Portland’s war on vapor

Just when you thought the idiocy of the Portland City Council had hit rock bottom, along comes another ordinance that proves its ridiculousness knows no bounds.

Next Monday, the council will consider a new law to ban the use of electronic cigarettes — also known as “vapes,” as they emit vapor, rather than smoke — in hundreds of public spaces and private businesses where tobacco use is prohibited. The verboten-zones cover public parks and squares (e.g., Monument Square and Deering Oaks), public trails (Back Cove Trail, the Eastern Prom), and pretty much every retail business and restaurant in town, including their patios and sidewalk seating areas.

In a column two years ago (“Portland’s smoking ban is not crazy enough”), I decried the council’s acceptance of the crackpot theory that even a passing waft of tobacco smoke can be deadly. A 2010 report released by Surgeon General Regina Benjamin had concluded there is “no risk-free level of exposure” to cigarette or cigar smoke and claimed that inhaling “even the smallest amount of tobacco smoke can also damage your DNA, which can lead to cancer.”

The resultant ban on smoking outdoors in city parks and squares has been effective in two respects. It has pushed the homeless and poor out of the most visible downtown gathering places and back into the shadowy side streets and alleys and onto the stoops of retail businesses. And it has further strained relations between the police and those marginalized groups, as well as teens and the elderly poor, by compelling cops to enforce a law that is patently discriminatory and groundless.

Let’s call these laws what they really are: a ham-fisted effort to criminalize a legal activity (tobacco use). The fact the existing bans also apply to chewing tobacco reveals their actual, Puritanical intent, which is to crush the public’s God-given right to catch a buzz.

It’s disturbing to contemplate how brazenly Portland officials are pushing ahead with this latest measure despite its complete lack of justification. As The Forecaster’s David Harry reported this week, an analysis by the manager of a city health program cited three reasons for the ban: “increased use of the devices by youth, potential confusion about allowable tobacco use, and the undetermined health effects of e-cigs.”

It’s already illegal for minors to use e-cigarettes, so that leaves the possibility someone could be “confused,” and the lack of any clear scientific evidence of harm, as the basis of the law. It was on this basis that the council’s Public Safety, Health and Human Services Committee unanimously voted to forward the ordinance to the full council for passage next week.

Ed Suslovic during his term as Portland's mayor in 2008; photo/Nathan Eldridge, courtesy The Bollard.

Ed Suslovic during his term as Portland’s mayor in 2008; photo/Nathan Eldridge, courtesy The Bollard.

It is on this same basis that I declare the committee’s members — Justin Costa, Jill Duson, David Brenerman and chairman Ed Suslovic — unfit to participate in rational debate over public-health policy and demand they be summarily removed from that committee by Mayor Mike Brennan. A similar bill has been introduced at the state level by Democratic Rep. Jeff McCabe, of Skowhegan, who also deserves to be denounced and derided by rational adults and voted out of office at the earliest opportunity.

Compounding the actual harm in this case is the fact many smokers have switched to vaping in order to improve their own health and ultimately kick their nicotine habit. E-cig vapor is less harmful than smoke (it eliminates a host of carcinogenic byproducts), and it allows nicotine addicts to gradually reduce the amount of the drug they ingest without forgoing the sensation of “smoking,” which is a key aspect of the habit.

Put another way, e-cigs have a proven ability to save lives, but no one has proven that secondhand vapor poses a credible threat to public health. It’s much more likely that the city and state bans would dissuade smokers from switching to this healthier alternative, continue to alienate poor people and young people, and waste the time and resources of our police and court system. The cops in Portland clearly have more pressing priorities than walking around Back Cove sniffing for illegal vapors and busting people in the park for inhaling what is little more than hot air.

But again, this isn’t about health or public safety. It’s about demonizing a legal activity that some people find pleasurable. Suslovic told Harry he’s troubled by the very idea of a child witnessing an adult exhaling vapor. If that’s the standard for sweeping new laws, Suslovic and his committee have a lot of work to do, beginning with a ban on all media depicting smoking, vaping, drugs, violence or unprotected sex, followed by bans on motor-vehicle exhaust, locomotive and ship smoke, jet-engine vapor trails and flatulence.

That last one could be especially tricky for the cops to enforce, due to the well established common-law principle that “whoever smelt it, dealt it.”

Chris Busby

About Chris Busby

Chris Busby is editor and publisher of The Bollard, a monthly magazine about Portland. He writes a weekly column for the BDN.