ban flavored tobacco merchandise. Ted Chen will report for NBC4 Information on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 5:30 p.m.
In response to the proposed ordinance that prosecutors submitted to town council this week, current smoking lounges will be capable of promote shisha merchandise for on-site or off-site consumption, however the metropolis’s 4,500 tobacco retailers shall be banned from promoting flavored tobacco, together with hookah tobacco.
Councilor Monica Rodriguez, who moved to amend the unique draft regulation to permit hookah merchandise to be offered for off-site consumption in addition to on-site consumption in lounges, mentioned she was involved concerning the influence on small enterprise homeowners, which can be affecting the group Promoting hookah merchandise for off-site actions.
“That is an grownup exercise so younger individuals can’t be uncovered in these premises,” she mentioned. She proposed a change to exempt the sale of shisha, the tobacco utilized in shishas.
That change, narrowly adopted by 8 in favor and 6 towards, got here when town council noticed calls from the Nationwide Hookah Group Affiliation for town to exempt the hookah from regulation and designate the hookah as a cultural custom.
Arnie Abramyan, president of the Nationwide Hookah Group Affiliation, referred to as the June metropolis council assembly to induce council members to exempt hookahs from the potential ordinance.
“A lot of small immigrant companies – Armenians, Lebanese, Persians, Egyptians, everybody within the Center East – over 1,000 households will exit of enterprise … respect our tradition and respect our small immigrant companies,” he mentioned.
Councilor Paul Krekorian, who’s of Armenian descent, tried to counter arguments that hookah is a cultural custom in the course of the June 16 metropolis council assembly.
“There was numerous dialogue … about hookahs and their cultural significance for some immigrant communities, and I need to say that this argument bothered me so much as a result of I’ve by no means smoked a water pipe; individuals in my household, my prolonged Armenian household, don’t smoke Water pipe. Armenian tradition is outlined by its music and its arts and its literature and beliefs … it’s not outlined by water pipe, “Krekorian mentioned on the assembly.
“For my part, you might be defending Armenian tradition … by stopping younger individuals in Armenia from dying prematurely because of smoking.”
Los Angeles Metropolis Council was initially supposed so as to add an exception to the menthol cigarette ban, however the metropolis council’s three black councilors, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Curren Value, proposed an modification to take away the menthol cigarette exception Interesting to the excessive charges of black individuals smoking menthol cigarettes.
In response to the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the tobacco business has “aggressively marketed menthol merchandise to younger individuals and African Individuals, significantly in city communities.” The modification was adopted with 14 votes in favor and one absenteeism.
“Historical past has clearly proven us the dangerous results menthol cigarettes have had on the African American group particularly. It’s as much as us to forestall such racial and well being inequalities from recurring,” mentioned Ridley-Thomas in the course of the metropolis council assembly.
Councilor Mitch O’Farrell, who began the ordinance course of in a November 2018 movement, mentioned he was towards the exemption for retail hookahs and thought of it a double normal as a result of the council didn’t exempt menthol cigarettes.
“How can we in good conscience ban different issues like menthol cigarettes if we then enable different merchandise to be retailed. I simply suppose that is a double normal,” he mentioned.
Los Angeles County’s Board of Administrators unanimously voted for an ordinance banning flavored tobacco merchandise, together with menthol, in October 2019, calling on Governor Gavin Newsom to move a statewide ban on vaping.
On August 28, California grew to become the nation’s second state, after Massachusetts, to move statewide restrictions on the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise. Tobacco producers and merchants have challenged lots of the legal guidelines and laws, however the courts to date have in every case upheld the restrictions on the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise, judging them to be constitutional and in step with the Tobacco Management Act.
Tobacco use is the primary preventable killer of dying in the US, inflicting extra deaths than the variety of individuals dying from alcohol, AIDS, automobile accidents, unlawful medicine, homicide, and suicides – mixed.
Day by day, 1000’s of younger individuals will devour a tobacco product for the primary time, and lots of of those tobacco merchandise shall be flavored. In California alone, 36.5% of highschool college students report utilizing tobacco merchandise. Of these, 86.4% mentioned they used a flavored product, in line with the California lawyer normal, which filed a short within the US ninth appeals courtroom in help of the Los Angeles County ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise.
