With Federal Regulations Delayed and Deficient, Blumenthal Supports New Haven Effort to Ban Tobacco Use, Including E-Cigarettes, at City Buildings, Public Parks, School Grounds

(Hartford, CT) –U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today joined New Haven Mayor Toni Harp, members of the New Haven Board of Alders and health advocates in support of local efforts to ban tobacco use, including e-cigarettes, at City buildings, public parks and school grounds. With federal regulations delayed and deficient, local municipalities and states have stepped up to protect residents and youth from e-cigarette exposure.

Blumenthal helped lead the fight in Connecticut and nationwide against secondhand smoke, working to advance the state effort in 1993 to ban smoking in municipal and state-owned buildings. New Haven’s proposed ban would build on that early effort, barring e-cigarette use in municipal buildings, and extending the ban on all tobacco products to parks, school grounds, beach and ball fields.

“Children at playgrounds, employees at work, and families relaxing at the beach deserve fresh air untainted by toxic smoke and chemicals, and students deserve schools and ball fields free from e-cigarettes and their insidious marketing plainly and callously targeted at youth. Lax and laggard federal regulation has given Big Tobacco free reign to deploy e-cigarettes as its weapon of choice to hook its next generation of addicts. These tobacco products—cynically marketed to children with flavors like strawberry daiquiri and vanilla cupcake—have no place in our public parks, beaches playgrounds and schools. Without any federal review, we simply do not know the full scope of health consequences of these addictive nicotine delivery devices. I applaud New Haven, Madison, Groton, New Milford and other municipalities who have stepped up to protect residents where federal actors have failed. I am proud to stand with Mayor Harp and President Walker to endorse this life-saving ordinance,” Blumenthal said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year proposed regulations prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, but did not restrict marketing to youth, including use of flavors such as strawberry daiquiri and vanilla cupcake clearly intended to entice children. A year later, those regulations have still not been finalized, granting Big Tobacco unfettered free reign to use its cynically-marketed e-cigarette nicotine delivery devices to lure its next generation of addicts. Additionally, because the FDA has not regulated e-cigarettes, there has been no federal review of the safety of these devices.

Without federal intervention, e-cigarette use among middle school and high school students tripled in just one year, with approximately 2 million students now using e-cigarettes, according to the Center for Disease Control’s Tobacco Youth Study released in April. A Yale School of Medicine study found that 25 percent of Connecticut high schoolers have tried e-cigarettes. The New Haven Health Department has estimated that more than 1,000 City residents have died from smoking-related health problems in the past decade.

With federal regulators slow to act, Connecticut municipalities like New Haven are stepping up to protect residents from e-cigarettes and other dangerous tobacco products. Earlier this year, the Madison Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to ban all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes at its parks, beaches, playgrounds and fields, except in designated areas. State legislators have also put forward legislation to restrict e-cigarette use in certain public areas.