I am not an attorney, I don’t even play one on TV, but I think the bill is just bouncing around various Senate committees:
See this link for more information…
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As I stated above, there is of course steps still in between, but it’s paper trail at this point. Nothing more and nothing less.
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I wonder what Altria thinks about this… I think they just bought Juul and they own 50% of the US tobacco market.
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Isn’t there quite a bit of big vaping business in Cali?
Even though I should get used to it by now, it’s a growing trend on a global scale, it still amazes me every single day how stupid people are becoming, how the world is full of contradictions and people keep voting for the wrong thing when it comes to their personal interests.
Those people who are voting for it have probably been smoking a bit too much ganja or drinking too much alcohol… it’s affecting their brains and both of these things are proven to be a hell of a lot worse than vaping.
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Kiss Free Speech Goodby in California.
here seems to be a new concept in law that there is such a thing as what is called a “verbal rebuttal presumption in law” that essentially means that if you engage in "rebuttal conversation with the public about certain subjects that you have violated a criminal statue’ This is very dangerous territory. It is the stuff dictatorships are made of.
I was reading the actual proposed law in SB-38 Flavored tobacco products.(2019-2020) and it contains these interesting 3 paragraphs:
-=22996.
(a) A tobacco retailer, or any of the tobacco retailer’s agents or employees, shall not sell, offer for sale, or possess with the intent to sell or offer for sale, a flavored tobacco product.
(b) There shall be a rebuttable presumption that a tobacco product is a flavored tobacco product if a manufacturer or any of the manufacturer’s agents or employees, in the course of his or her agency or employment, has made a statement or claim directed to consumers or to the public that the tobacco product has or produces a characterizing flavor, including, but not limited to, text, color, images, or all, on the product’s labeling or packaging that are used to explicitly or implicitly communicate that the tobacco product has a characterizing flavor.
-=22997.
An enforcing agency may assess civil penalties in the amounts set forth in subdivision (a) of Section 22958 for a violation of this division.
I will edit out the window dressing and you get this:
(b) (…) if a manufacturer or any of the manufacturer’s agents or employees, (… ) has made a statement or claim directed to (… ) the public that ( bla bla bla… various words one might speak in normal daily conversations…) then he /she has violated the law and the enforcing agency my take action as in next paragraph…
- An enforcing agency may assess civil penalties in the amounts set forth in subdivision (a) of Section 22958 for a violation of this division.
In other words use of words in conversations now become a crime in the State Of California.
This will, we hope, be contested and struck down in court as Un Constitutional.
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“most shocking of all our civil liberty’s will not be taken from us by force, they will be given up freely by imposing a world view to the public and reducing their ability to fight back”
well Zeitgeist was right about that at least.
Doesn’t this contradict he constitution?
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there in is the Constitutional conundrum,
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3937&context=clr
“The protections granted to defendants in criminal actions
impose burdens on the prosecutor which are not borne by the
plaintiff in civil litigation. To escape these burdens, legislators and
prosecutors have tried to devise various methods of circumventing
the requirement of providing constitutional protections to criminal
defendants. One increasingly popular technique to avoid this duty
is to change the labels of the statutes under which individuals are
prosecuted from criminal to civil”
I believe when you operate a business, basically you agree by license and charter to abide by regulations set forth in the jurisdiction of the issuing authority. We are not really free and the Constitution has been subverted from its intent before the ink was dried.
Edit to add, this is a old paper above but relevant,also recently the supreme court ruled to limit civil liabilities imposed by states but not abolish more relevent to forfieture law but may apply https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-constitutional-protection-against-excessive-fines-applies-to-state-actions/2019/02/20/204ce0d4-3522-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.76763f108aaf
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I am in no way supporting this proposed law but that section says to me it is a reverse onus situation (we have a few of them here in Australia as I suspect you do over there as well).
My take is if a manufacturer or employee or labelling states (yada yada) it produces a characterizing flavour then it is considered to be a flavour unless proven by the defendant that it is not a flavour.
