Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Chapters 5.81 and 8.68, relating to electronic cigarettes and similar devices, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
As an ordinance, the recommendation declaring orders amending the municipal code relating to electronic cigarets read an adopted as read. So moved by any public comment and item number 26. My name is Mike Schack, the image owner of Essex City, Long Beach. I was here last week and there's a couple of points that I would like to make. One, everything else is right now. I'm going to go ahead and try to make you all Instagram famous. Yeah. I want to publicize this on the Internet. And my point being is that technology trumps tradition. And we have the ability today that technology trumps the tradition of old cigarets the old ways. Okay. I have an electronic cigaret in my pocket which automatically demonizes me. Apparently that it's bad. It's the same thing as a cigaret, even though there is no studies clarifying that. There is no proof of that. I have studies showing otherwise. So as I take a head. It's still legal. In this council member. I don't understand what the issue is. I have over 700 signatures asking that electronic cigarets be classified as electronic cigarets and not as tobacco. This is where the problem lies because later in the future, when you classify tobacco as illegal or something else, then electronic cigarets has to fall in that place. I believe it's lazy of the city council not taking the time of something so popular. It is not a fad, it's a lifestyle. People want to become healthier. Last week, Dr. Garcia mentioned that he knew somebody that helped was helped by electronic cigarets. And I think that really needs to be considered by the entire city council. It's not going anywhere. It's the reality. I think that you guys have a very old school mindset and that you need to embrace it and learn more. And I invite you all to come to my shop and any other shops because I believe it. Yeah, there's a few owners here. We would be more than happy to show you what is in electronic cigaret. Can you guys name what's in a cigaret? I can name all four ingredients in electronic cigaret and two of the four are optional. All of them are USDA grade. You make em like tobacco. You tell me that I can't vape in my own shop. You want to put me out of business? I'm a small business. How dare you? Please reconsider the legislation. Please reconsider not classifying electronic cigarets as tobacco because it is not. Thank you. Sir. Thank you. Hey, could you just restate your name for the record? I'm Michael Schachner, owner of E-Cig City, Long Beach. Thank you. My name's Ken. Attorney. Born and raised Long Beach, California. I'm also the owner of an e-cigarette store. First of all, I'd like to say that this is a huge industry that we're taking on, which is big tobacco. It is a multibillion dollar corporation in which we are already turning people away from them, saving people's lives. I've. Personally have had people come to me and and say, after 35 years of smoking and trying everything to quit, this is the only thing has helped me. And to throw this in a category with something that's not even relevant to it. The thing is, electronic cigarets are not cigarets. As a matter of fact, everybody in this building right now is vaporizing. You are breathing water in and out of your mouth. Okay. Which is exactly the product that comes out of an e-cigarette. Nicotine is not a tobacco product. As a matter of fact, inside of a 150 gram potato, there are five five micrograms of nicotine. Nicotine is an F, almost every vegetable and some fruits. Okay, that that's that's a fact. Okay. To categorize this as a cigaret and put this as in and apply the laws to e-cigarettes as the laws are to cigarets. Well, why don't we do that with pot? Why don't we do that with with other substances? You can't because everything needs to be treated separately and differently according to the situation. And then on a second note, to categorize it, because you can smoke pot out of it or children smoke it. 20% of high school kids have tried e-cigarettes. And that is a fact. And the other fact is the majority of those 20% of those high school kids that have tried e-cigarettes are also smokers looking for an alternative and then for the use of illegal drugs in it. And you can use illegal drugs. In tin foil cans. Baseball bats. I mean, anything. This poll right here, I mean, it's so to to to justify categorize it as. A tool of of. Drug use is preposterous. Also, as my time's up. Thank you very much. Good evening, council members. My name is William Skidmore. I am not a representative of any organization, but I am a representative of 625 online petitioners that I started on Thursday. I sent you copies of the elongated version of our reason for the opposition of these proponents to all of your emails. And I have a copy of all of obviously the signatures here. I will summarize briefly for you. Because of time, we are opposed to chapters 581 because of its improperly linking the nicotine to tobacco products. This is not done with nicotine gums or nicotine patches. If we're concerned about minors, we took steps against that for things like compressed air or cough sirups. It was not classified as a tobacco product as it as it is requested to be amended in 581. The second aspect is 8.68, where we are having the same rules applied for smoking. There is no studies that show that these there is any harm that comes from electronic cigarets and because of this you're in out forcing people who smoke electronic cigarets and could possibly be ailing from these illnesses to be exposed to the same secondhand smoke, which there is plenty of studies, obviously, that there is that problem of exposing them. So that's all that I have at this time. