Senate Bill 15 was sponsored by Sen. Gary Stevens and R-Kodiak, and has already been approved by the Senate Finance Committee. Existing state law already bans the sale of nicotine containing e-cigarettes to anyone under 19, but this bill would extend this ban further to include non-nicotine containing products aswell.
“It is also intuitive that vaping, like cigarette smoking, is inherently habit-forming,” wrote Stevens. “By continuing to not take action against this new trend, we send the message to our youth that these products are safe and appropriate to use.”
However, many public health and anti-smoking experts would agree that it is tragic that the ‘Gateway Theory’ is still spreading and informing policy, when it has been dispelled by numerous scientific studies.
A theory dispelled by science..still informing policy
Last August researcher Jean-François Etter, from the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, attempted to examine whether there is any truth to the gateway theory.
The study titled Gateway effects and electronic cigarettes,which was published in the journal Addiction, pointed out that the fact that current data is showing that smoking is on the decrease, and that smoking is on the rise where vaping restrictions are in place, indicates that the Gateway Theory is unsound.
“The gateway theory is not compatible with either (1) the decrease in smoking prevalence observed in adolescents in countries where vaping increased or (2) an increase in smoking among teenagers after age restrictions were imposed on e-cigarette purchases.” Etter added that ultimately nicotine medication and smokeless tobacco are known to not produce any gateway effects.
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