A positive victory for vapers on California Bill SB648

Update: You can read my wife’s version of the events here in the article about the Corridors of Confusion.

This is probably going to be a lengthy summary of the second death of CA SB648 and one that is particularly difficult to explain in detail and with all its facets so I’ll try and keep it short and to the point because in reality, this is not any longer about a common sense bill that both vapers and industry supported but about how anti-tobacco groups (including the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society CAN, and California Medical Association) opposed a bill that would protect minors from having access to e-cigarettes via vending machines. It is about the true face of tobacco control and their true motives.

I will spare you the long history of SB648 and how it went from the bill it once was into a bill that focused solely on vending machines and preventing minors from having access. Instead, I will go back to June 25th when we were at the State Capitol in Sacramento for the SB648 hearing in which we wholeheartedly supported the bill. You can read more about that on my wife’s website in the post about California SB648 Turns on a Definition.

The TL;DR of that is that a very awkward and potentially harmful definition that would equate e-cigarettes with cigarettes and tobacco products was removed and rewritten in the Governmental Organization Committee. As a result e-cigs were not thrown in with regular tobacco. This caused the various anti-tobacco groups to peal off and oppose the bill that they had long since been supporting. Thereby opposing a common sense bill that would do exactly what it said it would do, prohibit access to vending machines for minors. Needless to say, this showed their true face and intentions because it was never about protecting minors to them but all about the definition to set a state wide definition in addition to the one in the Health Code. This blatant change of going from support into opposition did not go unnoticed by the committee as the committee chair remarked on that forcefully, or as my wife puts it;

Assemblymember Hall had less patience with them than I have displayed here. It was a delight to hear him chastising them for opposing the bill, for being willing to come down in favor of selling e-cigarettes in vending machines rather than accept the amendment.

The definition would have opened the door to taxation and many other overreaching anti-tobacco control desires and would have incorrectly defined a range of products that have contributed to the improved health of many former smokers and yet is also starting to be the bane of anti-tobacco’s existence.

In early August we learned that these various anti-tobacco control groups had been lobbying very hard with Senator Ellen Corbett and her staff. We know that Senator Corbett was extremely dismayed by having her “friends” turn on her the way they did but we also did not know whether she would show to have a spine or cave in to the pressure put on her to amend the bill back into the favor of the anti-tobacco interests. And the bill was coming up in the Appropriations Committee (where we as vapers and industry had spent time previously and were successful in defeating that awful bill). Needless to say, we needed to be there to ensure that our opponents would not have gained the upper hand on this bill (again).

Our main concern was whether there were any amendments that we might only learn of at the time of the hearing itself so Sallie, Jan, and myself set out to Sacramento again. I did try and put out a call to get more vendors and vapers involved but did not push very hard for it, knowing that this hearing (and because of other information that we may or may not have learned in the process) may not have needed an overwhelming number on our side to make the point. We were prepared to support the bill as it was last amended (the way we left it on June 25) or to oppose it in case new and undesirable things would have found its way in.

In the morning before the hearing we caught up with what was going on and learned that, for now, no amendments were present (other than some minor administrative bits) nor expected and decided to follow our original intentions of supporting this bill and Senator Corbett. We also learned that, as we had already expected, the definition that the anti-tobacco groups were fighting tooth and nail over were, indeed, meant as a prelude to taxation as a tax bill is in the works.

It might be premature to discuss this right now as part of this lengthy summary but please be aware that another battle is upon us. I can not give you a time frame or indication but rest assured that when the time comes you will be hearing about it as we organize and mobilize. If you are a consumer of vapor products I would urge you to contact me ASAP so we can include you on future actions and information. If you are a vendor or manufacturer of vapor products you most certainly would want to get in touch with me because we have quite a few other important things to discuss, not in the least the efforts, formation, and organization of the local Northern California chapter of SFATA.

Both Sallie and Jan delivered testimony in support of Senator Corbett’s bill and if you wish you can see that in the following two part video of the entire hearing. I will be referring to this further on in this post so if you’re interested in the subject, please do take the 30 minutes to familiarize yourself with what exactly happened in the hearing room. And, as expected, the anti-tobacco groups opposed the bill.

At this point, you need to realize that after the hearing on June 25th, the removal of the incorrect and bad definition caused a lot of fuss in the tobacco control camps. In particular with Professor Stanton Glantz who labeled the bill as being “pro industry” and called upon Senator Corbett to pull the entire bill because they could no longer support it. Glantz made it appear that the tobacco control groups had given up and were done with the bill. Except of course, in reality they kept working the hallways and kept pressuring, even more than before, to get this bill “fixed” (their word for it!).

