The state Senate yesterday unanimously approved HB1186, which was one of two bills emerging from the House aimed at putting some restrictions on sales of vaping products (the other, HB1078, failed). There are a lot of things to dislike about HB1186. While it bans sales to minors, which isn’t all that controversial, it puts in…
Brad Rodu: Anti-Smoking Advocate Spouts Nonsense About Vaping
On March 15 Tom Dennis authored a sensible editorial about e-cigarettes in the Grand Forks Herald. He wrote that “vaping is best thought of as a method of quitting smoking. As such, it can be a public-health tool. Because while e-cigarettes are not ‘safe,’ meaning zero risk, they’re proving to be both dramatically safer than…
Treating E-Cigarettes Like Tobacco Products Does A Disservice To Public Health
E-cigarettes have roared into the marketplace as a new product with few regulations. Currently lawmakers in Bismarck are grappling with how to deal with this product, which among other things is currently legal to sell to minors (though most retailers aren’t allowing that sort of thing). Personally, I’m not convinced we need to regulate nicotine…
Anti-Smoking Activists Want To Ban E-Cig Flavors Because Think Of The Children
The full-on assault on e-cigarettes from people supposedly motivated by public health has been nothing short of remarkable. That vaping is a much more healthy alternative to smoking, likely to improve more lives than the untold billions of public dollars spent on anti-smoking campaigns, is apparently lost on these people. If it looks like smoking, than…
Video: North Dakota House Defeats Amendment Exempting E-Cigs From Tobacco Tax
Next week the House Judiciary Committee will be hearing testimony on three separate bills related to e-cigarettes, but lawmakers got a preview of that debate today when the Finance and Taxation Committee kicked out an amendment to HB1133 which sought to exempt e-cigarettes and related products from tobacco taxes. The original bill, introduced at the…
Attorneys General Declare War On E-Cigarettes In The Name Of Tax Dollars
E-cigarettes aren’t healthy, but they’re one heck of a lot healthier than cigarettes. And, because they emit water vapor not smoke, in a lot of places (not, unfortunately, North Dakota) they can be used inside allowing people to enjoy doses of nicotine as though they were smoking a cigarette without having to be exiled outdoors.…