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• PERILLIE: Legislator takes aim at electronic cigarettes 

As home to one of the nation’s first public smoking bans, and one of the first localities in the country to raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes to 19, Suffolk County has been at the vanguard of national efforts to break America’s addiction to smoking. But now a new, high-tech smoking threat has emerged in the form of “electronic cigarettes. “

Marketed towards young smokers, untested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and lacking any governmental oversight whatsoever, the skyrocketing popularity of “e-cigarettes” has spurred Suffolk County Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) to introduce legislation that would prohibit the sale of these devices to anyone under the age of 19. Cooper’s bill would also place the same public usage restrictions on e-cigarettes that are already in effect for traditional forms of smoking.

If approved by the Legislature, Suffolk County would become the first municipality in the nation, and one of only a small handful of governments worldwide, to place restrictions on these untested devices. . . .

“These devices combine the appeal of an iPod with that of candy cigarettes. But they also have the potential to create a life-long addiction to nicotine,” says Cooper. “They’re just too dangerous to be left unrestricted. I certainly wouldn’t want my kids to be able to get their hands on them.”

But kids are getting their hands on them. Besides being sold at numerous sites on the Internet, there are currently at least four known locations on Long Island where anyone can legally purchase e-cigarettes. And that literally means anyone. Since these devices are so new to the American market and they don’t contain tobacco, e-cigarettes are not governed by Suffolk’s Tobacco 19 law or any other state or federal regulation.

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These devices [e-cigs] combine the appeal of an iPod with that of candy cigarettes. But they also have the potential to create a life-long addiction to nicotine. They’re just too dangerous to be left unrestricted.
Suffolk County (NY) Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) whose bile would prohibit the sale of e-cigs to anyone under the age of 19. and place the same public usage restrictions on e-cigs that are already in effect for traditional forms of smoking. If enacted it would be the nation's first such legislation.