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I believe that such “intent and/or representation only” statutes have long existed where it comes to prosecuting controlled substances (in federal statutes) in the over 100 year long futile “war on people who use drugs”. Thus, someone who represents a controlled substance but in actuality provides an inert legal substance, or a person who attempts to - or represents that they believe that they have -successfully manufactured a controlled substance (or analog), even though in actuality they have not produced any such thing, are considered to be fully chargeable and convict-able of the crimes of possession or manufacture of said controlled substance(s). This is prosecution of “thought crimes”.
If such “thought crimes” were (in present legal system) considered unconstitutional, these tyrannies would likely have been successfully challenged long ago. Nicotine is not a controlled substance - but that has not stopped FDA, or starry-eyed, unctuous legislators looking for revenue and public praise.
The supremely brain-dead thing about the (present, referred out of committee) SB-38 bill language is that they idiotically ignore that (pretty much all) tobacco leaves receive chemical “flavor constituents” !
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Division 8.7 (commencing with Section 22995) is added to Business and Professions Code, to read:
DIVISION 8.7. Prohibition on the Sale of Flavored Tobacco Products
.22995. For purposes of this division, the following definitions apply:
(d) “Flavored tobacco product” means any tobacco product that contains a “constituent” that imparts a “characterizing flavor”.
(b) “Constituent” means any ingredient, substance, chemical, or compound, other than tobacco, water, or reconstituted tobacco sheet, that is added by the manufacturer to a tobacco product during the processing, manufacture, or packing of the tobacco product.
(a) “Characterizing flavor” means a distinguishable taste or aroma, or both, other than the taste or aroma of tobacco, imparted by a tobacco product or any byproduct produced by the tobacco product. Characterizing flavors include, but are not limited to, tastes or aromas relating to any fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, menthol, mint, wintergreen, herb, or spice. A tobacco product shall not be determined to have a characterizing flavor solely because of the use of additives or flavorings or the provision of ingredient information. Rather, it is the presence of a distinguishable taste or aroma, or both, as described in the first sentence of this definition, that constitutes a characterizing flavor.
The full text of the (current, introduced Dec 3, 2018) SB-38 is available as download-able PDF here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billPdf.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB38&version=20190SB3899INT
Track the bill history as it makes its way through senate committees (and hopefully not farther) here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB38
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As is more common than not, and is nothing new, a bunch of coiffured legislative ignoramuses are so uninterested in actually understanding the molecules and substances that they rush to hurriedly prohibit (under rubrics of paternalistic/prohibitive moralities only, bolstered by junk-science, pseudo-psychiatric declarations, and hysterical hyperbolic fear mongering), that they are crafting patently incoherent, and wholly unworkable law. Note that they will (very likely) not be applying the above language to “big” leaf tobacco industries - once lobbyists for those powerful corps get in on the bill amendments process prior to any passage. Perhaps such exemptions may be already written in. Dunno. Read for yourself.
The language [from definition (a) above]:
A tobacco product shall not be determined to have a characterizing flavor solely because of the use of additives or flavorings or the provision of ingredient information.
… looks like a loop-hole big enough to drive a “big” leaf tobacco industry truck through - and one which clearly invites selective, subjective, and indefensible “enfarcement”. Expect “money to talk” uber alles.
The other thing about flavorings that seems to me absurd is that all of the fuss is about some kind of school-marmish taboo of flavorings on a premise that eliminating them would result in less “corruption of the youth” (Socrates’ crime) in general - where it may in fact be that (certain) identified molecules in flavorings are indeed potentially physiologically harmful. Rather than do reputable research, and then (if warranted) legislate based upon objective evidence that such harm has been shown to actually be the case, instead (as almost always true when it comes to activities that improve peoples’ mood and afford them any kind of “state of well being”) society and their legislators partake in “moralistic pontifications”.
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I’m getting another large order to submit today. I feel that these flavor bans are not just affecting the people who vape to not go back to smoking cigarettes or who are wanting or trying to stop smoking, it’s going to effect all those in the industry that are on the business side of vaping. What’s going to happen to all those people? From the person that had a dream and did have so much to open that neighborhood shop were everyone goes too, to the ones working in the warehouse pulling and boxing up orders. It’s going to screw over so many people and there family’s. It took me several months to get my fiance to stop smoking and start vaping. And as for me,I started vaping about a year ago after smoking for 31 years. Both of us have felt the difference and feel a lot better. This is the first year that I didn’t end up having bronchitis and I don’t wheeze when I breathe. But stores like mine and millions of others just doesn’t seem to matter to the government.