It was clear that they were not going to give up and this bill passing on out of the Appropriations Committee would have caused it to head to the floor where it is quite possible that our voices would not be heard as loud and clear as in the G.O. and A.P. committees. I will spare you all the political details and minutia of the legislative process since this post would never come to an end but to make a long story short, the bill was subsequently starved of the votes it needed to pass, essentially “killing it” in committee. For those more familiar with the process I would point out the abstentions, the bill being placed on call, and Corbett’s inability to gain the votes she needed before the day ended.

This is a rare but positive victory. Rare in that our side was perfectly happy with the bill itself but would not like to see it steer off course again and our opponents wished to steer it into a different direction again or otherwise not have the pass. The outcome is positive in that we have not lost anything and our opponents have suffered a setback that will take them time and effort to overcome, thereby giving us a little breathing room to organize some more and form a stronger opposition to the anti-tobacco crowd.

The real loss, however, is that so-called “public health” groups have been part of preventing a good bill to pass that would have prohibited minors from having access to e-cigarettes through vending machines. I guess that Assemblymember Hall was correct when he expressed his dismay on June 25 and said that it appeared that the anti-tobacco lobby WANTED minors to have access. If Senator Corbett had not been such a persistent opponent to our interests we might have felt sorry for her bill not passing but after the entire history of SB648 we will take the bittersweet result of how it failed to leave the committee this time around.

The bill is still up for reconsideration but that is extremely unlikely to happen. Senator Corbett is not up for re-election and the time it would take as well as the knowledge on her end that she would once again be squashed between two very strong opposing interests is probably enough to ensure that the second death of SB648 will remain its final one.

The more important, perhaps the most important even, aspect of the skirmish over SB648 is that anti-tobacco groups are using the pretense of public health as a vehicle for their other desires to control an industry and the many satisfied and happy consumers who have saved their lives with the smoke-free alternatives known as e-cigarettes and vapor products. But the tobacco-control folks don’t care about that. It’s not about that for them. We know it. We have known it for a long time. I am sure you, the reader, knows this too. But we don’t get to expose their tactics and political games as often as we’d like because they are slippery and shady and I for one am quite pleased that a bill like SB648 and its documented history allows us to highlight that and underscore the dangers that these groups pose to public health.

Instead, they will grab every single opportunity they get, along with their friends in the media, to incorrectly label us as “pro tobacco” or “big tobacco”. I, for one, am offended by that because we have no ties to any big tobacco companies and frankly we are perhaps the only ones that are truly opponents of big tobacco seeing as our jobs and sources of income do not depend on tobacco settlement money and government grants for anti-tobacco programs.

I am sure that it is not just us who are offended by the continued inappropriate smearing of the term “big tobacco” and “pro tobacco” as both NJOY and V2 who have been working on SB648 are not big tobacco companies, not owned by big tobacco companies, and are the furthest thing from tobacco companies. We did see NJOY present at this hearing but did not see anyone from V2. I regularly run into people who will say, “oh, NJOY, but they’re big tobacco”. No they’re not. Please do get your facts straight. I understand that NJOY is generally seen as a “cig-a-like” company but even that isn’t a correct reflection as the company has recently introduced their 2nd generation “open” vapor products along with a range of e-liquids in various flavors. It is, of course, in the interest of tobacco control groups to keep repeating the lie that these companies, all vapor companies and its consumers, are all big tobacco, big tobacco shills, etc. They need to repeat and continue that lie to influence public perception in a public that does not know better. If you repeat a lie enough it becomes truth through perception?

In part 1 of the video above you will hear the voice of desperation from the anti-tobacco organizations pretending it is all still about public health for them.

Tim Gibbs from the American Cancer Society made a very clear play on insisting that the use of e-cigarettes is an act called “smoking”. You would think he knows better and how we all refer to vaping as he has used that word repeatedly in the past. For this hearing, though, he decided to forget that and stick with the term “smoking”.

The irony of Mr. Gibbs referring to their opposition being because of a “last minute poison pill amendment” might not escape you. Maybe we should look at actual poison pills like Chantix that are supported and promoted by these groups.

Also note that Mr. Gibbs makes a direct play on the unregulated nature of e-cigarettes and that they can be used in movie theaters, super markets, restaurants, etc. as if the lack of a definition (their definition) in SB648 would either encourage or discourage the very things that local ordinances seem to have been focusing on in many cities across the nation. Strangely enough, it has not appeared that any of those ordinances that have come to pass had any issues with the lack of a definition.

