Guam bill targets vaping

A new bill introduced by the Speaker of the Guam Legislature, Benjamin Cruz, seeks to expand the US territory’s ban on smoking in public places to include vaping, according to a story in The Guam Daily Post.

“Vaping is a choice,” Cruz was quoted as saying. “Breathing isn’t. No one who visits a public place should be forced to inhale potentially dangerous chemicals as the price of admission.”

Guam’s amended Natasha Protection Act prohibits smoking in places such as restaurants and bars, outdoor recreation spaces, elevators, public restrooms, transit stops, service lines, within 20 feet of entrances to business and government establishments, and other public areas.

Smoking, as currently defined by the statute, means ‘inhaling, exhaling, or burning any lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe, weed, plant, tobacco product or related substance’; so the statute does not include electronic smoking devices.

Bill No. 198-34 seeks to amend the Natasha Act’s current definition of smoking to include ‘the use of an electronic smoking device’ or ESD.

The speaker’s bill would establish also a definition of ESDs to include ‘any electronic product that can be used to aerosolize and/or deliver nicotine or other substances to the person inhaling from the device’.

The bill says these devices include ‘electronic cigarette, electronic cigar, electronic cigarillo, electronic pipe, hookah pipe, or hookah pen, and any cartridge or other component of the device or related product, whether or not sold separately’.