Remember when the Chicago City Council,
unlike its counterpart in
New York, decided not to rush into banning the use of
electronic cigarettes in public places? As I
noted last month, the proposal, backed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel,
encountered what the Chicago Sun-Times called “a
surprise outpouring of opposition” from critics who cited the
dearth of evidence that e-cigarettes pose a hazard to bystanders
and worried that treating them like the real thing would discourage
smokers from switching to a much healthier alternative. While those
points remain valid, they are no longer dissuading Chicago’s
aldermen from imposing the same restrictions on vaping that
currently apply to smoking. Yesterday, by a vote of 15 to 5, the
city council’s health and finance committtees
approved a bill adding e-cigarettes to Chicago’s Clean Indoor
Air Act. The full city council, where a total of 26 votes are
needed to pass the ordinance, is
expected to follow suit tomorrow.
As in New York, supporters of the ban say vaping looks too much
like smoking to be tolerated. E-cigarettes “normalize smoking,”
complained Alderman Will Burns, a co-sponsor of the ordinance.
“They make it seem OK to smoke.” Alderman Ray Colon, who opposes
the ban, highlighted the absurdity of this argument:
The campaign is [more] against normalization of the appearance
of mimicking smoking inside than it is [about] the health benefits.
If we could prove that there is no health risk, you would still be
here before us saying that normalization of smoking indoors is bad
enough. We don’t want the look of smoking inside. We don’t even
want you to pretend to smoke.
Chicago’s
Clean Indoor Act “prohibits smoking in virtually all enclosed
public places and enclosed places of employment, including but
not necessarily limited to bars, restaurants, shopping malls,
recreational facilities (including enclosed sports arenas,
stadiums, swimming pools, ice and roller rinks, arcades and bowling
alleys), concert halls, auditoriums, convention facilities,
government buildings and vehicles, public transportation
facilities, coin laundries, meeting rooms, private clubs, public
restrooms, lobbies, reception areas, hallways and other common-use
areas in public buildings, apartment buildings and condominium
buildings.” Hence vaping will be allowed only in private
residences, designated hotel rooms, and tobacco (and e-cigarette?)
stores. You also can vape outdoors, as long as you remain more than
15 feet from building entrances. The temperature
in Chicago peaked at 34 degrees today; the expected low tonight is
16.
“You’re making people go outside,” Colon
noted. “You’re treating it just as you would [a] tobacco
cigarette. You’re lumping it together in the same category,
even though you don’t really have any proof that it has any harm.
You’re saying, ‘We’re going to regulate first and ask questions
later.'” Although New York City Health Commissioner Thomas
Farley claims
regulating out of ignorance is the only responsible approach,
that’s true only if you ignore the costs of regulation. Alderrman
Brendan Reilly told his fellow council members he has “friends and
family members who are using [e-cigarettes] to quit, to get away
from combustible tobacco that kills people.” If pushing vapers out
into the cold deters such harm reduction, which seems likely, it
will endanger people’s health instead of protecting
it.
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