Vaping shop owners and representatives asked the Lincoln City Council at a meeting Monday to shelve an ordinance adding e-cigarette use to the city's ban on smoking indoors.
At a minimum, the city should exempt the 16 vape product shops in Lincoln from the plan to ban vaping inside workplaces and public spaces, Scott Lautenbaugh told the council.
"It is not clear that there is harm from secondhand vapor," said Lautenbaugh, who represents the Nebraska Vape Vendors Association. "The best you can say is the jury is still out. The worst you can say is the evidence isn’t there."
Vaping advocates argued at Monday's public hearing that the nicotine-based products are a safe alternative to smoking tobacco products and shouldn't be conflated with cigarettes.Â
Interim Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Director Pat Lopez and representatives from the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association countered that adding vaping to the city's indoor smoking regulations puts the city on par with 890 other cities across the country.
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The aerosol used in vaping devices exposes people to toxins and carcinogens, proponents of the ban said.
But vaping proponents argued it's less dangerous than smoking and the concentrations of particles emitted from a vape cloud are not high enough to be hazardous.
Nationally, 48 deaths associated with vaping have caused a public health outcry, though many of the deaths have been linked to the use of black market THC cartridges, according to federal health authorities.
City Council members have already signaled support for the ban, according to interviews.Â
The Lincoln-Lancaster County Board of Health voted to support the ban last month, and Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird said her administration supports the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control to regulate vaping this way.Â
Grand Island has already passed a vaping ban, and North Platte's city council is looking to do the same.Â
Health department officials have argued e-cigarettes would have been added to the indoor smoking ban when the city enacted the ban in 2004 if they had been as available and popular as they are now.Â
Many businesses have already banned vaping indoors, but a city ordinance could give backing to businesses looking to outlaw the practice and protect public health, health department officials have said.
"No one should have to choose between their health and a paycheck," Nick Faustman of the American Cancer Society's Nebraska Cancer Action Center told the council Monday.Â
Eva Ayala, a health advocate at El Centro De Las Americas, said it's hard talking to her five children about the dangers of vaping when they see it every day in public like it is safe and normal to do.Â
"How would you feel if there were unknown chemicals being exposed to your children or grandchildren, blown their way?" said Ayala, who is a part of the Tobacco Free Lancaster County coalition.
People who vape already go outside to do so in most cases, so enacting a city ban is unnecessary, said Amy Wimer of the Lancaster County Libertarian Party.
And Lautenbaugh and Sarah Linden, whose Generation V E-Cigarettes and Vape Bar has three Lincoln locations, said no one is coming into the store or working in the store who doesn't know its business.Â
Linden's staff helps customers trying to quit smoking determine the right nicotine level and try out the vaping devices and flavors in the store, she said.Â
Her stores, both here and in other cities, have helped 120,000 people quit smoking, Linden said.
Banning vaping indoors without exempting businesses such as hers would be discriminatory, because cigar bars are allowed to operate in Lincoln, she said.
In 2015, Nebraska lawmakers carved out an exemption for cigar bars in the state's indoor smoking ban.Â
"It's widely known that secondhand smoke is harmful, yet we allow a wealthy demographic to smoke in cigar bars and socialize with like-minded people," Linden said, adding her shop provides a similar benefit.
"Allowing people to smoke in cigar bars while banning vaping in vape shops is irrational and unfair," she said.