Ada, Oklahoma wants ban on e-cigarettes on public property
The City Council of Ada in Oklahoma has banned cigarettes from public properties. However, nobody expected they would also ban electronic cigarettes, especially because the FDA has not regulated e-cigarettes yet.
At first the City Council announced they would take measures to restrict the age of people allowed to buy electronic cigarettes. Tobacco users as well as e-cigarette smokers were ok with that, but now the Council shocked everybody with the restriction of smoking electronic cigarettes on private property. By the end of the Council meeting, the Council was still divided with three in favor of banning e-cigarettes from private property and two against.
While tobacco cigarettes were banned from all public places for years, electronic cigarettes were allowed everywhere. E-cigarettes don’t produce smoke, but water vapor which doesn’t smell like tobacco does. Several cities are dealing with the same issue as some health organizations continuing on motivating cities to ban e-cigarettes, because there is no official statement of the FDA yet. Proponents of e-cigarettes keep saying these organizations should do research. According to them, electronic cigarettes can ban tobacco cigarettes and make the lives of millions of smokers way healthier.
Ada has now decided to ban e-cigarettes on all indoor and outdoor areas owned or operated by the city, sidewalks not included. The reason has nothing to do with health, they state. The proponents of the ban state some citizens complained about seeing people smoking e-cigarettes in the city park for example. In other places of Oklahoma the council is working on a proposal to ban e-cigarettes from campus. A ban on e-cigarettes at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Central Oklahoma is already effective.
The city of Ada has a couple of weeks to go before the ban on e-cigarettes will be effective. From the 20th of November nobody is allowed to smoke electronic cigarettes anymore all indoor and outdoor areas owned or operated by the city.