By Amber Phillips February
11, 2016
With one defiant puff in a congressional hearing, Rep.
Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) blew up an otherwise quiet debate Thursday.
"So," he said as he exhaled a cloud of mist in a
House Transportation Committee hearing. "This is called a vaporizer."
"There is nothing noxious about this whatsoever,"
Hunter went on. The congresswoman next to him wasn't so sure; she waved
the cloud away.
The committee was voting on Del. Eleanor Holmes
Norton's (D-D.C.) proposal to ban vaping on airplanes. Hunter, the "Yes, I vape" congressman, was most definitely
opposed to it.
In rather theatrical fashion, he urged his colleagues to say
no too. Vaping has helped him quit smoking, he said, and he argued Norton's
amendment would also make it tough for people with asthma inhalers or people
inhaling "medicine of the future" through vaporizers to take their
hits on a plane. "For freedom's sake," he said.
The amendment ended up passing. It was one of dozens of
amendments the committee voted on as part of a larger aviation bill making its
way through Congress, and while interesting, it probably wouldn't have made
national news without Hunter's brand of civil disobedience.
Vaping advocates are ostensibly grateful. They have been
waging what looks like a losing battle in Washington to fight back what
they say is an onslaught of onerous legislation and federal regulation that's
strangling an industry lawmakers don't understand.
Greg Conley, with the upstart nonprofit advocacy group
American Vaping Association, said groups like his are fighting a battle on a
lot of fronts.
President Obama just signed a bill requiring that all
packaging containing nicotine is child-resistant. The Federal Drug
Administration is finishing up regulations that would essentially put vaping
products under the same strict regulations as other tobacco products — a move
that Conley argues would put the burgeoning industry on death watch. There are
efforts at the state level to treat vaping products as traditional tobacco
products, from packaging to labeling to advertising to taxing them. There are
also active debates about where you can mist up (to coin a phrase) and
when.
Vaping advocates are pushing a bill that would let the FDA
regulate vaping products but requests it doesn't simply lump the industry in
with cigarettes and other tobacco products. The House bill, led by Rep. Tom
Cole (R-Okla.), currently has 45 co-sponsors, not an insignificant number. (Hunter
is one of them.)
As lawmakers across the nation decide how to handle this
growing industry, most vapers are following their own code of conduct, Conley
said: "Most vapers understand they wouldn't walk into a Walmart and do
it."
Hunter, a regular vaper himself, probably knew that when he
decided to mist up in Congress with the C-SPAN cameras watching. But thanks to
his little vaping stunt, you know all this stuff too, now.
Visit www.Vulcan-Vapor.com to check out our newest Mod, The Caelum.
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