SC senators trying again to create vaping registry
E-cigarettes sit on a table on Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024. Senate President Thomas Alexander, R-Walhalla, brought bags of the vapes confiscated from students to show senators. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — South Carolina senators are reviving an effort to cut down on children's access to illegal vapes.
A bill sent Thursday to the Senate floor would create a registry of vapes and e-cigarettes that are allowed to be sold in the state based on those that have approval or pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
While the Senate Medical Affairs Committee voted to advance the bill, some senators said they planned to propose changes once it gets there.
A nearly identical effort last year passed the Senate unanimously but never got a hearing in the House.
The 10 senators in the meeting agreed on one thing: Children have too much ready access to vapes.
Amid 'epidemic' youth vaping, SC bill aims to crack down on sales of illegal e-cigs
'It's kind of scary how much this stuff's in middle schools,' said Sen. Josh Kimbrell, R-Spartanburg, who has two sons in middle school.
Fruit- and candy-flavored e-cigarettes that are popular among students in middle and high schools are already illegal. But after Chinese regulators banned flavorful vapes in 2022, they have poured into the United States while regulators struggle to keep up.
At the same time, some senators cautioned that relying on the FDA's registry, which includes only e-cigarettes that taste like tobacco or menthol, could step on businesses selling vapes that have not yet reached the end of the long approval process.
'You're essentially going to shut them down,' Kimbrell said.
The state could vet e-cigarettes itself, creating a registry of those that are likely to get federal approval, suggested Kimbrell and Sen. Matt Leber, R-Johns Island. They said they plan to look into the issue and propose changes once the bill reaches the Senate floor.
Doing so would be expensive and time-consuming for the office, replied Sen. Billy Garrett, R-Greenwood.
'We've got to do something now,' Garrett said. 'We've got to stop it right now.'
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