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Town bans electronic cigarette sales to minors - 2013-07-11 03:43:47
The board of health on Monday voted to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors in Foxboro, and to prohibit anyone's use of the controversial devices wherever smoking is prohibited.
The restriction will take effect on Aug. 1.
Members Paul Mullins, Eric Arvedon and Paul Steeves voted unanimously for both measures as part of a revamp of the tobacco and smoking regulations.
Judith Coykendall, program manager of the Tobacco-Free Community Partnership in New Bedford, credited the board with an important step toward protecting the health of minors.
"In many other communities that have not passed a regulation yet...youth are still still able to access these e-cigarettes legally, and that's a problem," Coykendall said after the meeting. "It's a relatively new product."
Electronic cigarettes, also called e-cigarettes, have grown in popularity since they were introduced into the United States about seven years years ago.
The batter-powered device, which some use as an alterative to tobacco while trying to quit smoking, delivers an aerosol puff of nicotine when inhaled.
The safety of the inhaled vapors has been debated for years.
In 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cannot regulate electronic cigarettes as medical devices, such as nicotine patches, but can regulate them as tobacco products.
On Monday night, member Paul Steeves spoke of the experience of sitting in a restaurant with a woman at a nearby table puffing away on the e-cigarette.
"I was horrified," Steeves said. "Why do I need to be exposed to that while I'm trying to eat my salad. I was inhaling this woman's exhaust and I don't know what's in it."
The board had sent two notices of the public hearing concerning two sets of regulations to 17 local businesses permitted to sell tobacco and related product.
Three retail business owners and representatives of three agencies with strong interest in smoking or substance abuse attended.
In related business, the board declined to ban the sale of "blunt wraps," which in general are tobacco leaves used to wrap other substances to be smoked.
Members said the question of whether to probibit the sale of blunt wraps as a form of drug paraphernalia for marajuana smoking is better left to the police chief. Rolling papers sales are prohibited in Foxboro already.
Richard Carrig, owner of a Route 1 gas and convenience store, voiced astonishment that the town would even consider banning blunt wraps when it's legal to sell such intoxicants as nips of hard liquor, which can be involved in drunk driving.
Carrig added that he was less concerned with the small loss of profits such a ban would involve and more concerned with what he sees as one more step in government overregulation of people's lives.
Mike Lindley, owner of of Foxboro Shell, and Malini Patel of XPress Mini Mart also participated in the debate, along with Cheryl Sbarra, senior staff attorney with the Massachusetts Associatio of Health Boards, and Marilyn Edge, director of the Western Bristol County and Foxboro Tobacco and Alcohol Prevention Collaborative.