KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii A bill aimed at raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco and electronic smoking devices has stalled in the Hawaii House of Representatives.
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii — A bill aimed at raising the minimum age to purchase tobacco and electronic smoking devices has stalled in the Hawaii House of Representatives.
The bill proposed to make it illegal for anyone younger than 25 to buy the products, West Hawaii Today reported Sunday.
Democratic Reps. Richard Creagan and John Mizuno, the chairman of the House Committee on Health, introduced the bill that was unanimously passed by the health committee on Feb. 4.
The measure also passed a full reading on the House floor but did not secure required hearings before the House Judiciary and Finance committees. The bill subsequently missed a deadline for moving bills with multiple referrals to a final committee.
The bill cited the harmful effect of nicotine on developing brains, particularly youth and young adults and unborn children, as well as a study by the Institute of Medicine that found raising the minimum purchase age led to decreases in smoking prevalence and mortality.
The proposal has not necessarily met its end in this legislative session, Creagan said.
“I think it’s going to go forward, in just a new format,” Creagan said, who added he was surprised the bill died despite support from Finance Committee Chairwoman Rep. Sylvia Luke, a Democrat.
Creagan added: “I’m not sure exactly what Chair Luke has in mind, but it’s probably some type of gut and replace.”
The gut-and-replace legislative maneuver that strips a bill of its original content and replaces it with new legislation was used in 2016 when the tobacco age was increased to 21, Creagan said.
Luke could not immediately be reached for comment.
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The age of smoking anything should be raised a year, every year, and in a few decades the legal age to smoke will be up around 45 years and hopefully society having young smokers will be a thing of the past…let it continue to phase out.
Cigarettes, or any smoking of tobacco is a smelly, disease causing, highly addictive money maker for the tobacco and medical industries. How capitalistic preying on our youth, you might as well,give them opiates…oh they do that too…!
Ban smoking by at least a year every Increasing the legal age for smoking will mean Eventually no young person is allowed to smoke.
Peer pressure upon the youth will be gone too…eventually only the older, sick and diseased, part of the population will be publicly seen smoking, as they internally waste away year by year until death.
One educational thing about smoking, tobacco, and nicotine is that it causes with every inhale, constriction or narrowing of all the body’s arteries and reduces blood flow and oxygen to every vital organ in the body, not just the lungs.
Reduction of oxygen to Your organs causes your body’s organs to undergo accelerated aging, meaning they and you die sooner in life…meaning death by diseases. Cancer is a degenerative disease.
Here’s today’s challenge…name all of your body’s vital organs, and which ones do you have 2 of? It’s OK to Google the answer.
HINT, to you and the State Legislature…you should have learned all of this in lower elementary school; and built upon that knowledge year after year at least through high school graduation.
e-cigarettes should be outlawed period!