Legislation that sailed through the General Assembly on near-unanimous votes gives Virginia tough new tools to enforce existing laws on selling tobacco products and vaping products to underage buyers.
The "Vape Enforcement Act" legislation, House Bill 308 and Senate Bill 620, also gives teeth to existing law that says it’s illegal to sell vaping products that haven’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and that are on a directory maintained by the Office of the Attorney General.
“Increasing rates of vaping are a concerning and important public health and safety issue as well as a consumer protection issue … vaping threatens to addict a new generation of American youth, much the way that Big Tobacco did for generations before,” Attorney General Jay Jones said Monday.
“It is illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia to sell tobacco products to anybody under the age of 21, but up until the passage of the Vape Enforcement Act, there has been no way to enforce that law,” he added.
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The bills shift oversight of retail sales of tobacco from the state tax department to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, which is already responsible for enforcing state law that says only adults over 21 can buy alcoholic drinks.
ABC agents, who the bills say will be conducting unannounced buyer operations on each licensed tobacco and vaping product retailer once every 24 months, are already well-placed to enforce the tougher regulations, said Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, who’s been working on this idea since 2020.
Buyer operations aim to ensure sellers check IDs as required by law.
ABC agents also will be checking to ensure that unlicensed, untaxed vaping products aren't for sale.
Many of them have the kind of sweet flavoring that federal regulators say can hook younger users and can contain other ingredients that pose additional health risks beyond those from nicotine.
“We can ensure that these unregulated products are not sold to customers, and that bad actors are penalized for noncompliance," Hope said.
"There will be consequences for selling to underage. We have an underage of 21 law already in place, but it's just not being enforced in the way that it should. That ends with the passage of this law,” Hope said.
The bills say retailers will need permits from the ABC Authority to sell tobacco products or products with liquid nicotine.
They set record-keeping requirements and auditing requirements, as well.
“And then if they sell to a minor, there'll be random underage checks from ABC, and there'll be fines that start pretty hefty, fines that go up to thousands of dollars. And most importantly, if they do it repeatedly, they lose their license to sell these products,” said former state Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, who’s campaigned for years for tougher underage sales laws.
“That's a pretty significant penalty,” he said.
A first violation of the ban on selling to underage buyers is subject to a fine of $1,000, a second to a fine of $5,000 and a third to a fine of $10,000.
Selling tobacco products or vapes without an ABC permit also would be subject to stiff fines, as would selling vaping products not on the Attorney General’s directory.
“You and I see them in our neighborhoods on a daily basis, these illicit shops that are selling illegal products to kids," said state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, who carried the Senate bill when Ebbin left to take over as senior advisor at the Cannabis Control Authority.
"The Vape Enforcement Act really finally gives us the tools to put an end to that, which I think is really exciting and really promising.”
“One of the craziest statistics that I heard when I really got into the weeds of this process was that the number of vape stores that were registered with the government through tax is 52, and I joke that I think there's 52 vape shops on Staples Mill Road alone,” he added.
Separately, Altria Group said it has started marketing its new "on! PLUS" nicotine pouches nationwide.
Altria had been selling the product in Florida, North Carolina and Texas.
The "on! PLUS" pouches are the first product authorized through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s pilot program designed to expedite the review of nicotine pouch products.
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