A smokers-rights group has sued the city in a bid to snuff out the ban on electronic cigarettes in public places.
The New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, a k a CLASH, filed papers Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court challenging the expansion of the city’s Smoke-Free Air Act (SFAA) in December to include e-cigs.
The law bars e-cigarettes in all areas where regular smokes are already banned, even though e-cigs emit only vapor, not smoke.
The lawsuit said that regulating both tobacco-smoke exposure and e-cigarettes violates the “One Subject Rule” of the City Charter, which restricts legislation to one issue — and it also must be named in the bill’s title.
“According to all documentation, the sole purpose of the SFAA, since its inception and in all of its amendments prior to the e-cig ban, has been the protection of the public from involuntary secondhand-smoke exposure,” the group said in a statement.
“Not a single justification for the e-cig ban has anything to do with smoking around others or protecting citizens or workers from exposure to secondhand smoke.”
The lawsuit said CLASH has 914 members, “many of whom are e-cig users.”
City Council spokeswoman Robin Levine defended the SFAA, saying it protects New Yorkers from the harmful effects of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.
The devices contain nicotine but not tobacco.
The FDA plans to regulate e-cigs but has not yet issued proposed rules.
Levine said the council is confident the courts will uphold the legislation.
A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said, “We will review the complaint when we are served” with legal papers.
E-cigarettes were the target of a recent report that suggested the devices may be a gateway to cancer-causing smokes for teens.
Youths who reported using e-cigs had six times the odds of smoking a traditional cigarette, according to a study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Research also showed that e-cigs didn’t stop kids from also smoking tobacco products, the study said.