CityState: Reporter
Gina Raimondo issued an executive order
for a 120-day ban on the sale of flavored
e-cigarettes and directed the state depart-
ment of health to promulgate emergency
regulations to that effect. The health
department issued temporary regulations
prohibiting the sale or manufacture of
flavored vaping products and convened
a vaping advisory committee to guide
future policy. In January, the health
department extended the temporary ban
for another two months, and expects to
issue permanent regulations in April.
“In 2017, we had some data and we
were concerned,” says James Rajotte,
chief of the health department’s Center
for Health Promotion. “In 2018, the
Surgeon General declared vaping a
youth epidemic and action needed to be
taken. And then we got these 2019 num-
bers that were more alarming than we
previously thought.”
Groups like the American Lung Asso-
ciation support the ban “as a good first
step,” the organization said in a state-
ment. “But it doesn’t go far enough.
Flavors hook kids. Legislators must act
to end the sale of all flavored tobacco
products, including e-cigarettes, men-
thol cigarettes, flavored cigars and other
flavored tobacco products, in order to
protect our youth from a lifetime of
addiction and disease.”
The policy prescriptions are also get-
ting significant pushback from sellers
and adult users who argue that vaping
is safe — or at least safer than smoking
— and that bans don’t work.
“Prohibition is a mistake,” says Jona-
than Shaer, executive director of the
New England Convenience Store and
Energy Marketers Association, which
represents 480 retailers in Rhode Island.
“These products have demand, and fur-
ther demand among youth. A ban will
continue to push all users to markets
that are not regulated, not taxed, not
transparent and, by virtue of that, more
dangerous. That’s what happened with
the black-market THC vapes and that’s
where people get sick.”
In October, the Centers for Disease
Control coined the term EVALI (e-ciga-
rette or vaping product use-associated
lung injury) to describe a constellation of
symptoms — shortness of breath, fever,
cough, chest pain, vomiting, abdominal
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