Hey, everybody. It's Gregory Conley, CASAA's legislative diretctor. It is April 7th, 2013, and I'm here to give a brief update of what has been going on.
First, some news about bills that are dead or essentially dead:
West Virginia: We reported about two weeks ago that West Virginia was considering a smokeless
tobacco tax increase of about 600%. That bill has essentially died because the sponsor has admitted that it has no chance of passing, and West Virginia's legislative session either is over by now or it's over in a week.
Connecticut: The e-cigarette usage ban that myself and about 13 other vapers testified against two or
three weeks ago is -- absent some extraordinary action -- dead. It did not get a vote in the Joint Committee on Public Health by the committee deadline. We're going to be updating the Call to Action to ask those in the New England area to send an email to the members of the Joint Committee on Public Health thanking them for recognizing that there was no need to move any further on the e-cigarette usage ban.
Kentucky: The attempt to pass a smoking ban that includes electronic cigarettes has died. I believe it is three years in a row now that they've put electronic cigarettes in a bill dealing with smoking--and each time they've done it, the bill has died. These people apparently do not realize that when you add electronic cigarettes to a smoking ban that already is going to be a tough sell to legislators in Kentucky, it just means more opposition. Hopefully, after three major losses, they'll figure it out and stop trying to include e-cigarettes in smoking bans in the future.
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Current:
Minnesota: We are still awaiting any word on hearings of any sort in Minnesota where they have a bill on the table to impose a 95% tax on e-cigarettes. (That would be on their wholesale sale.) Minnesota is the only state currently that taxes e-cigarette sales. The retailer pays a wholesale tax of 70% on anything that contains nicotine. So the
mods that we use are untaxed. But disposables, nicotine liquid, prefilled cartomizers, they are all taxed. And I can tell you this: In Minnesota, I've heard reports from a very large company that makes a cig look-alike disposable that the wholesale tax on their product is around $3-$4, while the average Minnesota cigarette tax is aroud $1.23. So they're talking about making it even more expensive to use an e-cigarette and even more expensive to use an e-cigarette compared to using cigarettes. So we really need some more vendors in Minnesota to band together, form an organization, and put together a little bit of money and perhaps hire a lobbyist. It's time to do so. It's time for them to either keep the tax at 70%, lower it, or eliminate it. Minnesota's fiscal situation may be such that there's no hope of getting rid of the tax, but let's at least separate it out so that they don't keep raising the tax on e-cigarettes.
California: The CASAA Board has voted to fly me to Sacramento to testify at the April 17th, 2013 hearing on SB 648. We need to have a big crowd there. We've got a lot of people in the Sacramento area who are coming to testify, but I haven't heard too much about people coming from the other parts of California. busing their way there, vendors trying to collect groups of people to bring to the hearing. I know it's tough because California is such a large state. It's like telling me in New Jersey, "Oh, you should be in Vermont tomorrow," which is the comparison between Los Angeles to Sacramento, for example. But we need to pack that hearing room.
SB 648 has been scheduled for a hearing before the currently pending before the Senate Committee on Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 1:30 p.m. in Sacramento at the State Capitol Building, Room #4203 (John L. Burton room). Public comment will be heard at the end of the hearing and is open to the public.
If you would like to submit testimony directly to the Health Committee, please email or fax Senate Health Committee Assistant Alex Norring at
alex.norring@sen.ca.gov / (916) 324-0384. If emailing, please put "SB 648 Testimony" in the subject line. The deadline for official testimony is April 10th, but you can continue to contact individual legislators up to and after the April 17th hearing..
If you are in California and can travel to Sacramento to attend and speak at a hearing, please e-mail us at
board@casaa.org with the subject line "California Testimony." We are going to need vapers throughout California to organize trips to Sacramento. Please help out in any way you can.
Defeat:
We had a defeat this week, a minor defeat, but a defeat nonetheless. There was a resolution in North Dakota to study tobacco harm reduction, and it's a bill that RJ Reynolds has been pushing in various different states. While we have been fighting several RJ Reynolds sponsored bills, this is one that we support. We need states to look into tobacco harm reduction, and we need to have people who are not prohibitionists conduct the study. Any honest person studying tobacco harm reduction will come back with the assessment that all smoke-free products (whether e-cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, or dissolvables) are far, far safer than smoking and that there is a benefit to truthfully communicating information to citizens. This kind of resolution has passed in one or two other states, but not in North Dakota. The resolution passed the House of Representative by a 48 to 46 vote. It passed out of the Senate Human Services Committee by a 3 to 2 vote, and the Committee hopefully received a ton of emails from vapers responding to CASAA's Call to Action. (I haven't listened to the hearing yet, but I'm hopeful that those emails made a difference in their minds.) And then sadly on Thursday, I believe, the North Dakota Senate voted it down by a 7 to 38 vote. It is extremely disappointing that the North Dakota Senate voted against such a sensible bill.
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Three hearings on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013:
Contra Costa, California: A public hearing will be take place on Tuesday, April 9th at 9:30 a.m. at the County Administration Building, 651 Pine Street, Room 107, Martinez, California. We need vapers in and around the Contra Costa County area to attend and testify. If you can attend, please e-mail us at
board@casaa.org with the subject line "Contra Costa Testimony." Please help out in any way you can. One of the people who is on the Committee in California deciding whether or not to pass the statewide ban is from Contra Costa, California, and so it's going to be very unlikely that he will vote against the bill to add e-cigarettes to California's smoking ban if the county that he represents just voted to ban their use. So we really need to get some people from San Francisco and the surrounding area to attend the hearing.
Rhode Island: SB 622 has been scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, April 9th in Room 313 of the State House in Providence, Rhode Island at around 3:30 pm. If you are in or around Rhode Island and can attend and speak at the hearing, please e-mail us at
board@casaa.org with the subject line "Rhode Island Testimony." Please help out in any way you can. This bill would strangle online sales. It would require consumers purchasing from a Rhode Island vendor (and, for that matter, arguably any Rhode Island consumer purchasing from any vendor in the U.S.) to (1) send a copy of the purchaser's driver's license and (2) sign a statement saying that he's the person pictured. Then, the vendor would be required to deliver all vape mail with age verification via USPS. This will not only result in increased costs (which will ultimately be passed on to the consumers), but it will also pose a substantial inconvenience to consumers who will be forced to sign, in person, for each and every such delivery. This bill is sponsored by RJ Reynolds, and we need to push back against these unwarranted restrictions on online sales.
Oklahoma: SB 802 has been scheduled for a hearing on Tuesday, April 9th at 1:30 pm at the State Capitol Building in Oklahoma City (2300 N Lincoln Blvd., State Capitol Building, Oklahoma City, OK 73105). Vapers will be holding a rally outside the Capital beginning at 9 am! CASAA is requesting that all vapers attend and testify in opposition. Please e-mail us at
board@casaa.orgif you plan to attend. This bill involves taxes, tobacco licensing and a provision that would ban consumers from buying online. It is a terrible bill, again, sponsored by RJ Reynolds. We have many people who are showing up to testify, but we need more people. I just recently learned that the bill is even worse than we had initially thought. Originally, we thought that the tax on e-liquids, disposables, and such would be capped at 5 or 10 cents per product. However, it's actually 5 cents per 1.48 milliliters of consumable material. That means that a 30 milliliter bottle of liquid would be taxed at $1.00 - $1.05, which is actually approximately a 30% increase in the 77 cent sales tax that consumers in Oklahoma currently pay when buying e-cigarette products.
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This is the April 7th, 2013 legislative update, and we hope that vapers will take action on these bills. Our best chance of defeating bad legislation is by standing up and making our voices heard.