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm James Pappas from the fifth District. I have a residence and a business in that area. A lot of these guys have already touched on some of the points that I wanted to make. But, you know, the state Senate has looked into regulating e-cigarettes with SB 648 and they showed that the FDA was supposed to hand. Down its findings. On October 31st, and they have yet to do that. So I think it's a little premature to be discussing regulating e-cigarettes in this manner. And just for the record. I am in opposition. Thanks. Hi. My name is Jenny Warner, and I'm going to be quick speaking as a health care representative. I can tell you that four years ago, all the hospitals in. L.A. that I worked with and knew of were all banning. Anything called a smoking. Device. And we were citing a lot of things that. Some of the supporters were citing that you can put wax in it and it can be pretty much. Any substance. We didn't want that in our buildings. We were promoting health. And there's numerous studies and documents about how there's been an increase in the wax and explosions and it's like more prevalent now than meth labs. So bringing that back home, e-cigarettes, we decided they were toys. They were not something that we needed to promote in the public spaces, and it was not conducive to. Our smoke free. Campuses. So we banned. Them. Thank you. Hello. I'm Jeff Miller. E-cigarettes are about nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive substance. One of the speakers said that potatoes contain some nicotine. Well, it may be, I don't know. But until the FDA declares that these devices are as safe as eating a potato, I don't think it should be something we want to promote. And it should be noted that young people, teenagers, adolescents, junior high school students emulate what adults do. NPR had a report today indicating the alarming rise in usage of e-cigarettes by this cohort of junior high school students. Well, we don't need any more encouragement of using an addictive substance. Yeah, they're not all smoking bubble gum flavors. There's nicotine, and that is addictive. We don't need to give anymore chance for junior high school students to become addicted. So let's regulate these as we do other products containing nicotine. That's all that's necessary. Thank you. Good evening. And again. I'm sorry. I hope I'm not wearing out my welcome. Melinda Cotton. I live in Belmont Shore, and I'm a member of the Coalition for a smoke free Long Beach. And we appreciated the council vote last last week to on the first reading to approve this with aid to Andrews for bringing forward Mr. Shad , which I believe the e-cigarette store who just demonstrated e-cigarettes with all the chemicals that are in that vapor. I sat behind him last week and he periodically puffs that in and practically in my face. So if the council fails to pass this ordinance tonight, this kind of demonstration will be prevalent not only in city council chambers, in bars and restaurants, every public place. And I don't think we want this. These are dangerous chemicals in there. And just to remind everyone that we're not preventing people from using these if they feel they help them quit actual tobacco cigarets. We're only saying please don't smoke them in public places. Please don't glamorize them for our children. And until we hear from the public health people all around the world, there are a lot of studies that show great concerns about this and the other things that can be smoked. You can put almost anything inside these e-cigarettes and smoke them. So please support this on the second reading and we appreciate your support of public health. Thank you. I stayed to the end. Evan Brownie. My name and address is on file. I've been involved in the tobacco issues and related issues for since I've been on the council. And excuse me, I'm a back surgery last Wednesday, so I'm still a little difficult to walk around quickly. But I wanted to this is an important issue to me. It's an important issue, I hope, for the for the city and for our health health conscious people. My biggest concern I mean, I think they've stated a number of things here and I may or may not be true. What what's inside is are healthy or not healthy. My my concern is when I hear a radio broadcast from, you know, legitimate journalists who are telling us that these places are being bought up, that companies are being by the by the tobacco companies that we have have not been our best friends over the years, at least, certainly not to our kids and and to our the health of our community. And they seem to be buying more of them and more of them to match their to increase their bottom dollar. I'm concerned about what they plan to do with them. And that's and I think that has to be we have to be careful about the future and at least for now, protect our community. And this would go away a