Moorhead leaders discuss licensing e-cigarette vendors, abolishing lengthy tobacco sampling
By: Erik Burgess, INFORUM
MOORHEAD – Hoping to curb sales to minors, the city could soon require e-cigarette vendors to be licensed and subjected to compliance checks like traditional tobacco sellers.
State law in Minnesota – and local ordinances in West Fargo and Fargo – prevents the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.
But because Moorhead doesn’t license e-cigarette vendors, there’s no registry of businesses that sell them and no one doing compliance checks to make sure e-cigarettes aren’t being sold to minors, Keely Ihry, of Clay County Public Health, told City Council members Monday.
New state e-cigarette laws give statutory authority to cities to license and regulate e-cigarettes, which Ihry argued are being targeted to and becoming more popular among teens.
Ihry passed around e-cigarette, or “vape pen,” samples to council members Monday, noting the colorful packaging and the myriad flavors like Skittles, bacon and strawberry banana.
“To subject any of our youth to an addictive substance such as nicotine, with the additional pleasures of scent to draw them in, it’s just unbelievable,” said Councilwoman Nancy Otto, who was the most vocal on wanting to license e-cigarette vendors.
“Otherwise, it’s basically a free-for-all,” Otto said. “We’ve got nobody that is going in to check these facilities.”
Council members Mike Hulett and Brenda Elmer said they would support licensing e-cigarette vendors in Moorhead. City Manager Michael Redlinger said the council could vote on it at the end of the month or in June.
Police Chief David Ebinger also urged the council on Monday to consider abolishing what he called a “deceptive sampling practice” in the tobacco industry.
Some tobacco vendors are taking advantage of a broadly worded state law that allows “sampling” of cigars, tobacco or hookah indoors, he said. Instead of offering a taste or two, some shops are allowing lengthy, hour-long smokes.
That’s not the spirit of the sampling provision, Ebinger said,
“You don’t sit down … and smoke an entire cigar or two of them in a bar, and call it ‘sampling,’ ” he said.
The chief proposed that Moorhead set up an ordinance that would prevent lengthy tobacco sampling and only allow limited sampling if a customer was looking to make a “bona fide purchase” of a product, like a hookah.
Hookahs On Main, 815 Main Ave., is the only hookah shop in Moorhead that allows such lengthy sampling, said City Clerk Michelle French, but she and Ebinger said others have inquired about setting up similar businesses.
If the council decides to pass a more restrictive sampling law, Hookahs on Main would be grandfathered in, Ebinger said. Still, the law would prevent more of these shops from setting up in Moorhead, he said.
“It’s a public health issue,” Ebinger said, arguing that hookah tobacco can be just as dangerous as standard cigarettes.
Redlinger said law enforcement also sometimes has disturbance and neighborhood issues with hookah shops.
The City Council denied a tobacco license renewal in February for the former owner of Hookahs on Main, then called Pyromaniacs, after learning that police regularly received complaints of loud noise and parties at the business.