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It is my understanding that “reverse onus” is only common in your Country and Canada. In the USA it is not a feature of our law. Here you are innocent until proven guilty. Here there is no reverse onus that assumes you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
Over here similar to “reverse onus” is that in rare cases the defense may choose to mount what is called an “affirmative defense”. This occurs very rarely and is considered a very risky type of defense. To effectively mount such a defense you need to find a “trap door” that is written in the original criminal statute that allows such a defense.
The best example over here on that is in murder defenses where basically the accused says “yes I admit I am guilty, I did in fact kill the bastard and I admit that he is quite dead, but I did it in defense of my life”… This only works in some of our 50 States where the murder statute allows affirmative defenses by using what is called “Castle Doctrine” or in some cases “Stand Your ground”… In those few States the criminal statute specifically states that you can defend (with lethal force) your Home or Castle and/ or if outside of your Home/Castle your can Stand Your Ground and use lethal force and you are NOT required to retreat from the threat. But the key here is that those provisions MUST be in the original criminal statute.
To clarify my strong objection with what we have with this proposed California Law, it is that the violation is defined as verbal but not physical. No physical crime needs to be actioned for the law to kick in. No actual Sale of product needs to take place. Of course also here in the USA we take very seriously our principle of Free Speech… Short of yelling FIRE in a crowded theater, you get to verbally flap your jaws about almost anything.
A hypothetical example might help explain the problem. Let’s say you come to visit me here in California. We go to my local vape shop and are looking at the products. There happens to be also in the shop at that time a Deputy Sheriff Officer looking to buy a pack of (legal and lethal) cigarettes. He over hears us talking about tobacco vapes with the guy behind the counter. I mention that my NET tobacco extraction have been topped with a casing of Vanilla in the Cavendish Blend. The guy behind the counter nods his head in agreement and mumbles, “yeh I think it has vanilla in it”… At this point the Sheriff Deputy puts the three of us in handcuffs, and says “You are under arrest”. What has happened is clear. Our Words are the crime.
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If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. … The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. … Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. What can you do against the lunatic … who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? … I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
-George Orwell
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So, what about all the subtle and not so subtle notes in pure tobacco? A vendor can’t say a cigar has coffee, Carmel, or fruit notes anymore?
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Ah ok I wasn’t sure if you have them there or not - I must stress it is a crazy stupid idea and that I hope that it never will never see the light of day.
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Rolling from the now well developed playbook of pubilc policy makers brainlessly and breathlessly inventing faux-“crises” (that actually, by the “Iron Law of Prohibition”, engender and promote genuine resultant collateral dangers to public health and safety), the drumbeats are real. Not to be outdone by those often seen as “hipper” San Francisco council members, and bolstered by state level extreme legislative unction in Sacramento, where ceremonial “burnings of the books” amidst tongue-talking celebrations of collective weaponized ignorance are ensuing with a vibrant, sanctimonious fervor:
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You have quite the gift!
Love the above quote! 
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Although one might think that PM (Altria, 35% owners of JUUL Corp) would here have some political clout in CA, that is not so clear in this case. RJR poured ~$3.5 Million into opposition to June 2018 SF flavor ban. They lost by a roughly 2 to 1 margin with SF voters. As noted, LA (may) be following suit.
SB-38 passed out of the state senate Health committee 8-1, now referred to the Appropriations Committee for (governmental) fiscal impact analysis and consideration. The Appropriations Committee presently has 6 members and one vacancy (meaning that a deadlock is possible). The Chairperson (Portantino-D) is an initiating sponsor of the bill (and some related ones) - likely a solid Yes vote, as also is Hill-D. Vice Chairperson (Bates-R) may be a No vote (received $3,000 in 2018 campaign contribution from RJR). Jones-R is GOP Caucus chair, and may be a No vote. The balance may be decided by Weickowski-D, and Bradford-D (received $4,500 from PM and $3,000 from RJR in 2018 campaign contributions). Contribution data exists on Page 10 of Center For Tobacco Policy report:
https://center4tobaccopolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TMR-4Q-Final-4.17.18.pdf
The CA SenateHealth Committee recently authored a fairly informative document that is found here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB38#
For those who are interested in SB-38 and the surrounding political climate, it is a worthwhile read.
