The New York City Council has proposed to prohibit public smoking of e-cigarettes on Thursday. It is now awaiting the signature of the city head for implementation effective 2014.
In August, a report came out that the council has been discussing whether to include e-cigarettes on the list of "tobacco products." Under the state law, tobacco products are covered by the smoking bans or smoke-free laws which prohibit its use in workplaces and public spaces. It also included those who are not smoking but seen possessing the said products. NYC has one of the strictest smoking ban policies in the U.S. However, the policy does not include e-cigarette as it is considered a battery-powered device.
But things are soon to change for e-cigarette users. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the NYC council has voted to include e-cigarette on the public smoking ban.
The prohibition is in response to the growing national public-health policy debate involving the increasingly popular battery-powered cigarette.
The proposed ban is anticipated to be signed into law by the outgoing Empire State Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
A 43-8 vote, favoring the approval of the bill in the last council meeting of the year, emphasizes the city's role in pushing for some of the sturdiest antismoking legislation in the country.
As a part of New York's Smoke-Free Air Act in 2002, the city disallowed smoking in the majority of public indoor areas like bars, subways, and offices, and in 2011, prohibition is applied in outdoor places like beaches, pedestrian plazas, and parks.
However, there are still things to resolve to make this law work.
There is still a growing scientific agreement that e-cigarettes are not that harmful as conventional cigarettes, which releases thousands of pollutants through incineration and kills over 400,000 people in the U.S. yearly.
On the other hand, e-cigarette critics, including Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, defended that less harmful is not enough and that secondhand smoke is a pollutant.
Jeff Seyler, head of the American Lung Association in the Northeast, told WSJ: "We're grateful that New Yorkers will not be exposed to potentially unsafe secondhand emissions from electronic cigarettes."
