New Mexico Daily Lobo,
Lissa Knudsen,
February 3, 2020-
New Mexico is one step closer to establishing a licensure process for e-cigarette and other tobacco product retailers and raising the age of purchase of all tobacco products to twenty-one. Senate Bill 131, the Tobacco Products Act, sponsored by Sen. Linda Lopez cleared the Senate Public Affairs Committee on Friday Jan 31, with a unanimous do pass. Though the bill moved easily through the Senate Public Affairs Committee, there are two possible amendments that don’t bode well for the bill: local preemption and banning flavors.
Local preemption gives governments “the right to be even stricter with their tobacco laws than (the state) is,” said Rep. Liz Thomson in an interview with the Daily Lobo. “(The vaping ) industry wants that out and the City of Albuquerque and some of the advocates… the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the American Cancer Society want to keep that in,” Thomson said. She went on to explain the bill could mean that if the state did not ban e-cigarette retailers from selling flavors, the City of Albuquerque, for example, would be allowed to do so.
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