Kelly from the American Heart / Stroke Association goes one step further by saying that this bill would set a “dangerous precedent” surrounding the categorization of e-cigarettes. I would like to think she just failed to understand a simple, short, and very clear bill but unfortunately, what you are seeing is not her inability to recognize a common sense bill but her inability to give up on not getting the definition her employers wish to see exist in order to further their influence over the very thing that is causing serious harm to their funding.

Kimberly from the American Lung Association was by far the worst performer who tried her best to influence public perception by starting off by saying that “the tobacco industry has a clear agenda today”. Using the term “tobacco industry” does not automatically make it true. She then goes on to remind us all that the tobacco companies are convicted racketeers. Obviously, Kimberly really wanted to imply that those of us who had any involvement with SB648 are somehow related to or part of this group of convicted racketeers. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have run out of any sensible arguments!

Let me highlight the smear campaign by anti-tobacco groups and their allies in the media by starting off with this article published by the Sacramento Bee (a paper known for its strong anti-tobacco views) and written by Laurel Rosenhall.

“Senate Bill 648 presented a confusing case in the ongoing debate over regulating the vapor devices that are marketed as smoke-free cigarettes. It also illustrated the influence tobacco companies – which have expanded in recent years to include electronic cigarettes – wield in the state Capitol.”

Which tobacco companies, Laurel? Would you care to name them and do your job as a journalist or would you like to continue to just throw out baseless and unsubstantiated drivel like the above? We have been there throughout this bill and met and talked with everyone involved, on BOTH sides even. Repeatedly, both during and outside of hearings. We never encountered a single tobacco company.

And then there’s Micheal Sweeney, the former mayor of Hayward, CA who goes out of his way to outdo Laurel on the repeated mentioning of these big tobacco interests that were not present.

“The measure, SB 648 by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), originally would have ensured e-cigarettes were regulated just like any other tobacco product. But that tough language was stripped by powerful, pro-tobacco voices in the Legislature.”

I’m not surprised that Michael there would not dare mention the pro-pharma voices in the Legislature in many of the other committees we had to deal with over the past many months, you know, the ones that persistently vote in favor of anti-tobacco legislation. I guess the term pro-pharma may not sound as insidious as pro-tobacco.

“The new language is a known tobacco industry tactic to draw a distinction from an e-cigarette and a tobacco product. E-cigarette advocates are working diligently nationwide to further themselves from both cigarettes and tobacco products, and to exempt e-cigarettes from current smoke-free laws.”

The new language being referred to, in reality, is a removal of an incorrect definition that would serve no interests other than the financial ones of the anti-tobacco and tobacco-control groups. None of the changes were a result of big tobacco companies. In fact, very early on in the past months we, and others, had actually remarked on the fact that there was no lobbyist present to represent the interests of Blu, for example. All of them were absent from any work regarding SB648.

Mr. Sweeney there seems confused and dismayed that we wish to distinguish ourselves from cigarettes and tobacco products. I don’t understand why he doesn’t get it because our products are neither.

“Unfortunately, Corbett’s latest legislation was hijacked by pro-tobacco groups, and the lawmakers they fund…”

Oh, I didn’t know we were doing that. Last I checked I didn’t see anyone write any checks.

“Unfortunately, what started as a well-intended effort to protect our children and public health now does just the opposite. As currently written, through some crafty backroom dealing from high-paid tobacco lobbyists, SB 648 once again puts our children in the crosshairs of tobacco company marketing schemes.”

I’m sure tobacco-control and anti-tobacco organizations would never be involved in any back room dealing (insert undiluted sarcasm warning here). As for any involvement outside of the actual hearings, I have yet to see or run into any high paid “tobacco lobbyists”. In fact, their absence surprised me. I would have hoped that a former Mayor would be able to read proposed laws as written because SB648, as it has been worded since June 25, did not accomplish the opposite of anything but rather simply would have prohibited minors from accessing these vending machines.

We talk to lawmakers, Senators, members of Congress, their staff, all the time about various concerns. That now makes us high-paid lobbyists? Where do I go to collect my check?

Their strategy of ignoring the consumer voice and labeling the actual vapor industry as “big tobacco” is failing and as more people become aware of this the harder it gets for them to keep repeating the lie. At least they have friends like Laurel and Michael helping them perpetuate it for all the good it will do them in the long run.