ways to do that. Thank you. My name is Paula Wood, and I am chair of the Smoke Free Long Beach Coalition. I'm here to ask you to again support this on the Second Amendment voting. We feel that this is something that is very critical to particularly our youth of the community. I also work and run a nonprofit organization, and what I hear in talking to our youth is this is a serious issue that many of the young people, from what I hear, have not smoked in the past, but are trying these candied this candy vapor e-cigarettes. And they're you know, they're just becoming more and more prevalent all over middle school as well as high school. And I just feel that we need to make sure that this does not pass, as we can see if he's allowed the vapor here in the city hall. You know, I've also been in restaurants where it's happened. I understand that, you know, some of the college campuses that there's been some vaping in the classroom. And this is very, very a serious matter. And the concerns those of us who are concerned about the health of others. So I just hope that we can ask the city council to do what we have done in the past and support us on this tobacco issue. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Sheepskin. Yes. I'd like to actually make a substitute motion that we lay this over until the next council meeting, because I do not think it's fair. We've got three council members who are not here to vote on this. And I think it's very important. This is an extremely serious ordinance that we're taking into consideration and like the medical marijuana ordinance that we laid over so that there was all full participants, I would I would ask that we do that until March 4th. Seconded by Councilmember Neal. Mr. City Attorney can ask your question. This needs five votes in the motion. To lay over does not need. Five votes. The motion to pass the second reading would need five votes. So if I have six people and I have two indicating they're not going to support through the ordinance, if we get to the vote in the ordinance, the ordinance dies. That's correct. You need five votes for your second reading to pass the ordinance. You need to be. So. Okay, so. The practical impact or effect of voting to delay this would just delay it for two weeks. That's correct. You'd come back for your second reading again in two weeks. Thank you. You don't want to hold it over two weeks. Okay. The vote here is to hold it over for two weeks till the next council meeting. Till here? Yeah. So. Well, that would be. I'm. He's opining on her substitute motion this week. Okay. So any, any any further council comment on this item? Members cast your vote. The substitute motion is to hold the item over till the next council meeting. O'DONNELL Yes. Motion carry six votes? Yes. Councilmember. He has a question for the city. Yes. And Mr. Parking, I think this is the first time that I haven't really gotten a clear answer. Is there any way I know, because of the nature of the fact that people can put in these things any any kind of item? Isn't there a way, though, that can be ferreted out between the difference between because we're putting them under the classification of tobacco, which absolutely this city is is really committed to being smoke free with tobacco. Again, my concern down the line is our our vulnerability. I know other cities have done this, but our vulnerability of including things in a category that really don't belong there. So it. Becomes a policy decision. Obviously, for the city council. I think from an enforcement perspective it becomes, if will be our officers position would be almost unenforceable because you'd have no way to tell what product is in the e-cigarette that's being vaped unless you were able to test it. And I don't think we could enforce that. So the other cities, I think that we're following what they have done is that they have treated all of the product as a cigaret, as we're proposing to do in the second reading this evening. And are we distinguishing between, you know, in the first generation of the e-cigarettes, it was a device that lit up and simulate it as if you were smoking. And this these devices are much different. These vapor devices are different. So we're throwing everything in the same category. That is correct, in that we are treating. Them all similarly. I think the the other issue would be is if you adopted the ordinance as it's proposed at a future time, after some other technology advances or studies come out, the council could certainly amend the ordinance to address that issue. If that was a desire of the council. You know, what's the penalty for. You know, council memberships? You know, you're talking about altering the policy, not I'm not in the request to it. Well, not on the court. Your request was to hold it over until the next council meeting, which is really what our conversation should be specific to right now. Mr. Klein. Can I get that information? Jim McCall. Thank you. But right now, let's let's let's vote and move forward where he did so. Mr. City Clerk, that that is our last item, correct? Yes. Okay. New business people. We need to vote. We did not vote. Okay. You said we voted. Well, odor. And did we vote yes or no? Just hold on. Hold on. That's correct. Okay. We did vote yes. Sorry about that. Okay. Councilmember Lipski. No, no, no, no, no business. Councilmember Neal.