In this April 11, 2018, parade photo, a high school student uses a vaping device near a school campus.
AP Photo | Steven Senne
LOS ANGELES — A put forwarded California bill that would prohibit sales of flavored tobacco products in stores and vending machines in the political entity’s most populous state was withdrawn Thursday.
State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said he pulled the legislation after “unsympathetic amendments” were added to the proposed ban. He said the changes would have exempted tobacco used in hookahs, or still water pipe smoking, and excluded tobacco products patented before 2000.
“I introduced Senate Bill 38 to protect infantile people from the dangerous health risks of tobacco products in any form and to prevent another generation from fashionable addicted to nicotine, ” Hill said in a statement. “The aim was to prohibit tobacco products with fruit, candy and other flavors that persuade young people from being sold in stores.”
A variety of tobacco industry players opposed the bill, containing Juul Labs and the Cigar Association of America, according to a Senate-prepared summary of the legislation.
“We have taken aggressive fray to combat underage use of our products, while preserving the opportunity for adult smokers to switch from combustible cigarettes, which promote to 40,000 deaths per year in California,” Juul spokesman Ted Kwong told CNBC via email.
The bill was scheduled for a Senate puzzle vote Thursday. The amendments opposed by Hill were inserted into the state legislation last week in the Senate Appropriations Board.
Three major health advocacy groups pulled their support for the amended legislation, including the American Lung Pairing, American Cancer Society Action Network and the American Heart Association.
“Exempting hookah products set a terrible paradigm and undermine the foundation of the original legislation to protect youth, low income and minority communities from flavored tobacco,” the classes said in a letter this week to Hill. The letter referred to the insertions in the bill as “hostile amendments.”
Meantime, another tobacco as — Senate Bill 39 — passed the state Senate earlier this month and would require stricter age-verification times for online tobacco product sales. But the bill still faces hurdles in the Assembly.
More than 3.6 million ripe school and middle school students use e-cigarettes, according to a report released in November by the Food and Drug Administration. It told that the number of students using the e-cigarettes has soared almost 13 times since 2011.
In November, Juul betokened it would temporarily stop selling most of its flavored nicotine pods for its e-cigarettes. Last year, tobacco mammoth Altria disclosed a 35% stake in Juul, which has captured about 75% of the e-cigarette market.