Livingston NJ votes to Ban Vape Shops in its Business Districts

Despite all the evidence in favour of e-cigarettes as harm reduction tools, the Livingston Township Council is very proudly adopting an ordinance to prohibit vape shops from opening within Livingston’s business districts.

Diane Caruana

July 31, 2018

Despite being both a governing body and a health professional, Councilman Shawn Klein, who was absent on the night of the final vote, thinks that the council took a step in the right direction.

“I am proud of this council and the action it took,” he said about the final vote. “No one wants to live in a nanny state but a community needs to figure out where it should draw a line. This council had an opportunity to try to limit damage, to protect its residents, and did not let that opportunity go by. As a town and as a government, we need to continue to make choices about what kind of town we want to be.”

The vaping industry is not the tobacco industry

Sadly, Klein continued by saying that cigarette manufactures have historically been “massively dishonest about how addictive and dangerous their products were,” and that documents have indicated that cigarettes were “designed and altered to be extremely addictive.”

A PHE e-cigarette review that was conducted by leading independent tobacco experts, and updated the organization’s 2015 vaping report, confirming that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking.

However, Klein is making the mistake of associating the vaping industry to the tobacco industry. Although the major tobacco companies are trying to massively expand into the vaping industry, the larger part of the latter is made of independent vaping companies who have smoking cessation at heart.

The councilman went on to list a number of negative side effects of vaping, most of which have been proven untrue, however he missed a main point. No public health expert or vaping advocate is suggesting anyone takes up vaping, unless its for smoking cessation purposes, since the devices are known to be significantly safer than regular cigarettes.

Policy informed by misinformation

In a press release last February, Public Health England (PHE), released findings from an e-cigarette review that was conducted by leading independent tobacco experts, and updated the organization’s 2015 vaping report, confirming that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking.

The claims made by Councilman Shawn Klein are an unfortunate example of the misinformation that is still rife and spreading in relation to vaping products. Misinformation that is informing policy, and sadly stopping millions of smokers from considering the switch that could save their life.

Read Further: Tap Into Livingston