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SPRINGFIELD, IL — A local lawmaker is a targeting a new trend in nicotine products with a proposed Illinois law that would ban vaping devices disguised as everyday school supplies.
State Sen. Julie Morrison (D-Lake Forest) introduced an amendment in January to the Preventing Youth Vaping Act. On Wednesday, it passed the Senate Executive Committee and now is set to move on to the full Senate.
“The dangerous and addictive nature of nicotine consumption is the reason I have taken a strong stand on this issue,” Morrison said in a statement. “We should do everything in our power to make it impossible for children to obtain and conceal tobacco products.”
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The amendment would forbid manufacturers and retailers of electronic cigarettes from marketing them in a way that “is likely to cause a parent, legal guardian, teacher, or other adult to mistake the electronic cigarette for a product that is not a tobacco product.”
School officials have told the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services that they have been finding vaping devices on school property that are designed to look like highlighters, erasers and pencil sharpeners, according to Morrison’s office.
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“We expect public policy to protect children from harmful substances such as nicotine,” Morrison said. “This measure will prohibit tobacco companies from pulling the wool over the eyes of educators and guardians whose job it is to keep kids safe.”
Morrison is a longtime leader in anti-smoking legislation, having sponsored the 2019 bill raising the minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 and last year’s expansion of the statewide indoor smoking ban to include vaping, in addition to the 2022 Preventing Youth Vaping Act, which raised the age to buy e-cigarettes to 21 and banned the use of cartoons, characters, phrases or images known to appear to minors.
Last Fall, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to online retailers for carrying products designed to look like popular children’s characters and school supplies.
“The design of these products is a shamelessly egregious attempt to target kids,” said Brian King, who directs the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “It’s a tough sell that adults using e-cigarettes to transition away from cigarettes need them to look like SpongeBob in order to do so successfully.”
According to the latest data from the Illinois Youth Risk Behavior Survey, just 2.5 percent of high school students in Illinois reported smoking cigarettes in the prior month, while 38 percent have tried electronic cigarettes, nearly 17 percent reported they were regularly vaping and 4.5 percent using e-cigarettes every day. Those rates are all between 15 and 20 percent lower than in 2019, the previous edition of the biennial survey.
More information is available from the FDA’s Vaping Prevention and Education Resource Center, an educational resource for teachers, students and parents about the dangers of nicotine.
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