Is this like California, where the governor has to approve the bill?
Should we be emailing the governor of New Jersey ASAP??
I think so, but considering that it passed unanimously without comment means even if we convinced the governor to veto, it could likely be overturned. I suspect that the best next step is to challenge A4228 in court as the wording of the bill is clearly too broad and overreaching to be effective.
I suspect that the unanimous nature of the vote means that the problem is that the legislature was just being lazy. They assumed that since the FDA said e-cigs are bad, that e-cigs must be bad. They see e-cigs as a "loophole" in their new "Smoke Free Air Act" so they think they're doing the right thing in closing the loophole.
What they've failed to realize is that there is a substantive difference between smoke and vapor. They think that calling it "vapor" is just a semantic argument and justify that conclusion by citing cases where e-cig users have referred to it as "smoke". But the TRUTH is that no matter the name: a rose is a rose. There are VERY GOOD reasons to ban smoke in indoor workplaces, but those justifications simply do not apply to vapor in point of fact. It really has nothing to do with safety or effectiveness as a smoking cessation aid, it has to do with the physical difference between smoke and vapor: Smoke is the product of combustion which converts oxygen in the environment to carbon monoxide, while vapor does NOT chemically alter the air where it is being used. There is no more reason to suspect that exhaled vapor from an e-cigarette is a hazard to bystanders than there is to think that exhaled vapor from drinking a cuppa of organic coffee contains an appreciable amount of the 10mg of known carcinogens in coffee.
Because of the scientific difference between smoke and vapor, the only way that New Jersey can include all "personal vaporizers" is to use a definition that includes other electronic devices that produce a visible vapor...which means that is a de facto ban on rescue inhalers for asthmatics (which most are
electronic now to avoid using ozone-depleting Chloroflourocarbons as propellants) or other consumer goods like toy fog machines.
It might look like we are currently losing this David & Goliath fight, but truth and scientific FACTS are on our side so there is hope that reason will win out.
