SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Some people might think that vaping is a new thing and that the rise in vaping came out of nowhere. But the California Legislature actually tried to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes in 2009, which could have curbed the trend before it could arise.
The first patent for e-cigarettes was introduced when electricity first became commonplace in the 1920s and took until 2006 for the first batch of e-cigarettes ( as we know them now) to go through U.S. Customs and Border Protection by way of China.
California's legislators in 2009 passed Senate Bill 400, which would stop the sale of e-cigarettes in California. The primary reason for this ban was that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)had not yet regulated this tobacco product.
The FDA had just become regulators of the tobacco industry per the signing of former President Barack Obama's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
Soon after gaining control of tobacco regulations, the FDA was sued by Smoking Everywhere, an e-cigarette company, for claiming that its e-cigarettes were a drug-device.
California wanted to wait until the FDA figured out how they would regulate e-cigarettes before allowing the sale of them since they were different from traditional cigarettes, that was already proven to be bad for people's health.
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 400, citing that people should be able to choose what they want to do "until the federal law changes the legal status of these tobacco products."
Then in 2010, the U. S. Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA cannot regulate e-cigarettes as a drug but as a tobacco product unless advertised to have therapeutic properties.
The next year, the American Journal of Preventative Medicine published a study reporting that e-cigarettes are a promising tool for smokers to use when trying to quit. Soon after this study was released in 2011, a rising trend of vaping and e-cigarette usage began across the nation.
Now, eight years later, there have been several deaths and illnesses that have been related to vaping in California, yet vaping is still considered by some a way to curb smoking and acceptable in society.
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