WESTFIELD – The Westfield Board of Health voted in June of 2011 to modify its tobacco control regulations to address the sale of e-tobacco and other nicotine delivery products by minors under the age of 18 and to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes in places where tobacco use is prohibited under the state Smoke-free Workplace Law (MGL: Chapter 270, Section 22)
More than two years later Attorney General Martha Coakley and a group representing Massachusetts physicians are urging state lawmakers to adopt similar language to regulate the sale and use of electronic cigarettes and are requesting the Massachusetts Legislature to follow suit.
The proposed bill would prohibit the sale of nicotine delivery systems, including e-cigarettes, to children under 18. The measure would also prevent e-cigarettes from being used on school property or any other location where smoking is currently not allowed.
Acting Health Director Joseph Rouse said this morning that the Health Board modified the city’s tobacco control regulations, adding language that “made the use of e-cigarettes prohibited wherever the smoking of tobacco products are prohibited.”
The board also amended its “Regulation Effecting Minor (under 18) access to Tobacco” regulation by changing the title to read “Regulation Effecting Minor (under 18) access to Tobacco and Nicotine Delivery Products.”
Rouse said the amendment to the regulation now defines e-cigarette and nicotine delivery products.
The regulation states: “No person shall sell tobacco products or nicotine deliver products to a minor.”
Current state regulation prohibit the sale or dispensing of nicotine gum and patches to persons under 18 years of age. Pharmacies are required to ask for proof of age when selling those products.
Rouse said the local regulation was reviewed by the attorneys of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program “to make sure what we were adopting was legal.”
The MTCP lawyers made several suggestions to the Health Department based upon local regulations in place in other communities.
“We weren’t the first to adopt this. Some of the suggestions came from other communities’ regulations,” Rouse said.
The process of local communities being out in front of state action is similar to the original movement to ban smoke in workplaces because of the concern about the health effects of second-hand smoke. Many communities adopted bans years before the state enacted the work place law.
That piecemeal approach led to debate of uneven playing fields for many businesses because smoking was banned in their community but allowed in a neighboring community.
