Truckin' - up to Buffalo; Amazing hearing where 25 vapers urged Erie County Exec Mark Poloncarz to veto vaping ban bill

Bill Godshall;15469648 said:

I drove up to Buffalo (NY) yesterday to urge Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz to veto a bill that would ban vaping.

Amazingly, about 40 vapers and vaping advocates packed the conference room, and about 25 vapers (including many vape shop owners/employees) testified at the 90 minute public hearing urging Mark Poloncarz to reject the bill. Other testifiers against the bill included a registered nurse, an employer who allows vaping in his workplace, a human resources manager who said the ban would cause problems for employers, an eleven year old child of two vapers, a guy who never smoked or vaped but pointed out the stupidity of the proposed ban, several spouses of vapers, and me.

Only two supporters of the vaping ban testified at the hearing (the head of one of NY state funded groups called Tobacco Free something, and an obnoxious lady from the Cancer Society who repeated a dozen fear mongering claims about e-cigs)

I was impressed that Mark Poloncarz stayed for the entire hearing (after arriving a few minutes late), and that he missed the first 25 minutes of another meeting he was scheduled to attend. Don't know if Poloncarz will approve or reject the vaping ban (especially since the County Council passed it with a 8-1 vote back in January), but he certainly got an excellent education about vaping and vapor products at the hearing.

Here are two news stories (with the first one including some of my testimony).
Residents speak against e-cigarette bill | wivb.com
Public hearing reviews ban on e-cigarettes | WBFO

My testimony (which received a loud and long ovation from the vapers in the room) is below.

Testimony to
Erie County (NY) Executive Mark Poloncarz
Opposing Proposed E-cigarette Usage Ban

March 18, 2015

William T Godshall, MPH
Executive Director
Smokefree Pennsylvania
1926 Monongahela Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15218
412-351-5880
BillGodshall@verizon.net

I’m Bill Godshall, founder and executive director of Smokefree Pennsylvania. Since 1990, we’ve campaigned to ban smoking in workplaces, stop cigarette marketing to youth, increase cigarette tax rates, hold cigarette companies accountable in civil court, and during the past decade, we’ve been informing smokers and the public that all smokefree tobacco/nicotine products are 99% less hazardous than cigarettes (including vapor products, nicotine gums, lozenges, patches, inhalers, and smokeless tobacco).

For disclosure, neither Smokefree Pennsylvania nor I have ever received any funding from any tobacco, drug or e-cig company, or from any government agency that has campaigned to ban vapor products or vaping.

In 2009, after urging Obama’s FDA to keep e-cigarettes legal, we collaborated with two e-cig companies that successfully sued the FDA in federal court for unlawfully banning e-cigs. Since then, we’ve urged many state legislatures to ban e-cig sales to minors, and ban vaping in K-12 schools.

In sharp contrast to the many false and misleading fear mongering claims by entities funded by Big Pharma and Obama’s DHHS, the scientific and empirical evidence has found that nicotine vapor products are 99% (+/-1%) less hazardous than cigarettes, have never been found to be associated with any disease, and pose no health risks to nonusers.

Nicotine vapor products have already replaced about 2 Billion packs of cigarettes in the US, and nearly all of these products have been consumed by smokers and by exsmokers who switched to vaping.

Two new surveys found that 3 and 4 million US smokers respectively are no longer regular smokers thanks to vapor products, which are at least as effective for smoking cessation as FDA approved NRT products that have a 95% failure rate.

There’s no evidence vapor products have ever created daily nicotine dependence in any nonsmoker (youth or adult), and there’s no evidence vapor products have served as a gateway to cigarette smoking for any daily smoker (anywhere in the world).

Adult and teen surveys have consistently found that smokers are at least 20 times more likely than nonsmokers to report e-cig use, and the only survey that asked about product content found that 96% of nonsmokers who previously vaped had used nicotine-free e-cigs. Since vapor product sales began to skyrocket in 2009, adult and teen smoking rates have declined to new record lows every year.

Public health benefits every time a smoker vapes instead of smoking a cigarette, and vapor products have similar risk/benefit profiles as childhood vaccines, water and sewage treatment, and condoms.

In regards to indoor air quality, all of the following things emit more indoor air pollution than does an e-cigarette:
- smoker’s clothes and hair,
- cooking,
- glues and paint,
- carpeting and most furniture,
- printers and photocopiers,
- household cleaning products,
- dry cleaned clothes,
- hair sprays, perfumes and cosmetics,
- air fresheners, and even
- a cup of coffee or tea.

Although those things pose negligible health risks to the public, anyone who truly desired to reduce indoor air pollution would lobby to ban them before targeting e-cigs.

Since Smokefree Pennsylvania’s goal is to reduce cigarette smoking, we urge County Executive Poloncarz to veto this proposed vaping ban because it protects cigarette markets, takes away the right of all Erie County employers to establish their own vaping and smoking cessation policies, demonizes vapers and encourages them to switch back to deadly cigarettes, and discourages all smokers from quitting smoking.

We recommend amending this legislation to just ban vaping at K-12 schools and at preschools, as that would be reasonable regulation.

The proposed vaping ban would force many vapers to go outside and be exposed to secondhand smoke, and would deceive the public to inaccurately believe that vaping is just as hazardous as cigarette smoking.

Vapor products benefit many employers and managements because workers don’t waste time on smoke breaks, vaping helps employees quit smoking and reduces employer healthcare costs, and customers don’t have to go outside for a smoke. In sharp contrast, the proposed vaping ban would pit employers against employees.

Finally, its impossible to enforce vaping bans, as users can eliminate all visible vapor by simply holding their breath for two seconds.

That’s why nobody has enforced existing state or local vaping bans. In sum, banning vaping threatens public health, creates many new lawbreakers and increases resentment of government and elected officials.

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