A New York City Smoker Group Suing to End E-Cigarette Ban in Restaurants and Bars

On Tuesday July 22, 2014, the New York City based smokers group
named Citizens Lobying Against Smokers Harassment, charged in a
lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court that the ban on
e-cigarettes being smoked in restaurants and bars is illegal
because the ban has nothing to do with protecting New Yorkers from
second hand smoke

For more on this topic watch the reasonTV short titled Thank
You for Vaping: Libertarian vs. New York City’s E-Cig
Ban. 

Original text below the video.

“[E-cigarettes] are just as important for public health as
childhood vaccines, antibiotics, sewer treatment, and water
treatment,” says anti-smoking activist Bill Godshall of Smokefree
Pennsylvania. “And [it’s] one of the craziest situations because
the public health authorities [want to] ban them.”

On April 28, 2014, Reason, the Museum of Sex, and Henley
Vaporium co-hosted a party to celebrate how e-cigarettes
are saving lives—and to flout a ridiculous new law in New York that
bans their use in many public places. (More on that in a
moment.)

E-cigarettes, which are battery-powered devices that replace
carcinogenic smoke with water vapor, have proven to be remarkably
effective at helping habitual smokers quit tobacco cigarettes.
While we don’t know yet if e-cigarettes has any long-term adverse
health consequences, it’s highly unlikely that they’re as dangerous
as regular smokes.

“[S]imple common sense would tell us that inhaling their
ingredients, as compared to inhaling the thousands of chemicals
from tobacco combustion (the smoke), is highly likely to be less
harmful,” writesDr.
Gilbert Ross of the American
Council on Science and Health.

And yet federal regulators are determined to severely limit the
use of e-cigarettes. In 2009, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) attempted to block their sale altogether, but a
federal judge intervened. On April 24, 2014, the FDA proposed
regulations that would require e-cigarettes manufacturers to
obtain the agency’s approval for each of their products, a process
that Ross estimates could cost over a million dollars and would
likely drive the small players (which currently dominate the
industry) out of business. This would dramatically curtail the
variety of e-cigarettes products on the market, thus limiting the
options of smokers looking for an alternative to regular
cigarettes.

New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, along with other
cities, states, and counties have passed laws banning the use of
e-cigarettes in offices, bars, parks, and other public places.
These laws make little sense, argues Ross, because “there are no
toxins in so-called second-hand vapor.” E-cigarettes generally emit
no odor, and the vapor they give off rapidly dissipates.

At the stroke of midnight on the evening of the Reason event,
the New York City e-cigarettes ban took effect, giving attendees an
opportunity to openly flout the law.

Click here to
read Jacob Sullum’s take on the FDA proposed regulations.

Click here for
more photos of the event.

About 3:15.

Shot, produced, and edited by Jim Epstein. Photos by Anthony
Collins.

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