For persons who have on-line purchases in CA that are shipped to the buyer, the also pending SB-39 (introduced by Portantino and Hill) would result in much more expensive shipping delivery methods (requiring personal signature upon receipt of a parcel clearly marked as containing tobacco products), in addition to imposing what sound like more onerous age-verification procedures upon sellers/buyers.
SB-39 (pertaining to all shipped orders of “tobacco products”, which also includes vaping hardware):
Section 22963 of the Business and Professions Code is amended to read:
(5) The tobacco product shall be delivered only in a container that is conspicuously labeled with the words: “CONTAINS TOBACCO PRODUCTS: SIGNATURE OF PERSON 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER REQUIRED FOR DELIVERY.”
(6) Upon the delivery of the tobacco product to the recipient’s or purchaser’s address, the seller, distributor, or nonsale distributor shall obtain the signature of a person 21 years of age or older before completing the delivery.
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The creepy Orwellian List of Licit and Illicit Sensory Pleasures (likely would be a ham-fisted SNAFU):
State Assembly Bill AB-1625 language:
Article 5. Unflavored Tobacco 104559.1
(a The Attorney General shall establish and maintain on the Attorney General’s internet website a list of tobacco product brand styles that lack a characterizing flavor. This list shall be known as the Unflavored Tobacco List.
(b Every manufacturer and every importer of tobacco products may submit to the Attorney General a list of all brand styles of tobacco products that they manufacture or import for sale or distribution in or into California that lack a characterizing flavor. The Attorney General may deem each submission to be a request that the brand style be included on the Unflavored Tobacco List. Any submission under this section shall be accompanied by a certification by the manufacturer or importer, under penalty of perjury, that describes each brand style and states that it lacks a characterizing flavor.
(c In determining whether or not a brand style has a characterizing flavor the Attorney General shall consider, among other factors, information received from the manufacturer or importer to the Attorney General regarding the brand style.
(d The Attorney General shall presume a brand style to have a characterizing flavor if the manufacturer, importer, distributor, wholesaler, or retailer of that brand style, or an employee, contractor, agent, or affiliate of that entity, makes a statement that the brand style has or produces a characterizing flavor. A statement includes, but is not limited to, text, color, or images on the brand style’s labeling, packaging, marketing materials, social media, or advertising, or a submission to a government agency, that communicates explicitly or implicitly that the brand style has a characterizing flavor. This presumption may be rebutted by the manufacturer or importer.
(e The Attorney General shall decline to list on the Unflavored Tobacco List any brand style that the Attorney General reasonably determines has a characterizing flavor.
(f The Attorney General shall remove from the Unflavored Tobacco List any brand style that the Attorney General determines has a characterizing flavor. The Attorney General shall promptly provide the manufacturer or importer that submitted a certification regarding a brand style with written notice in the event that the Attorney General removes it from the Unflavored Tobacco List. This notice shall include the basis for the Attorney General’s determination.
(g A brand style not on the Unflavored Tobacco List shall be presumed to have a characterizing flavor. This presumption may be rebutted by the manufacturer or importer of that brand style. A manufacturer or importer that seeks to rebut this presumption shall notify the Attorney General, provide a certification by the manufacturer or importer that the brand style lacks a characterizing flavor, and, upon the request of the Attorney General, provide additional information and factual substantiation regarding the lack of a characterizing flavor.
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The incorporated definition of the phrase “tobacco product” reads as follows from this current statute:
(8) (A) “Tobacco product” means any of the following:
(i) A product containing, made, or derived from tobacco or nicotine that is intended for human consumption, whether smoked, heated, chewed, absorbed, dissolved, inhaled, snorted, sniffed, or ingested by any other means, including, but not limited to, cigarettes, cigars, little cigars, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco, or snuff.
