Houston to consider ban on smoking e-cigarettes and vapes in public

Houston City Council on Wednesday will consider a proposal that, if passed, would add vaping and smoking e-cigarettes to the city's existing ban on smoking in public spaces.

First reported by the Houston Chronicle's Nora Mishanec, the measure would effectively bring Houston's anti-smoking policies into the 2020s. Instituted in 2007, Houston's 100-percent smoke-free initiative included language tailored to the traditional forms of tobacco usage of the day, including cigarette and cigar smoking, but does not cover newer forms of nicotine usage.

Unlike rolled cigarettes, e-cigarettes use electricity to vaporize nicotine solutions into an aerosol, which is inhaled and exhaled as a fine, smoke-like mist. Some argue the exhaled aerosol is "harmless water vapor," but secondhand vape "smoke" still contains ultra-fine particles of nicotine, which can be inhaled by others.

This distinction is not addressed in Houston's current anti-smoking law, which only prohibits smoking "tobacco" broadly. The statute focuses on the places in which smoking is illegal and defines such areas as "all enclosed public places." City documents list "bars," "workplaces" and "aquariums," as among the places where it is illegal to smoke in Houston. Violators of the statute face up to a $2,000 fine per offense.

There are, however, some exceptions to Houston's mandate.

Among the exclusions to the city's ban are "private and semiprivate rooms in nursing homes and long-term care facilities that are occupied by one or more persons, all of whom are smokers and have requested in writing to be placed in a room where smoking is permitted." The law states that the fumes from these communal rooms "must not infiltrate areas where smoking is prohibited."

Certain "designated enclosed meeting areas in convention centers and hotels" are also fair game for smokers under the city's ban, so long as the organizing party informs the city in writing of its plans to light up.

According to Mishanec, a Houston Health Department spokesman said Wednesday's proposal targeting vape pens and e-cigarettes is a necessary reaction to the growing numbers of young people in the city smoking alternative forms of tobacco.

A 2020 CDC analysis found that e-cigarettes have surpassed combustible cigarettes as the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. middle and high school students. As of October 1, 2021, 993 municipalities, 20 states, and three territories include electronic smoking devices as products that are prohibited from use in 100 percent smoke-free environments.