City targets youth vaping

An ordinance aimed at clarifying and updating Green River’s laws regarding minors in possession of tobacco passed its first reading Tuesday night.

According to city prosecutor Bobby Pineda, the proposal comes after discussions with the police department and student resource officers who are seeing a large increase in the number of students using vaping products in the middle and high schools. Pineda said he’s received reports of teens vaping while on the work restitution bus.

“We’re really having a major problem with it,” he said.

The original ordinance only states that minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from using tobacco products. The updated ordinance adds electronic cigarettes to the prohibition, expressly prohibits the sale or giving of tobacco or electronic cigarette products, prohibits minors from using fake IDs to purchase the products and updates definitions of both tobacco and electronic cigarettes. Pineda said he hopes the ordinance’s definitions will allow it to stay up to date as the technology involved with electronic cigarettes continues to evolve.

Pineda said products are being made smaller and more discrete, producing less visible vapor than older types of e-cigarettes.

He said the advancements with vaping devices are made with adults in mind, but make it easier for teens to carry them because they’re now looking like USB thumb drives.

While the police department and prosecutor look to keep on top of a growing trend, Councilman Robert Berg said teens don’t even need a vaporizer to indulge. As manager of Arctic Circle, Berg said he hears about how teens at the high school use nicotine-containing juices designed for vaping, without a vaporizer. He said they take a bottle of a juice not containing nicotine and empty it, replacing it with a juice with nicotine in the mixture. Between class periods, Berg said teens will then dab a drop of the juice under their tongue -- an activity Pineda said he wasn’t aware of. The ordinance will be read at the next two city council meetings. After its third reading is approved, the new ordinance will go into effect.