(ii) An electronic device that delivers nicotine or other vaporized liquids to the person inhaling from the device, including, but not limited to, an electronic cigarette, cigar, pipe, or hookah.
(iii) Any component, part, or accessory of a tobacco product, whether or not sold separately.
(B) Notwithstanding subparagraph (A), “tobacco product” does not include a nicotine replacement product approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
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It would seem that “big tobacco” (ie, PM/Altria and RJ Reynolds, primary players in terms of political $$ spent) are “shittin’ bricks” at the moment, Their “influence” here (may) prove to be insufficient. These laws would (I think likely) inflate the retail costs of all tobacco products even more than current costs.
The FDA (wants) to mandate that cigarettes contain miniscule amounts of Nicotine. One can bet that FDA approved “cessation” products will be medicalized and monetized to death, soaking pocketbooks and trying one’s patience. This is the faux-“Opioids crisis” political model - forbidding things that do work and are not themselves particularly harmful/toxic (demonstrably much safer and less harmful/toxic than NSAIDs, Tylenol, Ethanol promoted by arse-clown policy makers, DEA agents, physicians, and pharmacists conscripted by craven fear to don priestly pseudo-psychiatric robes concealing police badges force onto suffering human beings out of sanctimonious self-interest) - maximally medicalizing, monetizing and loathfully criminalizing human beings and the human condition of experiencing pain (in ~80% of patients). [Fentanyl(s)] mortalities arise directly out their prohibitions. Yet these unctuous twits power on - unwilling to admit that their unleashing the “Iron Law of Prohibition” is the (actual) “scourge”, or that futile moral-nanny “demand-side efforts” are a demonstrated and proven futile fools errand. This specious travesty of prohibitions - largely ignoring the dying while sadistically torturing the living (driving some to suicide) - demonstrates just how obtuse/cruel moral crusaders wearing medical masks are. The (brainless, breathless) “press” are being used in identical ways in order to demonize our Nicotine.
Autonomy/dignity of competent adults is denied via paternalistic coercions in the name of amorphous, not determinable by physiological testing, and thus subjectively declared moral pejorative, “addiction”. Never mind that pharmaceutical Opioids as well as Nicotine are relatively safe/non-toxic physiologically. What interests and motivates the sanctimonious snits, busy-bodies, and pseudo-psychiatric parasites is the horrifying thought that individuals would own and have jurisdiction over their own bodies/minds. Forcing users towards toxic tobacco use is not at all unlike forcing users towards deadly Fentanyl(s). Prohibitions create amplifications of the “demand side” and perceptions of “taboo” irresistible to youth. Tragically, the resultant health/safety of the populace is endangered/harmed by these moral crusades.
This started in 1906 with legislative authority ensuring accurate labeling of ingredients/dosages. Today:
FDA also plays a significant role in the Nation’s counterterrorism capability. FDA fulfills this responsibility by ensuring the security of the food supply and by fostering development of medical products to respond to deliberate and naturally emerging public health threats.
https://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/
Some of the most dreadful/pernicious actions in modern history have operated under amorphous subterfuge of allegedly protecting societies from “public health threats”. The Pharmacratic Police State. The “drug war” model was developed in pre-WW2 Nazi Germany, and perfected by the U.S. Regarding this motley crew of pontificating parasitic self-dealing alleged “do gooders”, my “diagnosis”:
The over-proscribing crisis among public officials, tragically bowing to peer pressures and the need to be loved by the cool kids, quickly (as rapidly as 5 days) becoming profoundly habituated to unctuously speaking in tongues understood only by other cult members similarly enraptured with themselves, and who congregate in self-emboldened clusters in our cities to participate in dark ritualistic uncontrolled gesticulations of moral judgments/condemnations has reached crisis proportions, representing an epidemic scourge upon society. This should be considered a public mental hygiene problem, as it is not these poor misguided souls’ fault that their brains have been hijacked by the most powerful narcotic of all - that is, making war upon other humans. They will remain addicted to power for life, but can be managed via interventions followed by strict supervision if we can only remove the social stigma associated with being a pontificating brainless nanny-state charlatan. Mandatory “mindfulness” and “acceptance” therapies are showing “more promise every day” as treatments ! Here is a common one:
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