Arizonans can agree — e-cigarettes should not be in the hands of our youth. While researchers continue to study the long-term health impacts of these products, the truth is, children and teenagers are at serious risk of health problems caused by these products, including a lifetime of nicotine addiction. While I commend state legislators for considering a solution to keep these products away from kids, HB 4001 is simply not the answer. 

As currently written, there is no proof this bill would reduce the use of tobacco products like e-cigarettes because it does nothing to reduce demand or provide a commonsense approach to stricter enforcement. In fact, it ignores proven strategies to prevent youth tobacco use. 

Public health advocates from all corners of the state are concerned about this proposal.

First, this bill does not establish tobacco retail licensing. Without licensing, it is difficult to determine who is selling these dangerous addictive products. And, without licensing, it is unclear how penalties would work — especially those that stop a retailer from selling tobacco. It’s also unclear how this would be enforced. 

While the bill would provide greater penalties for retailers who sell products to underage people, it does not contain additional resources for the Attorney General’s Office to carry out compliance checks and inspections. The bill sets its toughest penalties on violations that happen within a two-year period. That means a retailer would have to fail five compliance checks in two years before facing the harshest penalty — which isn’t so harsh — prohibited from selling tobacco but only for one year. Realistically, this won’t happen. Given limited resources, it’s highly unlikely a business would even be checked five times in two years. 

Penalties are only meaningful if violations are actually detected.

The standard is three violations over 36 months. This is an approach that is already working. Most of the cities in Arizona that have adopted tobacco retail licenses have their license revoked after a fourth violation in 36 months. Under the model tobacco retail license, there would be a minimum of at least one compliance check per year, with a recommendation of two. However, in this bill, there is no requirement for compliance checks at all! Without additional resources, on average, the compliance checks in Arizona would happen only once every three years.

As a long-time public health advocate, I stand with my fellow advocates in calling for urgency to solve this issue. More than 17% of high school students in Arizona have reported using e-cigarettes. Big Tobacco spends more than $120 million each year marketing their products to Arizonans and studies have found that kids are twice as sensitive to the tobacco industry’s marketing tactics. Nationwide, youth use of e-cigarettes remains high despite declines. In 2024, 1.63 million youth reported using such products, with 90% preferring flavored products. 

We all agree — now is the time to act to protect future generations of Arizonans from the dangers of e-cigarettes. So, why is the effective date of this bill not until January 2028? If we have the chance to do something now to help solve this problem, let’s do it the right way with knowledge from public health groups and methods that are proven to work. Why wait?

Brian Hummell is Arizona’s government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.