Chicago moves to ban e-cigarettes where smoking is prohibited

Last month it looked like the Chicago City Council would do the right thing for once and back off plans to regulate e-cigarettes like tobacco products. On Monday, however, the city’s Joint Health and Finance Committee changed course, voting 14-5 to approve additions to Chicago’s Clean Indoor Air Ordinance that would severely restrict the use...

Last month it looked like the Chicago City Council would do the right thing for once and back off plans to regulate e-cigarettes like tobacco products. On Monday, however, the city’s Joint Health and Finance Committee changed course, voting 14-5 to approve additions to Chicago’s Clean Indoor Air Ordinance that would severely restrict the use of e-cigarettes. The ordinance will now move forward for consideration by the full City Council on Wednesday. If it’s passed, Chicago will officially forbid e-cigarette “vaping” in indoor public places, including restaurants and bars, and within 15 feet of a building entrance.

Far fewer people attended Monday’s meeting than attended the preview meeting in December, at which an outpouring of opposition apparently influenced legislators to hold off on changes to the law. Between the two meetings, the proposal actually got worse: the earlier version would have still permitted e-cigarettes without nicotine in these places, but the final version would ban all e-cigarettes, regardless of whether they even contained nicotine, from places of “public” accommodation, including private establishments such as restaurants and bars.

At Monday’s hearing, supporters from the medical industry raised concerns that e-cigarettes are “renormalizing” smoking in the public eye – never mind that e-cigarette use is not “smoking.” Opponents were mainly small business owners who sell e-cigarettes and users of e-cigarettes who testified that e-cigarettes helped them transition away from more harmful tobacco products. Had e-cigarettes been subject to the same regulations as tobacco products all along, these people might have never made the switch. Studies show that, while the vapor does contain small amounts of nicotine, it does not have other toxic chemicals associated with tobacco smoke, undermining any secondhand smoke justification for the ordinance.

The City Council will consider the proposal at City Hall at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15.