On Friday, March 20 2020, the Legislature adjourned the 2020 session. It was incredibly busy especially at the end as Legislators worked to address both the expected and unexpected issues facing our state.
We want to thank you for all of your support during the legislative session and share some good news on one of our priority issues. In the final days of the session the Senate passed and sent to the Governor legislation that will treat traditional tobacco and vape products the same.
It was a high priority issue for us to ensure all new tobacco products, like e-cigarettes/vape devices, e-juice, and other electronic tobacco products, fall under the same definition in state law as traditional tobacco products like cigarettes, chew, pipe tobacco, and snuff so that they also fall under the same regulations.
Under this new state law, all sellers of traditional tobacco products and vape products will be required to obtain a state permit. This allows the state to perform compliance checks to ensure they are not selling to underage users and before this passed that was not the case for those who sold only e-cigarette type devices.
We’ve seen a number of new smoking devices including electronic cigarettes/vaping devices like Juul and Sourin being introduced. The number of youth using these devices is staggering. In fact, one in four high school students admit to regularly using electronic vaping devices, and 48% of Idaho High school students have tried them at least once! We are hopeful that this will help begin to address the alarming rate of youth using vape products.
Again, we want to extend a big thank you to you, our advocates, for your ongoing support. In these days of uncertainty and concern over community health, we hope you’ll take good care of yourselves, your families and your community.
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